The Best of Times…
My professional life starts when I complete my MBA and join a management consulting firm. Life is great – I am working with marquee companies on their strategic projects.
On the personal front, I marry the wonderful MrsFiner. We both love to travel, and consulting is an excellent career if you love to travel.
Things seem to be going well. So what exactly is the problem?
The Worst of Times…
Management consulting is an intense industry. The hours are brutal, and there is no work-life balance. Even the travel gets tiresome after a while.
I am starting to realize that something is amiss. I am not able to pinpoint what exactly is wrong. So, like any good consultant, I start analyzing things and grouping them.
Two key themes emerge:
1. Busy Becomes Normal
I am not sure at what point being busy became normal for me. As my career progresses, things keep getting more hectic. Also, the reward for doing a great job is that I get to do more of it!
Like a frog in boiling water, I scarcely notice the busyness.
If you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will instantly jump out.
But if you place it gently in a pot of cold water and turn the heat on low, it will float there quietly. As the water slowly heats up, the frog will not realize the gradual change even when the water starts boiling.
When I began my career, starting early meant starting work at 8:00 am. Over time, starting early began to mean 7:00 am, and now it is 6:00 am!
Working over the weekend has now become a regular occurrence.
Non-work-related activities take up more time as I climb the corporate ladder. Meetings magically go from 30 or 60 min to half-day sessions. Commute – which was earlier spent listening to music or catching up on the news – is now becoming a time to respond to work emails.
I do not have time to focus on my health. It seems that gaining a belt buckle size is directly correlated with my next promotion!
Slowly but surely, busy is just becoming a normal state of existence.
2. No Financial Plan
This second item, frankly, is an embarrassment for me. My MBA is in Finance, and my consulting clients are Financial Services companies. But over the years, I have not thought about my own finances.
I do not even have a financial goal.
Of course, I want to become rich. But I do not know what that really means.
It is a vague goal, just like if someone has a goal of wanting to become a good person. A good person can be someone who helps others. Or someone honest, polite, well-mannered, kind, generous, compassionate, etc. Or any combination of these.
Unless I clearly define what ‘become rich’ means, I cannot plan for that.
“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” asked Alice.
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where—” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.” said the Cat.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll)
Financial planning seems like a daunting task. There is a ton of jargon, myriad options, and lots of conflicting advice. I wonder why they did not teach personal finance at school – it would have been one of the few things I could have used in real life!
Looking to the Future…
At this rate, I can see my future clearly. I will keep working until I am 60 or 65; after that, I will retire to enjoy life. But what would ‘enjoy life’ mean at 65? How healthy will I be at 65, given my current lifestyle?
By 65, I would have been working for more than 40 years. I would be so used to working that I may not even know what else to do after retiring.
Needless to say, I am not too pleased with the current trajectory.
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I am happily married and have a great job. However, a decade of overworking and no financial planning has left me wanting something new.
I am not exactly sure what I want, but I know I want something different.
The next decade cannot be like the last one…