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I’m here to encourage you to spend your money now.
My husband Chris and I flew to Greece last summer, and we had never flown first class before.
We both have said we would only fly first or business class overseas since the flights are typically much longer than we are accustomed to. Even when we were looking at flights, we questioned our logic on whether the splurge would be worth it. It was around $10,000 per ticket when we first looked!
However, once prices came down a little bit, we re-convened and decided it was worth it. This was already a once in a lifetime trip, and for us, it was worth spending our hard-earned money on an extraordinary experience for our first trip to Europe.
In fact, once we were on our flight, it was delayed on the tarmac for over two hours. In total we were on the plane for nearly 12 hours! We both looked at each other several times with relief and expressed how relieved we were for booking the tickets.
I tell my clients that if you don’t fly first class, your kids will.
Planning for retirement is very important and I’m a huge advocate of saving and sacrificing while you’re young to ensure a future with less worry. However, once you have done the heavy lifting and have a solid retirement plan in place, don’t forget to enjoy the fruits of your labor.
Taking the time to stop and smell the roses is great advice, but you also need to spend some dough on those indulgences you keep telling yourself that you can’t afford. You already know that you can’t take it with you, and the less you spend on yourself, the more your kids, or other beneficiaries, will have to spend on themselves. And let’s face it, they didn’t earn it, so they likely won’t have a problem spending it on the extravagant things you didn’t.
Of course, you have to be smart about spending versus saving. I’m not saying to run out and blow the money you’ve saved to care for yourself after retirement, or even to forget about your legacy goals. You can still provide for yourself and your legacy without detriment to your own enjoyment of life, if you make wise financial decisions centered on the things most important to you.
In fact, the same can be said for estate planning. Don’t forgo proactive estate planning now because you don’t want to spend the time or money having a solid plan in place in preparation of death or incapacity. Understandably, those are both topics most of us would rather stay clear of, but if you don’t put in some effort now to have the right legal documents in place before your death or incapacity, your loved ones are likely to spend a lot more of your money and their own time, taking care of things you didn’t.
So, when you’re planning that once in a lifetime trip you have been dreaming about, go ahead and buy that first class ticket, and when you’re thinking about the legacy you want to leave your loved ones, go ahead and plan for the inevitable. It will make your journey as memorable as the destination for both you and your loved ones.
Joy “Enjoying the Fruits of My Labor” Reily
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