The importance of aligning investments with retirement lifestyle goals

What does your ideal retirement lifestyle look like?

Before diving into investment strategies and portfolio allocations, we need to start with a more fundamental question: What truly matters to you?

In this episode of Heart of Your Money, we explore how understanding your core values transforms financial planning from a numbers game into a purposeful journey. Through real stories and practical exercises, you’ll discover how to align your investments with your deepest goals – whether that’s preserving a family legacy, supporting the next generation, or creating the freedom to spend more time with loved ones.

Let’s move beyond traditional planning to create a financial strategy that resonates with your personal values.

Show Notes: The importance of aligning investments with retirement lifestyle goals

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Heart of Your Money. This is episode 129. I’m Zena, and today I want to talk about your life, your dreams, your money. This is about aligning investments with your goals. How do we know what to invest in? Let’s start with the heart of it all: your values. This is where I love to slow things down and ask some big questions.

I mean, have you ever really sat down and thought about what brings you joy? What do you care about most in life? Here’s a little exercise I love. Imagine a mind map. Now in the center, you put yourself and then you branch out with the things that matter to you. And you can draw this. And I have a template. I mean, send me a note later. I can send it to you. It’s pretty simple, but you’ve got these arms that branch out and you’re in the middle. And then you’re just going to ask yourself what matters to you. Family, travel, giving back, career, maybe even things like keeping the family cottage or supporting a cause that’s close to your heart.

This exercise helps bring clarity to what you want, what is truly the most important to you. So once you have those and you’ve branched out, and these are the top things that are important, then you dig just a little bit deeper. Why is it important to you? I love Simon Sinek. I’m always talking about him, but now peel back the onion and ask why, why is this truly important to me?

So, for example, when I do this, one of my branches is travel with family, and then I ask a little bit more and I peel back and I think, why is this truly important? And I dig deeper and it’s actually about time with family, and in all my branches, the underlying theme was time, and that becomes important to me.

So that also means that I have to buy back my time, meaning the currency, of course, being money is to buy some of my time. And so then I know, okay, that’s one of the things where I have to put my money. I have to save for the financial means to travel and be with family. And that’s one of them, or buying back time.

I have a meal prep place where I pick up meal prep food already made for you a week or five days at a time, or if it’s bringing someone in to clean the house, it’s all those things. You can see where if I peel back where I spend my money, it’s about time. And you can do another simple exercise to just check your bank statement, go online and look at every purchase and every transaction. And is there a theme? And if it doesn’t align, then you know, okay, I need to make some changes.

So really it’s about using this mind map, branching out and digging and coming up with a list of things that are really important to you. Another example that’s personal—so again, sharing maybe a little bit too much, but I think these examples are really helpful—property out on Vancouver Island is an important value to my family. My parents have a house and there’s a little bit of land and we want to keep it in the family forever. Well, that takes some planning. It’s not a small endeavor. And in thinking about estate planning with my parents and their needs, that takes future planning and making sure there’s a financial plan for that.

So another example is a branch for my husband when he does this exercise. One of the branch-outs there is for retirement. And when we peel that back, what does that mean? It’s like his own time. Well, that was the goal to have enough savings for his retirement. And so it really fueled so that we knew where to put our money and what was truly important to us.

These all dictated where our money is put and then creates a bucket with a purpose, and I’ll piece this together with investments here in a minute. Just give me a minute because I want you to try and help uncover your values. So do this branch exercise, putting yourself in the middle, branching out and just brainstorming the first thing that comes to mind and then peeling back a little bit more.

Some additional guiding questions, under personal fulfillment: What activities or achievements bring you the most satisfaction? How do you envision your ideal lifestyle in the next 5, 10, or maybe even 20 years? Then, I’ve jotted down here, I’m reading off then family and relationships: What ways do you wish to support your family members financially? Are there family traditions or assets like a cottage or heirloom you aim to preserve? Well, that was my example of our place out on Vancouver Island. This is something that’s important and must be preserved.

Then you can get into the career and personal development: What professional milestones are you striving for and how can your finances facilitate these ambitions? So are there educational pursuits you see down the road? I’m doing this with my adult daughters right now, and knowing that there’s some professional pursuits, what kind of bucket do you have if you want to take your master’s? When you take your master’s? Had another conversation with another client and friend about that and their adult daughter.

Then there’s philanthropy and social impact: What causes resonate with you? Then there’s health and wellbeing: What investments in your health are essential in maintaining quality of life? And this is one where when I talk about time for myself personally, buying back time, I’ve also bought some health, meaning I have a trainer that we go to once or twice a week. They make sure I’m doing the work that I need to do. The rest I can do on my own, but I really need some accountability and that’s worth my money. And so that’s a bucket in our finances that has become important.

So that’s that health and wellbeing. And so these are just examples of some of the questions. These are getting you thinking, not about numbers, but more about the why. And when you know your values, the financial plan becomes more than just that spreadsheet. It’s actually personal and resonates with you.

Okay, so now I’m going to shift gears. Now that we know what’s important to you, let’s talk about when it’s important. Not all goals are created equal. Some are short term, like taking a big family trip in a year or two, and we have to save for that because you don’t want to have the guilt and you don’t want to—you just want to plan for it. You don’t want to have to use line of credit or credit card to pay for those trips. Others are long term, like ensuring you’re comfortable in retirement, like my husband’s plan. And then there are those after-death goals, the legacy stuff, like leaving something behind for your kids or a charity.

So breaking down these into timelines helps decide how to invest. It’s about knowing when you need the money so you can match it to the right kind of investment. And then of course this is our job as your financial planner. I do this for you, but I think it helps also—people feel pretty confident when they know why they have a bucket and what it’s meant for. And it gives that sense of calm through a storm, and so markets in the next little while might be up and down, a little bit of volatility, no matter what’s going on in the world. And when you know that this bucket is your long-term bucket, you know that within the timeline, you’ve got perspective. You’ve got 10 or 15 years or 20 years before you need it, then you can live through the roller coasters. But if you’re looking at a bucket and your investment, and you know that this is short term, and I know that I’m going on this vacation in 10 months, you don’t want to see a market dictate how much you’ve got in there. And so that’s going to matter to you.

Some real-life examples. I love bringing this stuff back to people in real stories, and that’s why I share some examples about mine, but also here’s a client. She was passionate about supporting her grandchildren’s education. And I think that there were three grandkids. And when I asked her to tell me a little bit more, she shared that she was in a field that was male-dominated, and she went to university back when women weren’t in that field. And so think sciences and engineering—she was a trailblazer and that education was very important to her. And that’s the why, peeling back the onion, like why does she want to help and make sure that her grandkids have enough money for an education no matter what they want to do, and knowing that it’s going to get expensive. It’s because she had to swim against the current and go into a field that was mostly male-dominated in university. Anyway, it’s a very interesting story.

And so it actually helped me understand why this was so important. And it puts a story behind the investment. And so it was knowing that her grandkids would have the opportunities that she had to fight for, and that she didn’t because it was a little bit later in life that she went. So we set up a fund specifically for the grandkids with the idea of education. Now there’s some flexibility if they don’t, but that was her main purpose and why of that. And there was a timeline with that.

Another client—this one’s very common. It’s actually a couple of clients. It was about keeping a family cottage, and it’s because they have this story. They’d spent summers there for decades. It was actually a parent that helped build the cottage. And so it was a big part of their plan, making sure there’s enough to set aside to maintain it and eventually pass it on. So that takes some planning in there as well.

These kinds of goals and values, they don’t come up right away. They usually surface after a few deep conversations. And it’s not just about asking, “What do you want to do with your money?” It’s about listening to the stories, what they’re passionate about, and what keeps them up at night. And it’s my job to also help peel back that onion, and it takes a relationship, and that’s why it’s important that there’s that trusting relationship and you want to have that with your advisor.

I find that when people feel truly heard, they open up about things. If you—it’s very common in our profession, and sometimes I have to check myself before I wreck myself too—is that it’s easy for us to run along because we’re going technical. We have all the answers and it’s like we can just jump into it. And sometimes you have to remind yourself, your advisor should be doing more listening than they are talking. And we want you to open up, you have to open up because you might not even realize what was truly important to you until after some conversations, and that’s when we can start creating a plan. And I know it’s fluid, it changes, and that’s another reason to even have a really great relationship with someone across the table with your planners because your life’s going to change and values and things that are important will evolve a little bit over time.

“Zena, how do we take all these values and goals and turn them into an investment strategy?” Well, this is where I like to use the term buckets. I use it a lot. And so bear with me while I keep using the term bucket because it’s easy. It’s a—I’m a visualizer or I like to have a picture in my head, with a story—and we have a riskier bucket. And that’s long-term goals. These are investments that can ride out the ups and downs of the market that I mentioned there, that are for the longer haul. They’re for the future self.

Then there’s a stable bucket, and that’s short term, or the non-negotiable goals. This is where we prioritize preserving your capital. You’re not really looking—you’re not wanting to chase a rate of return. Interest would be great, and you want some growth, great, but it might not be—well, it won’t be as big as your long-term buckets over time because time has the power of compounding and growth, but this is about preserving it and that’s that stable bucket.

Finally, there’s a legacy bucket, and this is for the after-death goals. This could be a trust fund or something set aside for charitable giving, or in the case of my family, making sure that legacy bucket includes keeping that land on the island in the home and making sure there’s means and a way to do that. So you’ve got your riskier bucket, your stable bucket, and then that legacy bucket.

And by dividing your investments into these buckets, we can make sure your money’s working for you and doing the right thing. That was a very simplistic version. Trust me, I don’t just draw out buckets and then do an investment choice. It’s based on one bucket, two bucket, three buckets. It’s a little bit more in-depth because within those buckets, we hold different things, but this is just to get your brain going to think about that timeline and investing.

If you’re looking to go even deeper about this, for some extra resources or insights into aligning your goals, there’s some great resources out there. And I came across an article, it’s by E-Money Advisor called “44 Questions to Ask Clients to Understand Their Values.” There’s planning life planning books out there that I always resort to, so send me a note—I can send you some links or just check out the articles. It’s a great starting point for digging into what really matters if you need a little bit more extra prompting.

Something I want to mention before I finish here: Legacy planning isn’t just for people with millions of dollars in the bank. It’s just for anyone who wants to make a lasting impact. Maybe it’s setting up a small scholarship fund or leaving something meaningful for your family. It doesn’t have to be millions and millions of dollars. What matters is that it reflects your values. And honestly, that’s what makes financial planning kind of fun and rewarding. It’s being able to sit across from people and be a part of the journey and seeing how they can put their money to work and pay the bills, but also reach their goals and create a life and legacy they’re proud of.

Okay, so if this episode got you thinking about your own goals and how your investments can align with them and making sure your investments are doing what they’re supposed to do to reach your goals, I’d love to help start that conversation. Reach out, send me an email: [email protected].