Financial Planning and the Search for Comfort
I remember being about 12 years old and telling my mom, “I just want to be 30 and have everything figured out.”
She laughed, as she should have. Not in a dismissive way, but in a way that suggested turning 30 might not have the answers I was looking for (FYI: it didn’t.). At the time, I didn’t really know why I had said it. I just remember the feeling behind it. I didn’t like not knowing what came next.
Looking back, what I thought I wanted wasn’t age or answers. It was comfort. The kind that makes uncertainty feel manageable instead of overwhelming. For a lot of people, that feeling doesn’t come from having everything figured out, but from having a framework that helps them make sense of what they’re facing.
Today, when I talk with people about money and their goals, they often say they just want to “live comfortably.” I find myself saying the same thing. Over time, I’ve learned that while the phrase sounds simple, it’s deeply personal. It almost never means the same thing from one person to the next, and it rarely has as much to do with numbers as people expect.
When people say they want to live comfortably, they’re rarely talking about a specific dollar amount in their accounts or the details of a particular lifestyle. Most of the time, it’s about how we want to feel in our day-to-day lives.
That can look like being able to enjoy things without second-guessing if our money should have been saved instead. It can also mean not feeling a sense of panic when an unexpected expense shows up, or enjoying life without the lingering guilt that we should have done something differently.
For some people, there’s comfort in predictability. Knowing what’s coming in and going out, and not being caught off guard by surprises. And if a surprise comes, knowing that they’ll be equipped to handle it.
For others, it’s providing a sense of flexibility. Being able to say yes to new opportunities and make decisions knowing they can change directions later if they need to, while keeping everything else together.
Hiding beneath the idea of “living comfortably” can be a lot of questions that keep us up at night. How long can I keep my current lifestyle? Am I making the right choices to set myself and my family up for the future? If something happens to me, will my family be okay? Even if things look good on paper, there can still be an uneasiness, and it can be challenging to wrestle with the disconnect.
Having these thoughts doesn’t mean anything is inherently wrong. They come from trying to thread the needle between caring about the future while trying to enjoy the present, and finding that balance can be elusive.
This is where financial planning can be helpful. It’s not some “magic bullet” that’s going to answer every question and remove any uncertainties, but it gives shape to questions that can otherwise be vague. Planning can help take these questions and concerns from being overwhelming to being something more concrete and understandable. It’s about being informed about the decisions we make and the tradeoffs behind them, knowing what’s flexible, what’s not, and where there’s room to adjust.
This is often where the most meaningful planning work happens for us. Taking the time to slow down, talk through the questions that tend to stay in our heads, and put some structure around them. When that happens, decisions usually feel more intentional, even when the future is still unclear.
Comfort looks different for everyone, and I don’t think any of us ever reach a point where everything is completely “figured out.” The questions we ask today aren’t the questions we asked yesterday, and they won’t be the questions we ask tomorrow. The goal isn’t to arrive at some perfect version of certainty, but to understand what drives us and build some clarity around the choices we make, and sometimes that clarity is enough to feel comfortable, even in a world of uncertainty.