From the Today Show to The View and innumerable points in between, Barbara Walters’ voice has been heard by millions of us over the last half century or so.
And while it’s hard not to conjure up Gilda Radner’s “Baba Wawa”, the iconic phrase that the real Barbara is best known for is her crisply enunciated welcome to the ABC TV newsmagazine 20/20. Of course the show title is an allusion to 20-20 visual acuity, which her careful phrasing so effectively captures.
This all came to mind for me as we turned the calendar over into the current 2020 year and decade, while reflecting on My Money Mirror.
What is My Money Mirror?
Whether it came out of a dream or is a remnant of a sci-fi/fantasy moviescape (or both), I’ve long had this notion of a money mirror out in the distance before me. It runs infinitely from left to right, and I’m always moving steadily toward it.
At a younger age, it doesn’t even appear that there’s a mirror at all. Being so far off, it could very well just be continuing sky. But as time and I myself roll forward, a dot appears on the horizon that grows and begins to take form, eventually blocking part of the view. I want to see past it, but as I drift to the left, it follows my move. Then I tack to the right, and it matches me again.
What is this thing, and why is it getting in my way? And that’s when it comes to me — it’s me.
Why a mirror?
Unless you were born into large wealth, you will spend much of your early life saving up a store of your excess labour — what we call money — that will be needed to sustain you in your later life. At some point you will (hopefully) cross over from the need-to-save to the freedom-to-spend. Maybe that’s more like an inflection than a reflection, but then my cute aliteration would be lost, so I’m sticking with my money mirror.
It’s the notion of retirement being the point at which there is enough stored wealth to comfortably and confidently fund the rest of your life. That’s a very different thing from merely reaching a chosen age or ceasing to work. The mirror is a way of visualizing the distinction between the purpose of your journey and the observations along the route.
Specifically, I want and need to visualize who I am on the other side of that divide. Ideally the image will be sharply defined well before reaching the mirror’s surface. Otherwise, without adequate preparation I might find myself on a collision course with an ever-growing dark mass with undulating edges —yeah, maybe this did originate as a nightmare.
Practical reflections on the year, and decade that was
The blurry blob aside, this journey toward clarity truly is the background visual when we look over the family finances each year-end. Note the “we” in that sentence, as this really is a team exercise.
Years ago when I was on my own, my attention was simply on saving something. I had no particular goals other than to be in a regular and reasonably informed habit, and I don’t apologize for that. To require more of a young person could lead to a very unhealthy stressful relationship with money.
These days as a couple dependent on one another and a family to raise, we have to be that much better informed and more targeted. We’re also learning from our experiences, so we have better intuition without having to be constantly looking, but we still run the numbers.
The difference this year is that it’s also a decennial marker, as we enter 2020. Looking back at our net worth progress over the last decade gives us confidence as we pivot from past to future. There’s no question that we’re still on the journey, but things really are getting clearer by the year.