going the distance: the key to long-term financial success

“Financial success doesn’t happen overnight, but is the product of years of work.” That kind of pithy saying is obvious almost to the point of being painful, so why point it out? Well, I wouldn’t bother, except for the fact that most people don’t actually act on it; they don’t seem to know what thinking in the long term actually means. So let’s get into specifics, shall we?

Spending trends are more important than events. Did you spend more than you earned in November? Who cares? What matters is, are you spending more than you earn over time? One month isn’t going to make or break you; what matters is the long-term trend. Does your spending go up faster than your income? When you get a raise, does it immediately go to improving your lifestyle — or do you set aside some of that raise to pay off your debt faster or bump up your monthly 401(k) contribution? Do you have a plan to not only to save a certain amount, but to increase that amount year after year?

This is one of the reasons why a buffer should be your very first savings goal. When you’re no longer swamped with the day-to-day stress of wondering whether you can pay the bills, you can spend more time looking at the trends — both external (like the price of gas) and internal (like how much you decide to put aside each month).

“Always in motion is the future.” Ten years is a long time from now — so why base your plan on a bunch of assumptions about where you’re going to be? Instead, you need to make flexibility a priority, which in turn means building up discretionary income by resisting lifestyle inflation, paying down your debts, and saving up for new purchases, rather than taking on new debt. The more discretionary spending you have available, the better you’ll be able to handle whatever life throws at you.

Your investment plan can’t be based on occasional luck. So you (or your financial planner) predicted the latest crash and pulled all your assets out of stocks just in time, or invested in Apple stock when it was at 200, or made a killing selling covered calls while the market was going nowhere. That’s great, but…that’s not what’s really important. What’s really important is whether you (or they) perform well consistently, year in and year out, for decades. The flip side is also true: don’t be too quick to dump a strategy or planner for underperformance, either. A conservative portfolio looked like foolishness in 1999…and sheer genius in 2001.

See what I mean? The long-term view means ignoring events in isolation, and looking at patterns and systems instead. Not why you spent $300 on electronics last month, but how you’re controlling your spending over the year; not how you’re going to pay your recently-raised rent, but what your plan is for maximizing your discretionary spending; not what the market’s doing this week, but what it’s doing this century.

And if that kind of systematic planning just isn’t your thing, well, that’s what geeks are for.