With no assigned parking space, we park our car on the quiet suburban Toronto street in front of our building. Eight to nine months of the year this parking arrangement is only a minor inconvenience.
Saturday morning, before my lovely wife drove our children to Jiu Jitsu, I cleaned the snow off our car and made a path to ensure the car would not become stuck in the snow as it drove away from the curb. After my family left, I continued to shovel; I shoveled enough snow off the street to clear four parking spots.
Our street is conveniently situated for motorists who are visiting local businesses, and, on week days, parking is not always easy to find. As I spent half an hour dodging cars to clear snow-covered, on-street parking spots, I thought about what neighbors might think as they saw a grown man shoveling snow from the street. A younger, more insecure version of me may have stopped, but older, experienced Beau thought it better to shovel on Saturday than complain about no parking on Monday.
Repeating this mantra while I cleared the parking spots, I realized my reason for shoveling the street was analogous to the motivation for investing diligence. If you want to attain financial security or financial independence, you need to put in the work today. Even if researching stocks or reading a fund prospectus is not your idea of fun, you need a plan to achieve your goals. Compound returns are powerful, but only useful to those with the ambition to set goals, create a plan, and execute.
Want to retire (financial independence)? Do you want to afford a vacation every six months, or have the means to put your kids through college? It is better to have a financial plan today than complain about your finances when you are older.