We all like having goals to aim for — a retirement age, a savings target, a bucket list of experiences. Goals give us direction. But what happens once you’ve achieved them? A video on the Bloomsbury Wealth YouTube Channel.
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Transcript: Robin Powell & Chris Budd/ Financial wellbeing expert
Robin Powell: We all like having goals to aim for — a retirement age, a savings target, a bucket list of experiences. Goals give us direction. But what happens once you’ve achieved them? Financial wellbeing expert Chris Budd says reaching a goal isn’t always the happy ending we expect it to be.
Chris Budd: A lot of financial tools will help you to achieve what they call financial goals. We hear about the bucket list, ticking things off. There’s a real danger with goals — what’s on the other side? A goal might be retiring at a certain age, say 60. But then what happens on the other side of achieving that goal? The swimmer Michael Phelps famously had a nervous breakdown after achieving eight gold medals at the Sydney Olympics. He’d achieved everything he wanted in life, and then there was nothing.
RP: So does that mean we shouldn’t set goals at all? Not quite. Chris isn’t arguing against ambition. He’s making a more subtle point about what we do once we’ve achieved a goal we’ve set ourselves.
CB: So there’s a real danger of only working towards goals. Goals, from me, are a stepping stone on the way to achieving objective, or meaning, or purpose, or having motivations — intrinsic motivations, we would call them. These are the things that bring joy and well-being from life. There’s nothing wrong with having goals, but having only goals and not thinking about where they’re leading you — that is where the danger lies.
RP: So if goals are only a stepping stone, what should we actually be aiming for? The key, Chris says, is understanding what’s really driving those goals in the first place.
CB: There are exercises you can go through to understand core values, and they’re really interesting exercises. I think one interesting exercise for couples is to talk to each other about these things, because that’s not something that we do very often. We get on with life, especially if you’ve got kids, there’s always something to do. But sitting down and discussing what our core values are and how we’re going to achieve them in the future is not something we tend to do together. Again, it’s a good reason for why you should sit with a financial adviser, financial planner, to help you to do these things.
RP: Working out your core values is one part of the puzzle. But Chris says there’s a bigger, more fundamental question worth asking too — one that goes right to the heart of what makes us happy.
CB: Love and happiness, care, thinking of others — these are the things that bring us joy in life. There’s a great line from Archbishop Desmond Tutu, in a wonderful book I’d recommend called The Book of Joy, where he says joy is your reward for the giving of joy. Now that’s such a wonderful line, and it means that joy is kind of selfish — it’s okay to be nice to other people because that will make you happy. So spend a bit of time thinking about where am I going to find that joy in my life?
RP: Goals can motivate us. But as Chris Budd says, they’re a means to something bigger, not an end in themselves. The real value lies in knowing what you want your life to feel like once you’ve reached them — and that’s something worth exploring, whether with a financial planner, or simply a conversation with the people closest to you.
Disclaimer — The information in this video does not constitute advice or a recommendation, and you should not make any investment decisions on the basis of it. If you do however require advice please do not hesitate to contact Bloomsbury Wealth.
