Life is simple, well relatively speaking – it just happens.
Living it successfully, now that’s a different story. But just what is ‘success’ and how do we even begin to achieve it?
Too often we feel rather like the shiny ball bouncing around the machine at the hands of the Pinball Wizard. At times we shoot for the skies as lights flash, bells ring and the score doubles, triples, quadruples on account. Successes are too quickly followed by rapid falls, tumbling towards the bottom ‘drain’ before being flipped up again over ramps to bump, ring and flash higher scores. Then down again, ‘drain’. The ball is lost and that life ends.
The good news about Pinball, is you get another life.
Money is not best measured with a story of numbers; it is best reflected in a number of stories – your stories.
It doesn’t come with a ‘user guide’. Everyone’s relationship with money differs, both in terms of what it truly costs you personally to earn it and, how much it adds to the real quality of your life as you spend it.
Is your life, loves and lifestyle driven by how much you think you can afford, or by the joys of living?
It takes far more than simply having more money to make life happier. After all – just how much is enough?
It is because these questions are so personal and their effects so fundamental to our, your, life that we came up with the concept of Money, Life, Balance.
By talking with you and truly listening to what you say, we are trying literally to balance the financial ins, outs, gains, losses, wins and pitfalls that feed and support the lifestyle you want now, tomorrow, in 5 years time and long after you retire.
Some refer to this approach as Financial Wellbeing because of the evidential part money plays in your very wellbeing.
We will go on to explore this in more detail as these blog / newsletter ‘stories’ develop and the jigsaw pieces of Money, Life, Balance, Lifestyles and Wellbeing join to become the picture of your own Health, Wealth and Wellbeing.
Let’s look briefly at the Wellbeing Cycle:
The New York Times bestseller by Tom Rath and Jim Harter – “Wellbeing: The Five Essential Elements” – provides a holistic view of what contributes to our wellbeing over a lifetime.
It insightfully begins with a sideways look at the many ‘life changing’ programs available, promising you’ll get richer, lose weight or strengthen relationships, each creating ‘a better you’ independently of the other. Read on though and we learn that they are not independent characteristics at all, but integral, all, to the cycle of wellbeing.
The 5 Essential Elements of Wellbeing are:
Career Wellbeing – finding satisfaction and enjoyment in the daily activities relating to work / career as well as hobbies, pastimes and daily routines.
Social Wellbeing – having strong relations with friends, partners, love, marriage and life.
Financial Wellbeing – being able to pay for the fun in life and manage your economic life and lifestyle.
Physical Wellbeing – being in good health through exercise, sensible eating, drink and life management.
Community Wellbeing – exercising good deeds for yourself and those around you.
This is all about you, your life so far and how it might develop into a fulfilling lifestyle.
We can not properly achieve the ‘right balance’ for you by looking at ‘money’ alone. The financial services industry has tried to focus on money alone, through financial products that might save this, increase that, release a bit of cash here and maybe afford something there – BUT…
The balanced wellbeing for the good life and lifestyle you desire has to understand and must account for the other four Essential Elements too.
Hence – Money Life Balance.