WEEKLY LETTER / ISSUE 002

The money can wait. Your knees can’t.

Hello Reader

We tend to plan for the future as if every year will arrive in roughly the same condition.

Same energy. Same confidence. Same appetite for adventure. Same willingness to sit on a budget Ryanair flight with your knees tucked somewhere behind your ears.

But time doesn’t work like that.

We picture our future self as basically the same person, only with more free time and a slightly stronger opinion about the thermostat.

We assume that if we don’t take the trip this year, next year will do. If not next year, perhaps the year after that.

The opportunity remains safely available in our imagination, earning interest alongside the pension.

You may have thirty years ahead of you. That doesn’t mean you have thirty identical years.

Some years are built for long journeys, late nights and saying yes without checking where the nearest toilet is.

Other years may be slower, quieter and closer to home.

Neither is necessarily better. But they are different.

And pretending otherwise can become a very expensive form of denial.

SOMETHING I NOTICED

People are incredibly careful with money and surprisingly casual with time.

They will spend weeks comparing investment charges to save 0.1%, then put off booking the family holiday they’ve talked about for four years.

They’ll worry about whether a restaurant is £20 too expensive while casually assuming their health, energy and relationships will remain available indefinitely.

Money feels measurable, so we protect it.

Time feels endless, so we waste it.

Until it doesn’t.

The real risk isn’t always running out of money. Sometimes it’s reaching the later years with plenty left and realising the things you wanted the money for are no longer possible.

That is a different kind of running out.

THE FIX

Stop treating all future spending as equal.

A pound spent at 62 might buy something very different from a pound spent at 82.

At 62, it might fund a long-haul trip, a month abroad, time with grandchildren or the courage to leave work a year earlier.

At 82, that same pound may still be useful, but it may be buying comfort, convenience and support rather than adventure.

A sensible plan should recognise this.

That means planning for different kinds of time, not simply different amounts of money.

There may be active years when you want to travel further, take on challenges and say yes more often. There may be flexible years when comfort matters more than novelty. And there may eventually be supported years when money is used to make life easier.

Nobody knows exactly when those stages will arrive. That uncertainty is the point. Waiting for perfect certainty usually means giving the best years the smallest budget.

It shouldn’t assume you’ll spend the same inflation-adjusted amount every year until you quietly expire midway through an annual review meeting.

It should give you confidence to use more of your money during the years when you are most able to turn it into something meaningful.

This isn’t about spending everything early and hoping your children enjoy having you live in their spare room.

It is about acknowledging that money has a shelf life too.

Its value depends on what your health, energy and circumstances still allow it to do.

YOUR MOVE

Think of one experience you’ve filed under “later”.

Now remove the comforting vagueness.

When, exactly, is later?

What needs to happen before you feel ready?

And is that condition genuinely necessary, or is it simply fear wearing a sensible cardigan?

Then ask one more question:

Would doing this twelve months sooner materially damage my future, or am I protecting the money from a life it was specifically built to fund?

If the plan can comfortably absorb it, bringing something forward is not stealing from your future self.

It may be giving that future self a better memory.

You don’t have to book anything today.

Just put a real date beside it.

Dreams without dates have an unfortunate habit of becoming regrets.

WORTH YOUR TIME

Look at the next twelve months of your calendar.

Don’t look for gaps. Gaps always get filled with admin, appointments and trips to garden centres you never consciously agreed to.

Instead, choose one week, weekend or ordinary Tuesday and protect it for something you genuinely want to do.

Put it in the diary before you decide exactly what it is.

Then tell somebody else. A protected date shared with another person is considerably harder to sacrifice to paperwork, indecision or a sudden urge to reorganise the shed.

The aim is not to cram more into the year.

It is to stop the things that matter being permanently outranked by things that merely feel urgent.

You have spent years making appointments with everyone else.

It may be time to make one with your own life.

Have a brilliant week,

Dan