14/10/2026
Sometimes we need to take a step back before we take two forward.
I had a conversation with a younger client recently who needed to withdraw some money from her investment account. Things hadn’t gone quite to plan. Costs are higher, interest rates have bitten, and income hasn’t necessarily kept pace. She was disappointed and felt like she was going backwards.
My response was pretty simple: Don’t stress. This is one of the reasons we built flexibility into the plan in the first place. A liquid investment isn’t property. You don’t have to sell the whole thing, wait months for settlement or completely change direction just because life throws something at you. You can access what you need, deal with what’s in front of you, and then start building again when things settle down. Importantly, using some of your investments when life gets difficult isn’t giving up. It doesn’t mean the plan has failed, it has actually been utilised for one of the reasons you started it - flexibility.
Financial plans aren’t built for a world where nothing ever changes. Jobs, families, expenses, interest rates, they all change, and life just gets bloody expensive. Good financial advice should be able to change with it.
There will be periods where you’re building quickly, and there will be periods where the goal is simply to get through without undoing everything you’ve already achieved. Sometimes maintaining your position through the hard years is a win in itself, and the important part is not giving up on the long-term plan just because the short term got harder.
