The Future Is For Real

The movie, Heaven Is For Real, gives one pause to ponder the future. After life, what’s next? Colton is the real-life son of Todd and Sonja Burpo. The film chronicles a near death experience when Colton was a young child. The family was incredulous over his miraculous recovery from a dangerous emergency appendectomy. More amazing was the story that emerged afterwards—an account of Colton’s trip to heaven and back, details involving long deceased relatives and other facts that never had been revealed to the four year old boy in his short lifetime.

  There are believers, unbelievers, and skeptics when it comes to concepts of God, heaven, and hell. Your view of such things will color your perception of the future and choices made along the way, including how you earn money and deploy resources.

  C.S. Lewis in his masterwork, The Screwtape Letters, observes that human beings “live in time,” whereas God, angels, and spirits, do not. Our sojourn on earth is measured in years, and most financial and life planning decisions are based on assumed time frames. How much time is deposited in our personal time bank, we do not know.  Atlanta recently mourned a beloved radio traffic reporter who at age 61 on a Saturday died suddenly of a massive heart attack while doing what he did best—assisting people hurt in a car crash near his home. We all will have a last day. But it may “come like a thief in the night.”

 Like heaven, which this writer believes is for real, your future is for real. You can only experience the future in your imagination; it only can be lived in real time one second, one hour, one day at a time. Do you have a plan for living well, with passion and purpose? Living well is not just about money or financial security, although as the sociologist Abraham Maslow observed, you must feel secure before you can move to higher levels of self-actualization. In conversations about money, we must define what you need to feel secure and not be anxious about your future. 

 A recent poll indicated that of those with household income of $100,000 plus, 37% live paycheck to paycheck, 38% could not handle an unexpected $10,000 expense, and 32% could not live comfortably for even 3 months with a breadwinner out of work. (CNNMoney.com, April 2014). The percentages are far worse for those making less than $100,000 annually. Retirees worry about financial health and long-term care expenses, not wanting to burden their children. Other retirees are draining their funds bailing out adult children.

 True well-being involves financial, emotional, spiritual, and physical satisfaction. Have you looked at your future in those terms? What challenges will you face in the next ten years, and ten years beyond that? In defining “real net worth,” what in your mind constitutes financial, emotional, spiritual, and physical success? Have you recognized the linkages between all four?

  You plan most major events in your life, including coming of age ceremonies, college, weddings, vacations, business and professional growth, major purchases, retirement. But do you have a comprehensive, holistic, plan to grow purposefully into your future? What does “aging successfully” mean to you? How do money decisions play into the answer to that question?

 Your past ended a second ago. How will your past meet your future? What dangers do you perceive? What opportunities? What strengths do you possess? What resources are needed to meet dangers, challenges, and opportunities? How do you instinctively go about doing what you do?

  What do you resist, what do you accommodate, and what do you embrace in initiating action? Knowledge of self will tell you (and your advisor) how you will tackle your future. Do you have a clear vision of where you want to go and how you want to get there?

 The questions you should ask yourself, and those a financial advisor should ask, go well beyond money. Your future is for real!

 Lewis Walker is President of Walker Capital Management LLC. and Walker Capital Advisory Services, Inc., a Registered Investment Advisor (R.I.A.) Securities and certain advisory services offered through The Strategic Financial Alliance, Inc. (SFA).  Lewis Walker is a registered representative of SFA which is otherwise is unaffiliated with  Walker Capital Management, LLC. ▪ 3930 East Jones Bridge Road ▪ Suite 150 ▪ Peachtree Corners, GA 30092  ▪ 770-441-2603 ▪ lewisw@theinvestmentcoach.com