LIFE STAGES

Starting out

You’re probably entering your thirties and will be at an inflexion point in your professional and personal life. It’s becoming clear that you’re going to be successful in your career as a partner, managing director or senior vice president.

Your earnings have the potential to double, triple or even better over the next decade. Career pressures can be extreme, but at the same time your personal life may well be changing, with a life partner, home ownership and children. Building good habits, avoiding bad ones and being intentional in your actions is key to success at this point.

You’re on the cusp of an incredible life opportunity. Although you’ll be enjoying your career, the life factor will help you reflect on what you really want out of life so that you set yourself up to live the life you want to lead.

Early on you may only have a rough idea of what you want to do. That’s OK, the vision can change over time. But it’s still worth thinking about the particular qualities you want to bring into your life, not just for the future, but starting today.

“As a 21st century senior professional, you have an opportunity almost unparalleled in human history to use the success you’ve earned to live the life you want to lead.”

As your income increases you need to get a handle on your relationship with money, which is what we explore in the money factor. Resisting peer pressure and lifestyle ratchet will create a significant surplus between income and expenditure as your earnings grow, enabling you to live life on your terms. But securing the benefits of a rising income requires you to understand the role that money plays in your life.

In the spending factor we’ll look at how you use money in your life and how this fits with your values. It’s easy to get caught up in a cycle of increasing spending that is ultimately unsatisfying. Yet the science of aligning spending to happiness is increasingly well understood and provides valuable insight.

With a new family comes new responsibilities. In the family factor we look at protection and legacy. Ensuring your loved ones are protected if the worst happens is a vital but often overlooked dimension of financial planning. You may also want to start making plans for your children’s financial future and it’s worth agreeing with your partner your philosophy for providing for them.

As your surplus income grows you can start to build assets, so a robust investment strategy that you can stick to is important at this phase in life. This is the subject of the investment factor. Fortunately, for most people, a simple strategy of that combines investing in low-cost global tracker funds and over-paying the mortgage is likely to be a good approach, so there’s little need to agonise too much over the details of your strategy.

As a 21st century senior professional, you have an opportunity almost unparalleled in human history to use the success you’ve earned to live the life you want to lead. Draw on the resources I provide through The Gosling Factor to take that opportunity.

Have a look at the next life stage — building wealth.

Start a conversation

If you like what you see, do get in touch to ask a question, share some thoughts or fix a time to chat. I’ll do what I can to help.