
It’s clear, climate change is here and very real. Catastrophic fires in Los Angeles. Super typhoons in Asia. Apocalyptic flash floods in Spain. Severe drought in Africa. People everywhere are experiencing severe weather impacts they have never seen before.
But this is now, and we all know that climate change is only moving in one direction.
A question I’ve asked myself a lot. What happens when the world is REALLY on fire when I reach “retirement age”? Am I really going to quit work to put my feet up? Take up golf and turn a blind eye? Will I not feel increasingly compelled to do something?
How about you? How do you think you’ll feel about the world when you reach “retirement age”?
From Career Cessation to Career Transition
If you do feel compelled to act, instead of planning for a career cessation later in life, how about a career transition? Use your talents, and put them to good work, to help. Find a purpose that aligns with helping save the planet, or helping society to adapt. Start planning for that change now. You are in the driving seat. This can be planning to move into part-time work on your own terms. Golf could be something you still play on a part-time basis. Perhaps not as well. But it’s good to balance it up. Time for you, and time to help others. Ultimately, we all get something from giving back.
What happens when you make that commitment? Retirement planning becomes a lot easier. Your pension and investments are no longer aiming for a fixed target, with investment returns coming from an increasingly volatile and uncertain world. Yes, it’s still important to save for the future. But match most of your basics in future with a combination of the state pension, saving on rent from owning your house (and even some additional rental income), and income from some part-time work or a side-business. Then your pensions and investments have to do less work. Your future life is less dependent on increasingly uncertain investment returns.
More Balance Later, More Balance Now
If you plan for more balance later, how about more balance now? Are you working yourself into the ground? If so, why? If you’re in it for the long haul, take the foot off the gas. If you’re in good shape, there’s a good chance you may live to age 100. If that’s the case, life is very much a marathon and not a sprint. Later life becomes an opportunity.
Less stress now, means better health, means greater longevity to provide for yourself, your loved ones, and have an impact on the world. A world that we should appreciate now. As we have to accept that parts of it soon may no longer EVER be the same. Why not take time out now to see it? Time to reflect on your future direction, and how you’ll invest in yourself, and adjust to a future path of purpose.
Balance for a Harmonious Future
It all comes down to balance. More balance now, more balance in future. Balancing your future income streams to help make you more resilient – pension, investments, rent (or rent saving), part-time work, potential business royalties, and state pension. Striving for balance in future society to help us live in harmony with the planet. Hence a reason why I picked the name “Harmonious Futures” for my latest newsletter blog – please do subscribe here. It’ll have the same feature articles as on this website, but also some additional content too.
To be honest. It was a name that generative AI suggested for me. AI gave me twenty different alternatives, and this is the one that resonated. Is anything that AI generates a coincidence? As I understand large language models are all about finding connections and patterns. So I delved into why. I discovered some work by Ervin Laszlo.
Ervin Laszlo sounds likely a pretty influential person, and perhaps someone I should have heard of before (but I’ll be honest, I hadn’t). His career was one of transition – a musician, turned scientist, turned philosopher.
He was an author of a number of works, and founder of the Club of Budapest an organisation dedicated to the basic mission of “facilitating and providing direction to a global shift toward a more peaceful, equitable, and sustainable world”. He is also author of a 2013 paper “Ideas of a Harmonious Future”. There’s the link!
A Culture of Oneness
In it he sets out a manifesto calling for a “Planetary Culture of Oneness”. He sees humanity essentially as one big organism. In the same way that we are an assembly of individual cells (there being more cells in each of us than there are stars in the galaxy – which I find mind-blowing!), each working in harmony to a common cause. Global society is a collection of individuals and communities that are all interdependent and have a common future.
Over history, we have fragmented into a coexistence of individuals or divided communities, which is setting us on an unsustainable path. Our viewpoints must change from an individualistic perspective to a collective one, where we need to all work in harmony to a common cause, for us to fix the world’s ills. We can’t simply rely on the actions of others, we all have a collective responsibility.
The Case for Sustainable Investing
How does this relate to investing for later life, and the case for taking a more sustainable approach to that investing?
The individualistic case for sustainable investing is that it is about managing your own risk. Not leaving yourself exposed when the financial markets finally start to reflect the future realities our society faces. The collective case takes a step further, how can you manage risk but also use your wealth to take collective responsibility for planetary action.
Using your financial assets is the easy bit. In this blog, I can help provide you with guidance, knowledge and practical suggestions on how to do that by yourself with confidence. Also, point out where it may be best to speak to a specialist investment or tax adviser.
However, your biggest asset is you. How you invest in yourself is the difficult bit.
Are you making optimal use of your talents for both your current and future selves, and for the planet? Are you living with purpose? If so, great. If not, then how about considering a change in direction?
Taking the Career Transition Step
Making a transition to a new path is a big decision and undertaking, but it is ultimately rewarding in the long term. It is something that takes imagination, courage and good planning. Including planning your finances.
I’ve been on this journey myself. Trust me I know what’s it like. Career transitions are not straightforward and can often involve exploring down some blind alleys. However, the process of exploration is important to help give perspective, and give you confidence that you’re settling on the right choice in the end.
A useful exercise is to list out all the things that you are good at. Among 10 people chosen at random, what would be the things you could say there’s a good chance you are best at? Combine two of those things and you become 1-in-a-100. Three gives 1-in-a-1000. Exploring those intersections can help you discover your personal USPs, which may help yield some interesting ideas of potential alternative careers or business opportunities. The next step is then to imagine how best you can have an impact.
I ended up choosing to move from being a full-time actuary, to a part-time actuary and part-time life & financial planner. I felt this could be the best way for me to use my talents, knowledge and experience to have a planet positive impact, through helping to influence others to green their finances, and green their career too, or set up a new green entrepreneurial venture of their own. But also retaining opportunity to still promote ideas and innovation in the actuarial field too.
Making any significant change can be daunting. But coaching can help provide you with confidence to help take that step. Particularly if it is from someone who has experience of doing it themselves. They can help provide the practical advice, know-how, recommendations and network that can help support you on that journey.
Finally, the most common challenge from making any big change, is often money. How will it effect my ability to provide for myself and my dependents? How could it impact on providing for myself in later life? If I am setting up my own venture, can I afford to do this? This is where financial planning is key. Identifying your life goals, and possible paths to achieve them. Understanding the financial implications of these paths. Using this information to settle on your optimal life and financial plan. A plan then gives confidence to proceed with implementation.
Regret Management – Avoiding the What If’s
Going back to the question about when you reach retirement age. Planning for later life isn’t about just finances and saving for a pension. It’s also thinking about where you’ll be as a person, and the life you want to lead. One interesting perspective is to think about “regret management”. When you look back from your death bed, what regrets could you have? Will I have lived the life I wanted to lead? Will I have done what I wanted to do, to help make the world a better place? Will I have lived up to my collective responsibility?
What About You?
If this has helped provoke any thoughts about your own path, and you would like to chat, then please do get in touch. You can find me on Linked-In, send me a message using the contact box on the home page, or just book in for a call (use the link above).
If you got something from this article, and think others would do similarly, please do also share and help spread the message.
Finally, please also do subscribe to my new sister newsletter publication Harmonious Futures, using the link here. You’ll receive all my same feature newsletters direct to your inbox, as well as some other free additional content.
The future is uncertain, but your ability to shape it with purpose and intention is entirely within your grasp — so let’s start today!
(Images are AI-generated)
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