You may have already heard a lot of people say that it’s never too late to do something – say, it’s never too late to chase your dreams, learn a new skill, build your dream house, etc. But what if we say it’s never too early? Yes! Let’s gain a little perspective and look at things from a different point of view.
When you’re young, it’s quite normal to think you have all the time in the world. But then the day arrives not too far away when you realise that you need to start making important choices and decisions for your life. For example, what activities you choose at an early age, what sports you played, which clubs you joined, etc., leave a deep impact on how you grow up to be.
It all starts to make sense when you reach the age to reason out everything and you know that everything is connected.
That is why in today’s world, the future is a big deal right from the time when you didn’t even learn to take your first steps. Parents start planning for their baby or kid right when they were in the womb. Why? So that the kid doesn’t have to face any insufficiency or other problems when it arrives into the world.
If you start building your assets today, you can think of building an empire tomorrow. If you carefully plan your finances today, you can have a carefree retirement tomorrow.
In this blog, we’ll talk about five real-life examples that got young people to an extraordinary position in life. This blog is meant to motivate you to plan for your future irrespective of the young age you may be. Let’s see what planning early can get you in life!
Build a Plan
Know this today and for the days to come, that everybody has got dreams of their tomorrow. Even if someone hasn’t spoken them out loud yet, you need to call them out and set them free to go after their dreams. This is how you can build your dream into a reality.
Set up a concrete plan early in life and walk towards your goals according to your plan. Let’s look at a few famous personalities for some inspiration.
Jeff Bezos – Founder of Amazon at age 30
While still a Princeton grad student, Jeff Bezos listed 20 things to sell. But selling books made a lot of sense at his time and so, he sold books in his garage. Today you know him for his success and it was because he started giving his plans a direction of motion early in life.
Bill Gates – Founder of Microsoft at age 19
Gates is a college dropout, that, we all know. But we also know how successful he is because he went ahead and pursued his dreams, leaving Harvard University in 1975 at the age of 19.
Mark Zuckerberg – Founder of Facebook at age 19
Did you know that Microsoft tried to hire Zuckerberg when he was still a high school student? He created the program – Synapse – which used AI to analyse its users’ music-listening habits.
Steve Jobs – Founder of Apple at age 21
Jobs is also a college dropout. Interestingly, he was once fired from Apple and he joined in 1997 again, this time, as the company CEO. He says it was a creative period when he was fired.
Larry Page and Sergey Bin – Founders of Google at ages 28 and 15 respectively
They met each other at Stanford when they built a search engine together. This search engine became a hit at the university which gave them a purpose to leave Stanford and work on their dream project.
Why Should You Start Planning Early?
First, answer this question – what did you learn from the above stories?
These personalities knew what they were doing or want to do in life and have a vision of where they stood in the coming future. And they started nurturing that dream with a plan in place and moved in its direction. Planning does you two most important favours in life. Here they are:
It gives you options
When you reach the peak of a moment, making decisions or choices can get overwhelming. You may even regret such decisions later. For example, life insurance can bring great outputs to your plans. When you decide to take out life insurance, you need to consider the type, platform of insurance, physical health examinations, etc., to understand the market rates and policy conditions.
If you start this process early, you are most probably in good health and there aren’t any pre-existing conditions that may impact your life insurance policy negatively. Insurance brokers are betting on your life which means they’ll need reassurance that they’re making a safe bet. That’s how being in good health is going to pay off in such a situation.
Additionally, in some cases, life insurance can be sold off and you can incur cash out of it. If you plan on doing something like it, then the longer you hold your policy, the higher amount you can expect to get out of it.
It can provide emergency support
The non-believers in planning often come with this one question - how can you plan for a future you know nothing about? Well, that’s actually why you should be prepared on the one hand. On the other, when you plan ahead of time, you’re ready to face the unexpected.
For example, in terms of your finances, you have a rainy day or emergency fund aside from your daily expenses so that you have something saved with you at times of need. But that is only possible when you plan your finances and save to create an emergency fund.
Another perfect example could be a living Will. Most people think a Will is for a dying person but reality says nobody is aware of their tomorrow. So, as you mature into life, you keep building your assets, adding to your ownership, making a family, creating savings accounts, adding collectables, etc. That is why you should have a Will, a formal plan for your assets and family if the day comes when you would be no longer around to look after them.
Ending Thoughts
So, it’s quite basic to realise that it is never too early to start planning for the future. The sooner we can get into the conversation of what one’s future is going to look like, the earlier you can reach your goals. However, while you start making plans early, it is also important to remember that your timeline and your life choices differ from person to person. There is no one way for everyone to plan.
