What are you waiting for?

by Nick Platt

People assume our job is to help clients spend less so their money lasts longer.

Quite often, it’s the opposite. We spend a good deal of our time telling clients to spend more.

I wrote about this in my article many years ago:

Just in case article

After decades of accumulating, many of the people we work with arrive at retirement in genuinely strong shape. Solid wealth. A proper plan. Real financial freedom within their grasp. And then they freeze.

The dream trip sits on the wish list. The kitchen stays as it is. The children are quietly struggling with a deposit and mum and dad could write the cheque tomorrow without blinking, but they don’t. Forty years of “save more, spend less” runs deep. It becomes identity, not just habit. You’ve been the responsible one. The planner. The person who sacrificed today for tomorrow. And now tomorrow is here, and spending feels like dismantling the very thing that made you feel safe.

I understand it. I see it every week.

But here is the truth we keep coming back to. The greater risk, for many of our clients, is not running out of money. It’s running out of time.

As my Vicki keeps saying to me YOLO (You only live once, don’t worry she had to explain that one to me also).

Your sixties and early seventies are almost certainly your healthiest years in retirement. The go-go years, as we call them. You can defer spending. You cannot bank physical capability for later. That trip to Japan, the skiing holiday with the grandchildren, the summer in the South of France – every year you wait, it gets a little harder. You built this wealth to fund a life. Not to guard it.

And it’s not just about you. Giving with a warm hand, now, while you can see the joy it brings, is one of the most meaningful things money can do.

Helping a child onto the property ladder. Funding an experience that the whole family will talk about for the rest of their lives. Supporting a cause that matters to you while you’re still here to see the difference it makes. That’s what wealth is for.

We make our clients richer in every sense. Yes, through disciplined investment and proper financial strategy. But also by helping them see, clearly and with confidence, that they can afford to live fully. That spending on what matters is not reckless. That a life rich in experiences, in memories, in moments shared with the people they love, is precisely what they spent all those years working towards.

A proper financial plan – one that models your lifetime, your spouse’s lifetime, your goals, your fears, and your hopes – gives you that confidence. It tells you how much more you can spend/gift, still ensuring you don’t run out of money before you run out of life. Not a guess. Not a feeling. Evidence.

And when you can see the numbers, really see them, the permission to live tends to follow.

From my experience happiest clients we have are not the ones with the biggest portfolios. They are the ones who understood early enough that money is a tool, not a trophy. Afterall, I’d rather be happy that rich, and while money helps, only if you spend it to live the life you want to live.

Yes I get it, spending more would not make me happier – so what are we going to do?

If you are holding back on spending that would bring meaning, joy or connection to your life or the lives of the people you love, we need to double down on that conversation. You may be richer than you think, in every sense of the word.