As the go-to financial planners for individuals and international families in Singapore and beyond, we spend much of our time helping clients to manage and grow their wealth.
Specialising in lifestyle financial planning, we’re here to help and support you with saving and investing so you can enjoy financial freedom in the future.
As such, you might imagine that we focus on finding ways to save money – certainly, there are various tax-efficient ways to preserve your wealth – yet often we work with clients who should be spending more.
Following multiple decades of saving diligently for their dream retirement, many people reach retirement with robust financial plans, having accumulated a healthy portfolio of investments.
Wealth should bring peace of mind and allow retirees to relax and enjoy the life they’ve been working so hard to achieve. But after many years of saving more and spending less, we regularly meet wealthy clients who are struggling to adjust to a spending mentality.
After a lifetime of accumulation, how do you adjust to spending your hard-earned money with confidence?
When you’ve spent 30 or 40 years diligently spending less and saving more, the habit is hard to shake.
You’ve saved, you’ve planned ahead, and carefully budgeted to ensure you aren’t overspending. Then, you stop earning an income, and you have to steel yourself to start chipping away at the wealth you’ve carefully saved away.
This can be a scary prospect; the fear is logical, and yet also deeply emotional.
Logic tells you that you’ll face uncertainties in the future – markets will, at times, almost certainly decline. While costs will continue to rise – particularly healthcare costs as you begin to age.
Meanwhile, your emotions make it difficult to feel comfortable when you start to spend the financial cushion you’ve worked so hard to build.
This dilemma is more common than you might think.
Clients with solid financial plans often resist spending more – they’re financially stressed and struggle to adjust to spending the money they’ve accrued.
And yet, as we often counsel in such circumstances, the greater risk is allowing unnecessary financial anxiety to derail the best years of retirement.
Your 60s and 70s are usually your healthiest years in retirement
While it’s relatively easy to delay spending your savings, you can’t preserve your physical capabilities indefinitely.
World adventures and long-haul travel will inevitably become more difficult as you age.
That said, under-spending is about more than missing out on experiences – it could also mean you miss opportunities.
For example, you may miss out on the chance to:
- Help your children with major purchases
- Support causes you care about while you can see the impact
- Enjoy the comfort that would improve your daily life.
Yes, your money helps you to pay for basics and emergencies, but you must also use it to create the life you want to enjoy and the legacy you’d like to leave.
Indeed, the happiest retirees embrace four key elements of meaningful spending:
- Personal fulfilment
- Family impact
- Charitable giving
- Daily comfort.
Part of our role is to help you understand when you’ve saved enough to fulfil your financial goals, and then help you to realise your dreams.
Read more: How a financial planner can help you work out how much is “enough” to fund your ideal retirement
How to shake off the fear and move forward with confidence
While fear of overspending is entirely understandable, a comprehensive financial plan can help ease your mind. It will incorporate your everyday lifestyle costs as well as discretionary spending, accounting for your personal “nice-to-haves”.
By aligning these costs with a well-diversified long-term investment portfolio, and mapping your finances through cashflow modelling software, we can provide the assurance you need to help you enjoy the lifestyle you’ve worked so hard to attain.
Good financial planning provides the solid foundation you need to spend with confidence. Regular progress meetings and updates help to ensure that you remain on track – and if unexpected expenses arise or markets perform poorly, you can adjust your course.
If you’re struggling to find the sweet spot between sensible discipline and confident living, we can help you find the confidence to make the most of the wealth you’ve worked so hard to save.
