By Kevin Wood, CFP™️ - August 2026
A better way to think about wealth, freedom and the life your money is meant to support
I recently read a thought-provoking piece by writer Dan Koe.
It was provocatively titled How to Fix Your Entire Life in 1 Day.
You probably can't.
But buried beneath the headline was an idea that has stayed with me — because it has an enormous amount in common with good financial planning.
Koe asks readers to imagine an ordinary Tuesday several years from now.
Not the dream holiday. Not the new car. Not the big celebration.
Just a Tuesday.
Where do you wake up?
Who is around you?
What do you spend your morning doing?
Are you working? And if so, because you want to or because you still have to?
How do you spend the afternoon?
What are you thinking about at 10pm that evening?
He then asks you to imagine something rather less comfortable:
What does that Tuesday look like if nothing changes?
It is a surprisingly powerful question.
And we think it is one worth asking about your finances too.
Most financial goals aren't really goals
Ask someone what they want from their money and the answers often sound something like this:
“I want to retire at 60.”
“I'd like my investments to grow.”
“I want to reduce my tax bill.”
“I'd like to leave something to the children.”
All perfectly reasonable.
But none of them really answers the question.
Because retirement isn't the goal.
Investment growth isn't the goal.
Tax efficiency isn't the goal.
They're tools.
The real question is:
What is the life you're trying to create?
Perhaps you want to stop working completely.
Perhaps you don't. You simply want the ability to say no.
Perhaps you'd like to spend three months abroad every winter.
Help your children while you're still around to see the difference it makes.
Buy the house you've always wanted.
Work four days rather than five.
Travel more.
Give more away.
Spend more time with your grandchildren.
Or simply reach a point where money occupies far less space in your head.
Those are different ambitions.
And they require different financial plans.
Which is why one of the most useful things you can do with your money has nothing to do with markets.
It is to make the future more specific.
Start with the life you don't want
Koe calls this an “anti-vision”: becoming very clear about the future you don't want to drift into.
We think this is particularly useful in financial planning.
Imagine yourself five or ten years from now if very little changes.
Are you still working longer hours than you'd like because you've never established whether you have enough?
Has your wealth continued to grow while you continually postpone enjoying it?
Are you still holding large amounts of cash because investing always felt slightly uncomfortable?
Have you accumulated more pensions, investments and accounts without ever really simplifying them?
Are your adult children struggling with costs you've always intended to help with — while substantial wealth remains earmarked for them one day in the distant future?
Are important estate-planning decisions still sitting on the “we'll get around to it” list?
Or perhaps nothing is obviously wrong at all.
That's the interesting one.
Life is comfortable. Money isn't a problem. Everything continues much as it is.
But ten years have disappeared.
Drift can be expensive even when it doesn't feel uncomfortable.
Not necessarily expensive in pounds and pence.
Expensive in time.
And time is the one asset we cannot replenish.
Now design the Tuesday you actually want
Forget investment returns for a moment.
Imagine an ordinary Tuesday ten years from now.
Where are you living?
What time do you get up?
Who do you see?
Do you commute anywhere?
How much work is in your life?
What does a good afternoon look like?
Where are your children?
What role do you play in their lives?
What do you do for your health?
How often do you travel?
What causes you stress?
What no longer causes you stress?
This is where financial planning becomes interesting.
Because we can begin attaching numbers and decisions to a life rather than attaching vague objectives to an investment portfolio.
If that Tuesday involves reducing work at 55, we can model what that requires.
If it involves travelling for three months each year, we can allow for it.
If you'd like to help children with property deposits, we can understand the impact of doing it at 35 rather than leaving the same money at 65.
If you want to spend more during your healthy, active years and less later, your plan should reflect that.
If leaving a particular inheritance genuinely matters to you, we can build around it.
And if the numbers suggest you've already accumulated more than you're likely to need, the conversation changes again.
It stops being:
“How do we make the number bigger?”
And becomes:
“What could this money make possible?”
That is a much better conversation.
The importance of knowing what “enough” looks like
There is a peculiar problem that sometimes comes with building wealth.
The goalposts move.
£1 million once sounded like enough.
Then £1.5 million.
Perhaps £2 million would feel safer.
Then markets fall, inflation rises or another worrying headline appears and suddenly even that doesn't feel quite enough.
Without a plan, there is no natural finishing line.
More simply becomes better.
But accumulating wealth indefinitely has a cost too.
You may work years you didn't need to work.
Take less time off.
Spend less than you comfortably could.
Delay helping family.
Avoid experiences because parting with capital feels psychologically uncomfortable.
Or spend hours thinking about investment performance that has almost no bearing on whether your actual life plan succeeds.
A detailed financial plan cannot tell us exactly what the future holds.
Nothing can.
What it can do is help us understand what enough might reasonably look like.
We can ask:
What does your desired lifestyle cost?
What income will arrive naturally from pensions and other sources?
How much capital might you need?
What happens if markets disappoint?
What happens if you live much longer than expected?
What if spending is higher?
What if you help your family?
What if you retire earlier?
And, importantly:
What if things go better than expected?
Once you understand those trade-offs, money can begin doing its real job.
Providing choices.
Your behaviour reveals your real financial plan
There was another idea in Koe's piece that struck us.
In essence: pay attention to behaviour, not just stated intentions.
That matters enormously with money.
Someone can say:
“Family is more important than money.”
But continually postpone reducing their working hours.
They can say:
“I know markets rise and fall.”
But check their portfolio every day.
They can say:
“We want the children to benefit.”
But never quite feel ready to give anything away.
They can say:
“We should spend more.”
And still feel guilty booking the holiday.
This isn't criticism.
Money carries decades of emotion with it.
Security.
Status.
Fear.
Responsibility.
Independence.
For someone who spent 30 years accumulating wealth, suddenly switching from “save” to “spend” can be surprisingly difficult.
That's why financial planning isn't simply a mathematical exercise.
Sometimes the spreadsheet says you can afford something long before you emotionally believe that you can.
Part of our job is helping bridge that gap.
Build backwards, not forwards
Koe's framework eventually works backwards from a bigger vision into shorter-term actions.
We can do something similar with your financial life.
Start with the bigger picture:
The life
What would you like your life to look like in five, ten or twenty years?
The next chapter
What needs to change over the next year or two to make that future more likely?
Perhaps it means agreeing a retirement date.
Reducing working hours.
Putting an estate plan in place.
Helping children.
Consolidating investments.
Having a conversation with your accountant.
Updating wills or powers of attorney.
Or simply giving yourself permission to spend more.
The next decision
Then make it smaller again.
What is the single financial decision that would move things forward now?
Not twenty tasks.
One.
Good financial planning is often less about constantly doing things and more about identifying the few decisions that genuinely matter.
And don't forget your constraints
This may be the most overlooked part.
A good life isn't created by optimising every number.
There should be things you're not prepared to sacrifice in pursuit of a larger portfolio.
Your health.
Time with your partner.
Time with children or grandchildren.
A particular standard of living.
Your independence.
Simplicity.
Your ability to sleep at night when markets fall.
Your generosity.
The freedom to change your mind.
These are not inconvenient obstacles preventing the financial plan from being perfectly efficient.
They are the reason the financial plan exists.
There is little point building the mathematically optimal strategy if living with it makes you miserable.
The objective isn't maximum wealth.
It is sufficient wealth, arranged intelligently, to support a life you actually want.
A useful exercise
So here's something to try.
Set aside half an hour with a blank piece of paper — ideally with your husband, wife or partner if you plan your finances together.
Don't open your investment account.
Don't check the markets.
Don't start with money at all.
Instead, answer these questions:
If nothing changed for the next ten years, what would we regret?
What does an ordinary Tuesday in our ideal life actually look like?
Which parts of that life require money — and which don't?
What are we currently postponing until “someday”?
If we knew with reasonable confidence that we already had enough, what would we do differently?
Who do we want our money to benefit — and when?
What aren't we prepared to sacrifice simply to become wealthier?
What financial decision have we been avoiding?
What would make the next twelve months feel like genuine progress?
What is one thing we could do now?
You may find those questions produce a more meaningful financial conversation than discussing whether one fund has outperformed another by a percentage point.
Because investment performance matters.
Tax matters.
Pensions matter.
Estate planning matters.
But only in context.
They are pieces of a much larger puzzle.
Your money needs a job
For many years, the job of your money may have been obvious.
Accumulate.
Save.
Invest.
Build security.
But there comes a point when that job needs to evolve.
Eventually, money should translate into something.
Time.
Freedom.
Experiences.
Security for the people you love.
The ability to work because you enjoy it rather than because the mortgage requires it.
The confidence to spend.
The ability to give.
Or simply peace of mind.
A portfolio can tell you what you own.
A financial plan should help you understand what it's all for.
So perhaps the most useful question isn't:
“How much will my investments be worth in ten years?”
It is:
“What would I like my Tuesday to look like?”
Once we know that, we can start working backwards.
And that is where financial planning becomes less about money — and much more about life.