We often forget about investing in social wealth when focusing on financial planning. Instead, we dedicate the best, most energetic years of our lives to building a fortress of financial security. We work long hours, take on additional responsibilities and sometimes miss important family milestones – all in the name of providing for the people we love.
It’s a noble pursuit, driven by a deep sense of care and responsibility.
What are we really building wealth for?
But what if, in our quiet rush to build that financial security, we’re accidentally sacrificing the very relationships we’re trying to protect?
Relationships are an investment too
In ‘Good Money’, John Coleman introduces this as close social relationships (based on the fifth domain of the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University). This domain reminds us that human beings are fundamentally, undeniably wired for connection.
We can accumulate a beautifully structured portfolio, but isolation remains the absolute greatest enemy of our well-being. Research consistently shows that the depth of our relationships is one of the strongest predictors of our long-term happiness.
The danger of waiting for ‘someday’
Yet, we frequently fall into the trap of delaying our shared experiences for a ‘someday’ that might never arrive.
We tell ourselves that once the mortgage is finally settled, or once the business is sold, we’ll finally have the time to take that family trip or host those long, unhurried weekend dinners.
The danger here is that connecting cannot be deferred indefinitely. Relationships require consistent, present-tense investment. If we wait until we’re entirely financially ‘done’ before we start investing in our social wealth, we might find that the window of opportunity has quietly closed.
Life happens simultaneously
It’s a tough balancing act, juggling all the demands of our time, focus and energy. Ron Blue often says that all these demands are simultaneous and not sequential. That means that we can’t aim to build a career, then a family and then a legacy. We need to recognise that we’re working towards all of them at the same time.
Our children grow up and build their own lives, our friends move away and our own physical energy levels naturally shift over time. So the sooner we can learn how to plan and balance these life treasures simultaneously, the better.
Consider a professional who routinely turns down invitations because work is demanding and retirement feels more important. Years later, the financial position is strong, but one close friend has emigrated and a parent’s health has declined. None of that means the earlier choices were wrong. It simply shows that some opportunities carry a time limit. A planned dinner, an annual weekend away or the cost of visiting family can look discretionary on a spreadsheet, yet these decisions may preserve relationships that cannot be rebuilt as easily as capital can later in life.
Looking beyond financial yield
Instead of always asking what financial yield an investment will produce, we might gently challenge ourselves to ask what emotional dividend a shared experience will pay out. It encourages us to actively and intentionally deploy our capital to foster connection today.
Making room for togetherness
This approach certainly doesn't mean being reckless with our financial planning or abandoning our budgets. It simply means giving ourselves permission to allocate our funds specifically for togetherness, investing in social wealth.
It might look like renting a house on the coast for an extended family getaway, flying across the country to celebrate a milestone with an old friend or buying a cup of coffee for a colleague on a busy Tuesday morning.
Financial security is not the ultimate purpose of our balance sheet. True lifestyle financial planning recognises that money is merely the fuel for our shared narrative.
It’s to bring us closer to the people who make our lives profoundly meaningful.
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