Oh to be young again – not?

Issue

After 48 years of working life – earning, spending, living, learning and enjoying it’s easy to reflect but not so easy to refrain (from giving advice).

Some things remain the same but most are very different – and nature teaches us that it is smarter to adapt, life threatening  not to.  Whilst intellect and education remain important, especially when seeking employment – the people with the ‘smarts’, those with common sense, determination and purpose seem to make their way in life with a swagger – and do ok.  Their academic or intellectual colleagues tending  to question, consider, vacillate and perhaps not rise to a level of ultimate self-fulfilment (apart from a very few corporate personnel in critical roles). So what’s the secret?  How do we – be young and fun loving, bashful or boastful, frugal or frivolous, experimental or economical and ‘sensible’ all at the same time?  We all know people who seem to fit this picture, what is it that sets them apart?  How can they be the life of the party one day and the millionaire next door the next?  Is it simple really? – the same principles apply whether making money or making love?  Decency, conscience, scruples, standards and ideals mixed with a sense of purpose and a determination to please.

Perhaps it’s not so simple, perhaps there’s a certain amount of luck – the right teacher at the right time. Someone to take us under their wing and show us the way.  A mentor or manager.

Rationale

Life happens one day at a time and that’s how its best measured and managed.  Not the only way – but the first way.  Daily decisions and daily disciplines.  The decision being the goal or aspiration and the discipline being the implementation, the action required.  When you reflect, it is instructional to consider how you did – last week, last year, last decade.  Get this as a base along with principles and letting your hair down now and again is the ticket to life.

Many young people think that making plans is somehow limiting – somehow preventing of spontaneity.  Somehow grown up when being “only young once”, and devil may care a “badge of honour”.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  What prevents spontaneity as you travel through life is lack of money and the absence of passion.  Passion for something purposeful.

Baby boomers with lots of money are having a great time.  Most of them had their OE, most travel lots and enjoy the fruits of their work and their investments.

Baby boomers with no money are not having such a great time. Many have never travelled and most do not have the inclination nor the means to change.

They were young once just as today’s millennials are.  They could attend University just as 30% of today’s students choose to do.  They entered industry, manufacturing, services and trades just as today’s school leavers tend to do.  And the outcome will be the same.  20% will become extremely successful, enjoying luxury and comfort.  80% will struggle through, living with necessity as soul mate and provider.

Recommendations

• Choosing what you like doing is critical.  People who are passionate about what they are doing, are good at it, and it makes money – these are the stars.  Two out of three ain’t good enough.  You need all three.
• Select your partner and mentors wisely, your friends even more so.
• Plan for the future and live for today but daily decisions and daily disciplines ultimately determine your destiny.
• Align goals and aspirations with the strategies and products necessary to achieve them.
• Borrow to invest but pay cash for everything else.
• Read.