158. Flourish Blueprint explained - Prepare Today For The Self You Haven’t Met Yet

What if your money plan was designed for every version of you, not just the one paying bills today? We take a practical, human look at life’s moving parts—student, first job, partner, parent, homeowner, and future retiree—and map out how to fund each stage without feeling overwhelmed. The goal isn’t a perfect spreadsheet; it’s a calm system that protects your income, supports your people, and builds the freedom to choose work you love.

We start with foundations that unlock resilience: income protection as the engine of your plan, medical aid you can actually use, and an early retirement contribution that leverages compounding for decades. From there, we add bricks as life expands—choosing the right marital property regime before the wedding day, setting life cover to match real obligations, and planning for children’s education without starving your own future. Along the way we tackle the hard but necessary steps people avoid, like drafting a valid will, updating beneficiaries, and preparing for illness or loss so a single blow doesn’t derail years of progress.

Retirement gets a reframing too. Instead of waiting for a date on a calendar, we aim for financial independence, where invested assets can fund your life well before 65. That means capturing salary increases into savings, taming lifestyle creep, and building buffers that turn surprises into detours, not disasters. You’ll hear how to balance living well now with protecting the next version of you, and why a seasoned planner can speed up every transition you’ll face for the first time.

Ready to fund the self you haven’t met yet? Follow the show, share this episode with someone starting a new chapter, and leave a review to help more people build calm, confident money plans that grow with their lives.

Chapters

• 0:12 Welcome And Topic Setup
• 0:22 Defining Your Different Financial Selves
• 1:54 First Paycheck Reality Check
• 2:44 Laying Foundations For Future Selves
• 3:57 Planning For Risk And Retirement Early
• 5:23 Life Stages: Marriage, Kids, And Cover
• 6:06 Midlife Pivots And Lifestyle Shifts
• 6:23 Setbacks, Loss, And Replanning
• 7:17 Rethinking Retirement As Freedom
• 8:16 Protecting Wealth With Structure And Wills
• 9:20 Preparedness And The Planner’s Role
• 10:08 Closing And Listener Resources

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:12

Hello everybody, welcome to Know Your Money. I'm Bronwin Wayner.

SPEAKER_01: 0:16

And I'm Craig Finch, and we are from Growth Financial Planning. We hope you enjoy our podcast. Hi everybody, we are still chatting about Flourish Blueprint. And Braun, today we're going to try to explain to us the different versions of yourself. So I was just thinking, you know, if you finish school now, you're going to university, and now you've got the whole world as your oyster ahead of you, things are going to change. You're going to have different, as you call them, versions of yourself. So explain to our viewers what do you mean by different versions.

unknown: 0:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 0:54

So what I mean by that is let's say that student is now studying and their parents are still paying for all of the bills, you know, the accommodation, the food, the pay for them for a long time, yes. So that's a version of them still receiving. They're not actually earning. How do you equip that person to be able to go out into the world and earn, but then still know that all those different versions of them are going to be okay? One of the biggest things you've even said is uh a student gets their first paycheck, and now they've got to fit in rent, they've got to fit in going out, medical aid, um income protection. Income protection, retirement annuity. It's overwhelming. It's that is 10 different versions of them that they've got to look after. Whereas when they were a student, there was one version of them. Mommy and daddy are going to look after me. Um if anything happens to me, I'm okay with them. But then you go into the world and you've all of a sudden got to look after all these versions of you. Then you go and get married, and now you've also got to look after your spouse. Then you go and have kids, and you have to look after your spouse and children. How do you manage that and manage your finances without feeling overwhelmed if you can't see all those versions?

SPEAKER_01: 2:24

And but they don't all happen at once. Surely it it takes like building a wall, it's a brick at a time. So there are certain versions that you would need to address right then and then, and then as life evolves, you're going to add on to the to that bigger picture. Is that right?

SPEAKER_00: 2:42

Yes, absolutely. So what we would do in the process is if a client comes to me, wherever they're at, if they're a student, if they're a mother, if they're a spouse, we'll lay their foundations down. So as it currently stands for the students, there's a version of you that is gonna start to earn a salary. There's a version of you that's gonna retire one day, and there's a version of you that could get hurt, like our guest we had on that was the what did he do? And he went into the power lines?

SPEAKER_01: 3:19

Yeah, yes. Paraglide into power lines, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 3:23

Yes. So there's those possible versions of you, even though you are studying. How do we manage that? So for that student, you start there with those versions, and then you do that goal setting of like, okay, well, where do you see your life going? What do you want in your life? I want to own a home, I do want to have children one day. Those are different versions of you. So you've got to include those versions in your financial plan. Because if you just live for today and just look after the version of you that wants to jewel and go see all of your friends, it's gonna be harder to go to those next transitions. So I would generally do that. But I think what is also quite important is let's say there's a version of you that's about to get married. Okay. That version needs to think about the possible versions that can coexist as well. If you do get divorced, how how are you married? Did you do that? That if you get divorced, you're not going to be left off in financial trouble. If you were to get sick, do you have income protection? So it's just understanding and sort of unpacking where a person is and highlighting versions of them. Can you maybe say, like versions of your clients that you've seen, just so that our listeners can go, okay, yeah, there's that possible, there's this, and then see how you plan for those.

SPEAKER_01: 4:53

Well, I mean, just my own career. I mean, the 40 years of working, well, a little bit more than that, but how that's changed over the single, carefree, don't care about the future, living on the edge basically, yeah, definitely have income protection, have some retirement plan ahead of you because But did you do that?

SPEAKER_00: 5:14

As that young, carefree starting salary.

SPEAKER_01: 5:18

So when I when I joined the industry, then I realized the the importance of having loss of income and and having a future retirement because I knew and I'd learned from the past from my family.

SPEAKER_00: 5:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 5:31

So that was definitely one of the versions, and um then getting married, and then suddenly you've got children. Well, you've got a wife first looking after her. If I'm not here, I want to make sure that the the home is paid for. So this so the life insurance kind of version becomes important. You've still got your income protection, you've still got your retirement, and then you're gonna plan a family. So that's when the children arrived, their education was very important. So lots of energy went into the education and then also holidays for them and how that that whole thing changed. Now they're both working, they're out of the house, now it's a different scenario. Now it's looking at a smaller house to live in, it's looking at more time to enjoy the healthy years we've got. It's also making sure that retirement is going to be long and fruitful. So lots of things happen, and yeah, then people get derailed across the way, like you mentioned, Calvin, power gliding. But other clients have had misfortune health-wise, it happens to them or loss of a spouse. It's devastating. And then that then that whole version changes, you know, what they thought would be a happy ending, now they've on their own, and they've yeah, so and it's also guiding them through the process that when those events happen that you're there to help them change the the the path and how the path looks. And and I think when they when they're younger, it's for you to show them what the future may look like. Or they go, Are you mad? Retirement, that's 40 years away. No, no, no, just pay a little bit of attention to it because it's gonna be you know what I mean, we know all those stories.

SPEAKER_00: 7:13

So No, and I mean, like that is one of my favorite ones, is when you're sitting with a student and you and and they go, No, retirement, you know, is 40 years away. And then you kind of reframe that and say, Okay, but don't you want to be financially independent that you can retire at 30, at 40? Exactly. That that is just society's retirement date.

SPEAKER_01: 7:37

Correct.

SPEAKER_00: 7:38

Our goal as your coach, like a tennis player, is trying to get you to wimbled in to win that thing. My goal is to make you financially independent, and that if you don't want to work, you don't have to, or you can do something that you absolutely love to do, and all the other versions of you are still protected. So you go now and you work and you you get yourself to be financially independent at 30, but you got married to someone in community of property, she sat there and watched you when, or he sat there and now took half of your wealth, and now you're not financially independent again, you have to start. So this process is about showing a client all these different versions. How are you with those versions? Is it protected? Do you have a will? And it's it's I wouldn't necessarily go, okay, these are the five versions of you. How do you feel about them? It's just having those conversations and that awareness around these different things. Because when you have that, you can have everything because you don't have to go through these highs and lows because it isn't prepared properly.

SPEAKER_01: 8:48

I think that's the key, what you just said, it's not prepared. If it's prepared, then you know that if anything or the event happens, be it retirement, be it an illness or whatever, but that that you're prepared for it. So prepared for a time, prepared to look after your children's education, prepared to look after your spouse, prepared for these things. Then it's not an you can prepare, you can be doing the planning a lot earlier. And if you show them the different versions, or if people are prepared to talk about the different versions, some people aren't prepared to talk about it. Some people say, Don't, I don't want to do a will because you're just tempting fate. It's not tempting fate, it's taking a possible problem off the table right now, and it's planning for it and being prepared. I think that's a really great way of looking at be prepared.

SPEAKER_00: 9:34

Completely, and that that is the ultimate role of a financial planner is to be your partner in life, your partner in your money, and helping you prepare for any version of you that is gonna appear.

SPEAKER_01: 9:48

As the versions change, that you are they transition with you.

SPEAKER_00: 9:52

You know, and also a planner has done this a few times, they know what that transition looks like. This is your first time doing it, they can really help you.

SPEAKER_01: 10:01

Yeah, awesome.

SPEAKER_00: 10:02

So that's the process.

SPEAKER_01: 10:03

Thanks, Brian. Sharing flourish with us. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00: 10:06

Bye.

SPEAKER_01: 10:07

Bye. Thank you for listening. If you have enjoyed this podcast, would like to subscribe, please visit our website www.growthfp.co.za. The information we have provided in this podcast is our personal opinion. For more detailed information, please discuss your financial situation with a financial planner.