The world is changing at exponential rates. How does this societal acceleration complicate the manner in which we prepare for the future?

1. Planning your Financial Future
Our world is changing. Fifty or sixty years ago, good financial strategy involved
“home economics” where women stayed home to raise children, sew clothing, tend gardens
and hand-wash clothing.
Not that long before that, it made more sense for people,
especially in small towns or rural communities, to preserve their own foods from local
crops, catches or hunts. If you didn’t freeze, pickle or preserve fruits and vegetables for the
winter, you faced the real possibility of the inability to nurture yourself.
It wasn’t that long ago that it was more economical to buy whole chickens and part
and clean them. Many people raised their own for eggs and meat and it made more sense
to have a few hundred square feet of garden in the back yard to till and tend for vegetables
than to consider buying them.
I did a time-value of money calculation this year and based on my hundred square
feet of garden in the back yard, my home-grown tomatoes cost me thirty to fifty dollars a
pound. Practices and rules that applied to managing money and that made good sense just
a few years ago can cost tenfold their benefit today. Engaging in financial decisions and
practices today thinking they are the right thing to do now because they were the right
thing to do a generation ago, or even a decade ago is like practicing surgery using ether as a
sedative and dirty knives honed on a strop: it’s prone to complicated and undesirable
outcomes.
When I was growing up we used to call this a generation gap. Now we talk about
Innovators, Early Adopters, and Laggards. It’s gone beyond the idea of Generation Gaps by
exponential degrees. Those kinds of gaps in practice and attitudes happen in microcultures and micro-environments through our whole society as ideas and technology come

2. to the forefront of day-to-day world; from air-bags in cars to cell phone in every purse and
pocket; to high-tech clothing fabrics (plain old cotton, by the way, is nearly a thing of the
past). What worked yesterday doesn’t necessarily work today. In fact, at the current pace
of change, what worked ten minutes ago has no guarantee of working now.
So, if we are looking back on today from five years in the future, what would we tell
ourselves to prepare for? How would we advise ourselves to plan our futures in a world
that is changing at a rate faster than ever in history; and that’s accelerating?
Shannon Boschy, BFA, CFP
Financial Security Advisor, Mutual Funds Representative
819-243-6497 - Scheduling and Administration
613-282-5370 - Goal-Based Inquiries
Suite 400, 228 St Joseph Boul.
Shonnon.boschy@investorsgroup.com
Visit me at www.shannonboschy.com
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intended as a solicitation to purchase securities. Shannon Boschy is solely responsible for its content. For more information on
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