I would like to think all I listen to in my car is highly technical financial planning topics I can then dispense to you in more relatable terms.
But the truth is, sometimes I just want to rock out. So here are some financial ideas we can learn from my playlist.
When Creedence Clearwater Revival sang “Someday Never Comes,” the band was implying while we can understand much in time, for others, that someday never comes. With financial planning, the question is, “What is holding you back from doing the things that matter most to you, because someday might never come?”
I will never forget my parents fixing up our dark, dreary basement laundry room to ready their house for sale. My mother spent years down there taking care of our family’s laundry. Why did they put off doing something that could make her life better, but for potential financial benefit, they took care of it for the next owners? What is an investment in yourself you can make today in case someday never comes?
Robert Earl Keen revealed in “I’m Comin’ Home” the lyrics, “Ain’t nothin’ better than your own backyard. I’m coming home to you.” It isn’t inconsistent to invest in what is most important to you while also wanting what you have. An insatiable need for what’s next leaves us unsettled with what’s now. If what’s now is enough, you might never need to fill the hole of what’s next.
Bryan Adams suggested in “Summer of ’69″: “Ain’t no use in complainin’ when you got a job to do. Spent my evenings down at the drive-in. And that’s when I met you.” Bad things happen all the time in financial planning. We lose jobs, spouses, money. But we never know how it will eventually settle. One of our clients begrudgingly sold a Florida home to move back to Minnesota. The client’s daughter later learned of her breast cancer diagnosis here, and she had the support and care of her parents because of that sale.
This is not to diminish the bad things that happen to us or the pain they cause. It is only to point out impermanence is the one aspect we can count on in an ever-evolving life. Hardships today don’t mean hardships forever.
When Bruce Springsteen in “Backstreets” sang how we were “trying to learn to walk like the heroes we thought we had to be,” he reminds us many of our money choices are satisfying expectations we believe others have for us. We have created financial standards through imitation of what success looks like rather than what success is. To copy is to find acceptance. We are compelled to mimic what those around us are showing. Make your financial choices for yourself rather than for how others will interpret them.
