Four percent of couples report that they have considered separating or getting a divorce during major home renovation projects. If you’ve ever gone through such a process, you may be able to empathize.
The most common reasons for the friction when remodeling your home are staying on budget, choosing materials, and agreeing on the design.
If remodeling a house is stressful, building a house from scratch may be the ultimate stress test for a marriage. There’s even a saying about it: “Build a house, lose a spouse.”
Why is it so hard to agree on big decisions regarding your home?
In short, because where you live represents the kind of life you want.
If you want a big dining room, it’s not simply because you like big rooms. Maybe you want to be the kind of person who hosts a lot of parties, or maybe you want a big family. If you want a big backyard, it’s not simply because you want open space. Maybe being outdoors is life-giving to you.
The ultimate purpose of building a house is not to have the house, it’s to live your life inside the house. When you’re building your house, you’re building your vision for your life.
No wonder the color of the walls in the main floor bathroom feels so important.
It’s the same with building a financial plan. At first glance, you’re building a secure future for you and your family. Under the surface, you’re creating your version of a “good” life that allows you to fulfill your ultimate purpose, to accomplish the thing(s) you consider to be of utmost importance.
But for many people, their plan for the future never goes beneath the surface.
“Who do you want to be?”
Now there’s a good question. (If you missed my last article where we talked about the question, “What do you do?” you can read it here.)
We typically save this type of conversation for our closest loved ones (and therapist).
If this question is ever worth considering, the right time is on the edge of retirement. For the first time in your adult life, you will be totally free to be whoever you want, to do whatever you want.
If that feeling alone puts a knot of fear and excitement in your stomach, you’re not alone. After 40+ years of fitting your personal life around your professional obligations, you’re finally going to have total control over your time. Invigorating and intimidating all at once, right?
So how about it? Who do you want to be?
Finding the meaning of retirement
One of the most common retirement planning mistakes people make is to put money before meaning. Often without realizing it, they have come to believe that the solution to retiring well is having enough money.
Inadvertently, these people have defined an unwritten purpose for their golden years: Spend as little money as possible. Not a particularly compelling reason to get out of bed each day, right?
That’s why our planning process begins with purpose. Once you set your purpose, everything else falls into place.
If you don’t define your purpose, three things will happen:
1. Someone else will define it for you
If you don’t know why you’re saving money, you’ll inadvertently pick up someone else’s reason without even realizing it. This is the definition of “keeping up with the Joneses.” The neighbors bought a boat, so you did, too. Your in-laws took a cruise, so you did, too. Your daughter moved closer to the city, so you did, too.
2. You will never know the peace of having enough
Saving without a goal in mind is an endless mission. You can always earn more money, and so you will never feel true financial freedom.
I’ve worked with clients who don’t just want financial freedom, they crave it. They believe that once they find that freedom, then (and only then) they can start really living. Until that day, they can’t be their best selves.
And so they save every dollar. And when they’ve saved every dollar, they move on to quarters, then dimes, then nickels, until they’re saving every penny.
If you don’t know your purpose, you don’t know how much money you will need to fulfill it. If you don’t know how much money you will need, you’ll never know when you have enough.
Not only that, but hyperfixating on attaining financial freedom often causes people to put off personal growth. If you don’t focus on growth, your life will reflect it. Your marriage may suffer, your family may be distant, you may have no hobbies.
3. You will never give yourself permission to enjoy your own money
Advisor Dan Haylett calls this “The Permission Paradox.” During your working years, your career and busy lifestyle gave you an excuse to spend money on a nice car, eating out, etc. In retirement, many people struggle to “splurge” on a fancy coffee at Starbucks because they don’t have a reason to buy it. In their working lives, they bought a coffee every day on the way to the office, but now that excuse is gone.
They may have all the money they need, but they can’t give themselves permission to enjoy it.
The problem is that these people are more focused on what they’re turning away from than what they’re moving toward. It’s kind of like graduating from college. For many people, the year after graduation is a time of purposeless drifting. After spending so long focused on academics and college life, transitioning to “real life” can be a bit jolting if you don’t know who you want to be.
Who do you want to be?
That brings us back to our original question: “Who do you want to be?”
Once you’re clear on the answer to that question, it’s easier to get yourself to do the things that match up with the person you want to be.
In order to begin to answer that question, it’s important to identify the things other than money into which you want to invest your time and energy. Community, family, spirituality, personal growth – a good life is a function of all these things. You invest your resources in those things to make a good life.
Money is the tool, not the thing that makes life good. Money is the factor that goes into those other pieces.
So ask yourself: Who do you want to be?
Try picturing the retirement you’ve always wanted. You’re living the life you’ve been saving your entire life for – now what? What does it look like?
If you want to live near your kids, what does that look like? What will you do when your kids are busy? What if your kids move away?
If you want to have free time, what will you do with it? Who will you spend your time with? What will you do when you get bored?
If you want to give back, what does that look like? What causes do you care about?
Last but not least, how can you start incorporating those things into your life now so that when you do retire, you already know what your life will look like?
Resist the urge to shrug these questions off. They are worth considering sooner than later.
If you don’t answer them for yourself, someone else will.
