Lifestyle, leisure and the cost of wealth wellness
Summer is traditionally a time for adventure, travel, rest and relaxation. It’s also road trip season for many Canadians and a time to visit with friends and family. For many, warm weather and a slower pace gives us the energy and focus to excel in other areas throughout the rest of the year. When we talk about wealth wellness, lifestyle and leisure are important topics. Making time to recharge, take a break and experience things that bring you joy are what we wish for all of our clients and why we do the financial planning we do.
Wealth Wellness
Wealth wellness means having success in all, or many, areas of your life. We shared our values first, wealth second approach which encourages clients to think about their leisure time and the accompanying price tag for their hobbies and holidays. Budgeting for these things will positively impact other areas of your wealth wellness like family and relationships, career and work. Wealth wellness is having the freedom to make your own choices as you plan for your retirement and the lifestyle you want as you age. Having financial freedom means having not only choices, but resources and most importantly, your health which allows you to act on your choices. Choices allow you to achieve your goals, financially and otherwise as you live out your values.
Wealth wellness is also about being confident in your decisions. Finances shouldn’t keep you up at night. When we look at our hierarchy of financial needs, lifestyle and leisure are usually at the top of the triangle. They’re not foundational like career, family or health but we believe they’re just as necessary. Despite their importance, lifestyle and leisure are often left until last, or the first to drop off when finances are tight. When we’re planning, we advise clients not to let this happen. It’s a firm value at Sea Glass Wealth that you need joy, hobbies, holidays and fun to allow you to recharge enough to do what you need to do in order to create consistency and success in other parts of your life.
Balance and FIRE
In order to achieve wealth wellness, you need balance. You need to earn money, invest wisely and in alignment with your values. To achieve financial freedom, you need comfort and confidence across all areas of financial investment. One lifestyle choice we’ve been hearing about lately is FIRE which stands for Financial Independence, Retire Early. This is where you abandon the lifestyle and leisure areas of your financial wellness. You give up on relaxation or joy and work as much and as hard as you can until the time arrives to retire early. This method isn’t effective. Sacrificing leisure in favour of overworking leads to burnout, negative health implications and unhappiness. Things that can’t necessarily be bought when desired. With FIRE, there’s no balance.
Leisure isn’t affluent
Lifestyle and leisure look different for everyone. Finding joy may look like taking an hour and sitting at the beach with a good book. It could be a walk with a friend. It could be an Alaskan Cruise or a guided cycle tour through the South of France. One thing we know to be true, you don’t need to be affluent to have a rich lifestyle. While some types of joy come with a financial price tag, many are moderate. Wealth wellness is about making a plan and having the financial freedom to make choices for yourself when it comes to holidays and ways to relax. These experiences may vary from weekly and inexpensive to milestone events or holidays with larger investment. Ideally these experiences leave you feeling refreshed, whether the event is 30 minutes or a month long.
Budgets, Planning and VALUES
Lifestyle and leisure aren’t achievable without some financial component. Even going for a walk requires shoes. To ensure our clients have the shoes and the other resources they need, we start with a plan. Does the ideal lifestyle look like four weeks off per year? Or does it mean working from home with a flexible schedule so you can walk your dog at lunchtime? Having these conversations and connecting your goals with your values helps align your budget and determine the role lifestyle and leisure will play in your financial plan. We work together to ensure the goals align with your values and then set you up with a strategy to achieve the goals, and in turn live out your values.
Core values are the pillars we return to at every stage of planning. While they can change over time, generally these values inform your thoughts, words, actions and ultimately your spending and investments. Values are re-visited time and time again as decision-making touchpoints that help to guide you forward.
Building lifestyle, leisure, joy and peace into your life are the cornerstones of mapping out a life you don’t need to or want to retire from. The opposite of the FIRE mentality, we believe in building joyful moments into your life regularly, so you don’t burn out or lose your financial freedom due to unforeseen circumstances.
Joy in a Tough Economic Climate
As the Bank of Canada continues to increase interest rates and the cost of living is rising rapidly in 2023, we are facing challenging economic times. The current climate is tougher than many of us have seen in our lifetime. While this can make it hard to plan, now is the best time. If you can save in a tough economic climate, you can save at any time. Lifestyle and leisure are sometimes the first elements of wellness to be cut but we firmly believe they shouldn’t be. What may happen, though, is that your lifestyle and leisure activities will likely evolve. Your annual trip to Maui could turn into trying out local beaches and lakes.
Money is finite. But its growth or depletion is made by your choices. In an economic climate like the current one, it is even more about choices. You might have to give up on something to swap for a lower ticket item or experience. So, it’s a matter of making good choices with the funds you have, ensuring your choices are pointing back at your values.
Start Small, Investing in Yourself
Savings can start small and they can start anywhere. There’s a myth that you need a lot of money to start investing. This is false. Saving and investing are accessible to almost everyone, this includes impact investing. If you’re not able to save, there’s still room for planning, which might uncover a way to save. If lifestyle and leisure are strong values, there’s incentive to work towards your financial goals when one element of it is rewarding yourself.
Wealth wellness offers resiliency when times do get tough or if something unexpected is to happen. Elements of our wealth wellness may shift depending where the need is but the value of ensuring balance is invaluable for longevity. There should be no period of life where you’re not budgeting for lifestyle and leisure in some capacity. Investing in yourself and in your joy will always pay off.
Let’s talk about your goals and dreams for lifestyle and leisure. Get in touch with Tracey and Kristina to set up a time to meet and start getting your plan in place. https://seaglasswealth.com/contact/
We are looking forward to the opportunity to meet you! For more information, please feel free to reach out.
- Check out our upcoming events.
- Contact Us for more information on Sea Glass Wealth Advisory Group.
- Find Tracey on LinkedIn and Facebook.
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