107 | A Crumbling Pillar: Detailed Plans and Projections

Borrowing from Carl Richards, "Certainty is a promise that can't be delivered."

Whether we realize it or not, detailed plans and projections are promises of certainty in disguise.

For a time, they answered the question that investment management never could, "What does all of this financial wealth mean to me?”

Over time, they've morphed into an annual exercise of attempting to calculate the uncertainty out of the future.

Inevitably, these “products” fall woefully short of contributing to real financial well being because uncertainty and change are the only guaranteed parts of your financial life.

We can all feel it in our gut, but it's hard to have the courage to say it out loud.

No one can calculate the uncertainty out of the future.

It's tough because we want a shortcut to peace, security, contentment, and freedom, but those things don't come from a spreadsheet.

The moment we begin speculating about the numbers of the future is the moment we abstract what we're actually trying to do with our money and our life.

The pillar of the industry is crumbling and we're building a new one.

We will reflect on the past, we will build habits and tweak mindsets, we will even project a couple of years into the future (as long as it is grounded in a verifiable reality), but we will not rely on a detailed, assumption-laden projection to give us a false sense of security about the future.