How to Align Your Financial Plan With Your Life Goals
Have you ever walked into a financial advisor's office and left feeling like the conversation focused more on investment returns than on what actually matters to you? It’s more common than you might think.
For too long traditional financial planning has missed the mark by emphasizing numbers over the life you want to live.
This article explores a different approach, one that puts your life at the centre of every financial decision. Based on insights from Advice First advisors Brad Smith and Tim Borody in their podcast "Your Life and Money," we'll examine how life-centred financial planning shifts the focus from "what's your number?" to "what's your best life?"
You'll discover how your past shapes your money perspectives, how to balance present enjoyment with future success, and the tools that make personalized planning possible.
What Makes Life-Centred Financial Planning Different?
Life-centred financial planning prioritizes your return on life over your return on investment. Rather than asking how much money you need to accumulate by a specific retirement age, this approach examines how to get the best life possible with the resources you have—both now and in the future.
Traditionally, financial planning conversations typically revolve around three core elements:
Maximizing investment returns
Hitting arbitrary retirement age targets
Accumulating a specific dollar amount
Life-centred planning flips this hierarchy. The questions become: What experiences matter most to you? How can your money serve you and your values today while still providing for tomorrow? What transitions will you navigate throughout your lifetime?
Why Does Traditional Financial Planning Fall Short?
Conventional financial advice tends to focuse on deferral. Traditional planning often operates under a "sacrifice now, enjoy later" mentality, which may leave you feeling disconnected from your current life.
Brad notes on their podcast that the financial industry has historically fixated on concepts like "Freedom 55"—the idea that you must endure decades of sacrifice to reach a magical age where life truly begins. This framework raises an uncomfortable question: Should you remain "enslaved" to a distant future goal while your present life passes by?
The profession has conditioned people to defer everything:
Defer enjoyment until retirement
Defer taxes through RRSPs
Defer life experiences until you've hit "your number"
This deferral-focused mindset creates several problems. First, it assumes you'll reach that future date; an assumption that life doesn't guarantee. Second, it overlooks the reality that many people genuinely enjoy their work and may want to continue past traditional retirement age. Third, it ignores the intangible assets you build through present experiences, particularly with family and loved ones.
What Is Your Money Story and Why Does It Matter?
How does your past shape your financial decision making today? Your earliest experiences with money create a lens through which you view financial decisions throughout your life, often unconsciously influencing your choices decades later.
Understanding Your Money History
Tim Borody emphasizes that values-based financial planning begins with understanding your client's story. This includes examining three dimensions:
Where you've come from (your financial history and upbringing)
Where you're at (your current financial situation and values)
Where you're trying to go (your possibilities for the future)
Brad Smith shares a personal example from the podcast. Growing up on a farm during the high-interest-rate environment of the early 1980s, he witnessed his family struggling with cash flow and limited resources. This created a "poverty mindset" that shaped his perspective on money well into adulthood.
Questions That Reveal Your Money Perspective
Two powerful questions can unlock your money story:
What was money like growing up in your home? This question helps identify whether money was openly discussed or shrouded in secrecy, whether it created stress or security, and whether it represented opportunity or limitation.
What is your earliest recollection of money? This often reveals formative experiences that continue to influence your financial behaviour today, sometimes in ways you haven't consciously recognized.
Most Canadians struggle to articulate their perspective on money without help. These questions provide concrete entry points into understanding how your past influences your present financial decisions.
How Does Life Centered Planning help you today?
Are you living according to your values today or only planning for tomorrow? Purpose-driven finance examines how your current spending and saving patterns align with what truly matters to you.
The pandemic accelerated a mindset shift. People began questioning whether deferring life experiences until traditional retirement age made sense. This questioning has led to more people prioritizing present experiences while still maintaining prudent planning for the future.
Balancing Present Enjoyment With Future Security
Tim Borody shares the story of a client couple who left well-paying jobs in their mid-thirties for lower-income positions that allowed them to spend significant time with their children. They chose an outdoor environment that aligned with their values, building memories and experiences over those five years.
The trade-off was clear: they didn't contribute to retirement savings during that period. However, they built something equally valuable; intangible assets in the form of family bonds and childhood memories that their now-teenage children still cherish and reference.
This example illustrates a key principle: there are no universally "right" or "wrong" financial decisions. The right decision depends on your unique story, values, and priorities at different life stages.
What Are Possibilities vs. Goals?
Why should you think in terms of possibilities rather than traditional goals? Goals can feel constraining or restricting, creating a sense that once declared it, you're locked into a specific path regardless of changing circumstances or evolving values.
The language shift from "goals" to "possibilities" may seem subtle, but creates meaningful psychological differences:
| Goals | Possibilities |
|---|---|
|
Fixed and rigid
|
Flexible and adaptive
|
|
Success or failure binary
|
Multiple paths to fulfillment
|
|
Can feel like obligations
|
Inspire exploration
|
|
May become outdated
|
Can evolve with life changes
|
Possibilities invite ongoing conversation and adjustment. They acknowledge that life doesn't follow a linear script and that what matters to you at 35 may differ from what matters at 55 or 75.
How Does Holistic Financial Advice Address Life Transitions?
What major transitions will shape your financial journey? Most people will navigate up to 65 different life transitions, each with unique financial implications and planning considerations.
These transitions span across various life domains:
Educational milestones (graduation, continuing education, career changes)
Relationship changes (marriage, partnership, divorce, widowhood)
Family developments (having children, becoming empty nesters, caring for aging parents)
Property transitions (first home purchase, downsizing, relocating)
Career shifts (promotions, entrepreneurship, retirement)
Health events (illness, disability, long-term care needs)
Traditional financial planning often focuses narrowly on the transition to retirement. Holistic financial advice recognizes that each transition deserves consideration and planning. A comprehensive approach examines how your principles, possibilities, and resources interact at each transition point.
What Tools Support Life-Centred Financial Planning?
How do financial planners uncover what truly matters to you? At Advice First we use structured tools that help reveal values, principles, and priorities that might otherwise remain unarticulated.
The Role of Discovery Tools
The podcast references specific tools like the "Fiscalosophy" that help unpack:
Core values and how they were formed
Principles that guide decision-making
Current alignment between spending patterns and stated values
Past experiences that shape present perspectives
These tools serve multiple purposes. They help clients articulate perspectives they may never have consciously examined. They create a common language between the advisor and the client. Most importantly, they ensure that the resulting financial plan reflects your unique story rather than generic templates or industry-standard benchmarks.
How Does Return on Life Differ From Return on Investment?
Can you measure financial success by life satisfaction rather than portfolio performance? Return on life reframes the entire planning conversation around a simple yet powerful question: Am I getting the best life I can with the money I have?
Return on investment focuses on elements largely outside your control, such as market performance, economic cycles, and interest rate fluctuations. You can't control what the S&P 500 does next year. Return on life redirects attention to what you can control, such as your spending priorities, your value alignment, and your balance between present and future needs.
This doesn't mean investment performance becomes irrelevant. Returns still matter. However, they become means to an end rather than the end itself. Strong returns serve your life goals; they don't define your success.
Why Do Principles Matter in Financial Planning?
What core beliefs drive your financial decisions? Principles act as navigational guides, helping you make consistent decisions that reflect who you are and what matters most to you.
Your principles might include beliefs about:
The role of work in life satisfaction
Responsibility to family members across generations
The value of experiences versus material possessions
Risk tolerance and security needs
Charitable giving and community contribution
Environmental stewardship and ethical investing
Understanding these principles allows your financial planner to recommend strategies that align with your beliefs rather than conflicting with them. For example, someone who values environmental stewardship might prioritize sustainable investing options, even if they come with different risk-return profiles than conventional investments.
What Does Personalized Planning Look Like in Practice?
How does life-centred planning move from philosophy to action? The process involves building a comprehensive picture of your unique situation, then crafting strategies that honour both your current reality and future possibilities.
A typical life-centred planning process includes:
Story exploration: Understanding your money history, values, and principles
Present alignment check: Examining whether current habits reflect stated priorities
Possibility Exploration: Identifying potential futures without locking into rigid goals
Transition planning: Preparing for predictable life changes
Flexibility building: Creating plans that can adapt as circumstances evolve
This contrasts with traditional approaches that might start by asking how much you earn, how much you've saved, and what age you want to retire. Those questions still get asked, but they come after establishing the context of your life story.
How Can You Start Aligning Money With Life?
Shift from number-focused planning to life-focused planning. Begin by reflecting on three foundational questions before your next financial planning conversation:
Question 1: What memories and experiences do I want to create in the next five years? This helps identify opportunities to invest in present life satisfaction rather than only deferring to future goals.
Question 2: What financial decisions feel misaligned with my values? This reveals disconnects between your money habits and what truly matters to you, disconnects that life-centred planning can help resolve.
Question 3: What life transitions am I approaching or currently navigating? Anticipating transitions allows for proactive planning rather than reactive repairing.
Working with a financial planning advisor who embraces a life-centred approachemeans partnering with a professional who will these questions and genuinely listen to your answers before recommending solutions.
Making the Shift to Life-Centred Planning
Financial planning doesn't have to feel like a sacrifice. The life-centred approach recognizes that your best life can happen across all the years of your life, not just during some future retirement phase. By aligning your financial decisions with your values, honouring your unique story, and preparing for life's transitions, you can experience greater satisfaction both now and in the future.
Life truly isn't a rehearsal. The planning approach you choose should reflect this reality, helping you make the most of the money you have while you still have the opportunity to use it. Consider exploring how life-centred financial planning might reshape your relationship with money and help you live more fully at every stage.
The conversation starts with your story.
