I man­aged to spend more than a weeks salary over the week­end, on five dress shirts, a pair of shorts, Birkenstocks, a beanie, two ties, a tie bar, a tie rack, a vest, Four Swords Adventures, and beer. It wasn’t very dif­fi­cult; I’m meet­ing with a finan­cial plan­ner today, so I saw at my pur­chases as the last of my guilt-free spend­ing before I look into invest­ment options and bud­get con­sid­er­a­tions. Unfortunately, he’ll be giv­ing me advice based on how I risky I want to be, the age I want to stop work­ing, and the lifestyle I’d like to have at retire­ment. The prob­lem is that I haven’t decided yet. I never really con­sid­ered the fact that I might live past 30. On top of that, I never planned to retire. I don’t think I’d mind work­ing past 60, although the require­ment for this to hap­pen is that I enjoy my job then as much as I enjoy my job now.

Most peo­ple start to invest when they start a fam­ily, and need to con­sider the cost of rais­ing kids, includ­ing tuition fees, an extra mouths to feed, etc. I don’t plan on hav­ing a fam­ily, so I fig­ure I should just start now. Of course, as Pat says, ones life can change in a sin­gle day, even with the best laid plans, and I really couldn’t agree more. I sim­ply see invest­ments as a sort of finan­cial safety net.