What Is Your Money Helping You Say Yes To?

When Kate Turkington was a little girl growing up in England, she was given half a crown pocket money every week. She saved it all.

Once a month, she would take the train into London and spend her savings on theatre tickets.

Even as a child, Kate understood something that takes many of us years to work out: money has the most meaning when we use it for the things we value.

For Kate, that was theatre, learning, curiosity and experience.

If you don’t know Kate, she is one of South Africa’s best-known broadcasters and travel writers. Now nearly 92, very little has changed. Kate is still building her life around curiosity and adventure.

Money helps us keep our curiosity alive

We normally use our money for sensible things: paying the bond, saving for retirement, building an emergency fund, investing, and providing for the people we love.

Those things are important, but I also believe we should get a return on our investments and a return on life.

Sometimes we become so focused on preparing for tomorrow that we forget to ask what our money is making possible today.

When was the last time you deliberately saved for something simply because it would bring more joy, adventure, learning or connection into your life?

What do you value enough to save for?

Kate’s half-crown story is really a story about values. She knew what she loved, and she was willing to give up other things to have more of it. And that is what good money choices often come down to.

If travel matters deeply to you, you may be willing to spend less on a new car.
If learning excites you, money for a course may feel more worthwhile than another possession.
If family is one of your highest values, you may choose to spend on taking everyone away together or travelling to see children who live overseas.

The question is whether your spending reflects what you say matters most.

I often ask people to visualise what their lives would look like if things turned out well. Once you have an answer, your money has somewhere meaningful to go.

A plan should leave room for possibility

This is where Kate challenged me.

I am a planner. I believe in having goals, creating a vision and making intentional choices about where I want my life to go. But I’ve also realised that there is a difference between having a plan and trying to control exactly how life unfolds.

I spoke to Kate about this, and much more, on my Life Chapters, Money Choices podcast. I think you will enjoy hearing how she “ricocheted from one thing to another,” took every opportunity life had to offer, and her views on ageing, curiosity, adventure and being present in every moment of every day.

A good plan should give you direction, but it also needs enough flexibility for the opportunities you cannot see yet.

What are you postponing?

Many people spend decades preparing for the life they will live one day: when the bond is paid, when children leave home, when work is less busy, or when they retire.

There will always be another financial responsibility competing for your attention.

Good planning helps us prepare for those responsibilities, but it should also help us decide what is important enough to enjoy along the way.

I do not want to reach the end of a carefully planned life and discover that I forgot to live enough of it.

Kate asks herself five questions every night. One of them is:
“When did I feel most alive today?”

There is a money question sitting alongside it: What is my money helping me say yes to?

Your answer may tell you something important about whether your financial plan is supporting the life you really want to live.