I’m almost two decades into my career. This is exactly the mid-life crisis timing people joke about.
I've spent most of those two decades focused on the money part of the future. Lately I've started to think that might have been the easy part, and that the things I didn't plan for are the ones that will decide whether the years ahead feel full or empty.
I'm sitting here and thinking about the second half of the story still to be written. Some people already have chapter titles in mind. Raising kids into adults, or one day grandkids. A career built toward something specific. A craft or a sport they'll spend decades getting good at. Different versions of a future already taking shape.
If I’m lucky, I’m looking at another 40 or 50+ years to fill. Seeing that full block of open time allows for a lot of possibilities. It’s a little terrifying if I’m honest. That’s a lot of time and blank pages to fill. I don’t want to look back at it and think I wasted it. A future where I wake up feeling sore and achy, accomplish little, speak to no one, and go to bed early.
Occasionally, that type of day might feel restorative. Months or years of days like that, built on top of each other, would feel like I let my life come to a silent finish when I didn’t mean to.
That’s why I’m thinking about it now. Looking into the future a bit. Imagining what it could look like and whether it fills the pages or needs some rewrites.
Part of what I want from that stage is simple. To leave things a little better than I found them. For myself, for my family and friends, and in some small way beyond them. That impulse is part of why The FI Equation exists, and probably part of whatever comes next.
I hesitate to call it purpose, because purpose can sound like one big thing you’re supposed to discover and keep forever. I think we carry many purposes through a life, some big, some small, shifting as we do. So I won’t pin it to one word. It’s more an overarching theme I care about, and the reason the rest of this matters at all.
I see three factors influencing whether those future pages feel filled or incomplete. Enough money, my health, and my connections with others.
I used to think the hard part of retirement planning was figuring out the money. For a long time, that was the problem I knew how to work on. Over the last two decades, I’ve built my plan and can adjust as needed. I’ve automated most of the decisions around growing my savings and am confident continuing to do the same things will get me to where I currently hope to be.
Now I’m starting to wonder whether the harder part is becoming the kind of person who can actually enjoy the life the money is supposed to buy.
To my own surprise, the money part has become fairly straightforward. My health and relationships are different.
Money has flexibility. You can earn more, spend less, adjust the plan, or move the target. Health and connection do not work the same way. These are two variables money can’t buy back. They occupy my thoughts the most whenever I now visualize that future.
That’s a good place to be. Feeling secure enough in your financial plan to turn toward the nonmonetary plans of the future. Not everyone makes it to that stage. I’ve felt that financial security the last couple of years, which is why I’ve been able to start seeing the shortcomings I’ve allowed in my health and my connections.
Struggles with weight, and persistent back and knee issues have shaped what I’ve been able to do since early adulthood. Some of that was bad luck. Some of it is because I haven’t exactly treated my body like a temple over the years. The concern is the same either way. I don’t want to feel limited, or spend years dealing with pain and mobility issues I might have prevented or reduced. So I’ve started paying more attention, because this is one variable where the cost of ignoring it only compounds.
At the same time, many of the friendships I’d built over the years faded. Some drifted, most simply fell away, and only a handful are still in my life. A lot of that is on me.
The friendships we’ve made more recently exist largely because of my wife, Jamie. Through her work and the way she connects with people, she’s the one who finds those we end up seeing regularly. I enjoy them as much as she does, but I’m rarely the one bringing someone new into our lives.
I don’t think I’m the only husband who has let too much of the planning and connecting fall to his wife. Knowing that doesn’t get me off the hook, but it helped me see it for what it is, a default I slipped into, not a fact I have to accept.
There’s a difference between the friendships you find and cultivate yourself and the ones someone else pulls you into. The second kind comes with a bit of dependency. It might feel a little strange to reach out to one of them if it was just me wanting to get together. If Jamie weren’t in the picture, would these people still reach out to me? Would I set up the plans myself? A friendship I’d built on my own would be an easy yes to both.
So I’ve started taking some of that back. Reaching out on my own, planning the trips, being the one who follows up. Building genuinely new friendships is the harder part, and the one I’m still working through. Deep connection doesn’t form overnight, and it doesn’t hold without effort.
An old friend has the shared history but has lost track of who I’ve become. A new one might know who I am now but missed everything that came before, the years that turn a single reference into an evening of shared laughter and nostalgia. The depth I’d want from friends new and old will only come from time and effort I start putting in now.
This doesn’t mean you must start a workout plan or reach out to old friends of yours to connect again. My shortcomings are not necessarily yours.
But how is your health? Have you let a few friendships drift? Or something else entirely, some part of your future you're letting slide?
If any of that lands, the time to start closing the gap is now.
Easier said than done. You may be trying to correct something that was being neglected for a good part of your life. That’s not a simple thing. But continuing to ignore those shortcomings only makes them harder to correct.
Health and connection are not variables I can fix once and forget. Naming them gives me somewhere to begin. And if the longest chapter is still unwritten, I’d rather start shaping it now than hope it somehow turns into the life I wanted later.
— Brad
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This is meant to help you think through financial decisions and tradeoffs—not tell you exactly what to do. It’s general in nature and not personalized advice (see full disclaimer).