posted in: Retirement Planning

Why We Tell Clients to Keep Spending on What They Love

Most financial advice starts from the same place. You’re spending too much, and the fix is to want less. Cut the extras, flatten your lifestyle, feel a little guilty about the things you enjoy. We take a different view. When a client tells us about the thing they really want, our instinct isn’t to talk them out of it. More often, it’s to build it in. Does that sound reckless? It isn’t, and the reason comes down to structure.

In this article, I’ll walk through why the things you dream about belong in your strategy, the difference between spending willy-nilly and funding a goal on purpose, why commitments like a mortgage can work in your favour, and why the smartest plan is one built around who you actually are instead of who a budget wishes you were.

The Dreams That Made You Save Deserve a Place in the Plan

Most people start saving because there’s something they want. The car they’ve loved since they were a kid. A boat. The chance to take their own kids fishing the way someone once took them. Then somewhere along the way, that thing gets filed away as a guilty indulgence, something to feel slightly bad about wanting. We do the opposite. If there’s a specific goal you’ve been carrying for years, we want it named and built into the strategy.

If a goal for you is that you’ve got your eyes on this car that you’ve always loved since you were a kid and you want to make sure you get it, or maybe you want a boat. Maybe when you were growing up, your grandfather took you out fishing and you want to be able to do that with your kids. We want that in your strategy.

That’s not permission to spend without thinking. It’s closer to the opposite. Naming a goal is what makes it fundable. A boat you vaguely want “one day” competes with everything else and usually loses. A boat that’s written into your plan, with a number against it and a timeframe, becomes something we can actually work toward.

Your Goals Are the Point, Not a Distraction

There’s a mindset that treats every dollar of lifestyle spending as a leak in the system, as if the goal of financial planning were simply to accumulate the largest possible number. But you’re not building wealth for its own sake. You’re building it for a reason, and that reason is exactly the thing so many plans quietly push to the side.

That’s obviously what we’re working hard for. So we want to make sure we get it in there.

When the goal is invisible, discipline feels like deprivation, and deprivation doesn’t last. When the goal is on the page, the choices you make in between have a reason attached. The saving stops feeling like going without and starts feeling like progress toward something specific.

Commitments Can Work in Your Favour

People often hear the word “commitment” and think of a burden, another fixed cost eating into their freedom. In practice, the right commitments are one of the most useful tools you have. A mortgage or an investment property is money you’re locked into directing somewhere every month, and that structure can do a lot of the heavy lifting for you.

Commitments are helpful, of course. Having commitments that you need to spend money on like mortgages and investment properties, they’re great. And we don’t want people just spending money willy-nilly, but if something is important, let’s get it in there.

The nuance sits in that last line. A commitment forces a decision that stays made, so the money goes where it’s meant to before you get a chance to fritter it away. But there’s a difference between a commitment that builds something, like equity in an asset, and spending that simply evaporates. The skill is knowing which is which, and being deliberate about both.

A Leopard Doesn’t Change Its Spots

Then there’s the spending that isn’t building an asset at all, the kind most plans try to shame out of existence. Say shopping is genuinely one of the ways you enjoy your life.

Shopping might be an outlet. Let’s get it in there.

The instinct in a lot of financial advice is to treat that as a problem to be corrected. We see it differently. If a certain kind of spending is part of who you are, a plan that pretends otherwise is a plan you will eventually break.

It’s you. It’s part of your plan. We shouldn’t just try to change it. A leopard doesn’t change its spots. So putting you first is how we insulate it.

So rather than trying to reengineer your personality, we build the thing you love into the plan, give it a boundary and a number, and protect everything else around it. You get to keep being you, and the rest of your strategy stays intact because it was designed for the real you in the first place.

So, Should You Really Keep Spending on What You Love?

There’s no universal answer here, because what you love isn’t what the next person loves. The car buyer, the frequent shopper and the person dreaming of a boat all want different things. The mistake is treating that spending as the enemy and trying to flatten all of it.

The clearer way to think about it is this. The goal isn’t to suppress what you want, it’s to structure it. The things that genuinely matter to you get funded on purpose, with intention, and the spending that doesn’t matter is stopped from quietly eroding your future. Putting yourself first in the plan isn’t self-indulgent. It’s the single thing that makes a plan survive contact with real life.

Book a quick Wealth Planning Consultation and we’ll help you see where you stand, what’s possible, and how to make it happen.

• Stop feeling uncertain about your financial future
• You won’t need to make big sacrifices
• You won’t drown in paperwork or endless meetings

Get started here.

About the Author: Ethan Stein is a financial planner with expertise in investment structuring, superannuation strategy, shares, property investment and other planning strategies. This article reflects general financial commentary only and does not constitute personal financial advice.

Financial Disclaimer: The information provided in this article is for general knowledge and informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Individual circumstances vary significantly. It is essential to consult with a qualified and licensed financial planner before making investment decisions. Past performance of any asset class is not indicative of future results.