What’s your rapport with time like? The new year is an ideal time to consider your strategic budgeting and investing foresight – it’s a great time to review life.

Can you expand your awareness of time, looking further back and further forward to help you understand how quickly your future will be upon you?

How might this longer-term thinking help us prepare for our futures?

Let’s start by reflecting on time.

1. Remarkably, we are closer in time to Tyrannosaurus Rex than Tyrannosaurus Rex is to Stegosaurus. And yet we can happily wipe off the 60 million years between the two species by grouping them together as dinosaurs. This is clear evidence of how time flies and proof that even 40 years to retirement is but a drop in the ocean.

2. It’s fascinating how our memory chooses to deal with the past. I moved back to Bermuda in 2021 but prior to that lived in Bermuda from 2002 to 2013.

Those 12 years were when I met and married my husband, had my children, was promoted at work, represented Bermuda in a sailing world championship, had artwork purchased by Masterworks and also had lots of daily worries and stresses in that time, too.

And yet, that whole swathe of time is now just represented by a dash between 2002 and 2013. Just a “-“, that’s it! All too quickly time moves on. Thankfully I saved throughout the “-“. Are you saving throughout yours?

3. An estimated three billion people watched the world cup this December. To help grasp that number of people, it takes 31 years to even just count to a billion. So how did those people manage their time to make that happen?

How was life not impacted in any way while three billion people stopped work and sat on a sofa watching football? How did the factories still run and the companies still build revenue?

The answer is because they made it work. They wanted to. Their desire to watch football meant they sped up their other jobs, using ‘deadline time’ to get work done quicker so the planet could keep spinning.

In a world where we say we are too busy to make changes, this football test alone proves that our concept of time can be skewed.

We can make things happen using ‘deadline time’ if our desire is great enough to work harder and faster – three billion people have proved that. You can make a change to your finances this year if you want it bad enough.

1. Sailing the Atlantic a few years ago I was convinced I was standing still. I had no sensation of moving forwards for days on end, because the horizon was always the exact same distance away from me in every direction, regardless of how fast I was sailing. And yet, life is still always moving forwards no matter what our perspective.

2. Even indecision about whether to invest doesn’t keep us standing still, it’s an active decision to not keep pace with inflation.

3. Not moving forwards isn’t actually possible. Even thinking about ‘now’ isn’t possible as it’s already gone.

A new trend in thinking expands our awareness of time beyond when we will exist. There’s even a future library in Norway that doesn’t have any books in it yet.

It’s surrounded by trees that are being grown for the paper to make the books. Unseen/unread manuscripts today have been locked away to be turned into books in 100 years, long after the authors and people who created the library have passed on.

Can we help in a time beyond us? And if we can conceive that far ahead, can that make it easier to understand our responsibility for our own future at least?

2. We have proof that people from the iron age looked forward at a future beyond themselves. The Battersea Shield, a significant piece of intricate Celtic metalwork, made broadly 3,000 years ago, and dredged up in 1857, shows that shield makers seemed to understand their detailed creation would outlive themselves.

And so, they were dispatching a message forward into the future that there is reward and pride for doing your best work now and going the extra mile for later benefit.

3. Expanding our rapport with time invites us to spend less time focusing on the current issues and more time on what we want for the future.

We only have to look back at how time has flown to understand how quickly our future will be here.

If we accept that time flies fast, that we can control time if we want something badly enough and that our own future is much closer than we think, then we can be more motivated to take responsibility and action today to make more financial provision for our future.

It can also help us balance the equation better of having something now versus something of greater value later.

2023 is a great chance to get your earnings working for you to help you secure your future. We enter the year with a heavily discounted stock market, good yields on bonds and money market funds for the first time in years, and even interest resurrecting in savings accounts.

So let this year be the time to send your money out to work for you, to benefit your future.

By spending your earnings now, you only get to spend the money once.

By saving and letting your earnings work for you, your money keeps earning over and over for the future.

Even $1,000 saved with a seven per cent per annum return broadly doubles in value in 10 years, and that in turn doubles again in 20 years, to more like $4,000. It takes long-term thinking to make this happen.

And with that comes the benefit of ‘anticipatory savouring’ which is the feel-good factor for taking positive action for your future self thus enabling you to effectively benefit twice; once by anticipating and then again when you actually receive the benefit.

Much like having a holiday booked and enjoying the anticipation of it along with the actual experience.

An easy action, by setting yourself a task using ‘deadline time’, is to seek help from an investment adviser.

What would your future self be asking you to change now? Ask yourself: “What is one thing I am doing wrong that I could do something about in 2023?”

In the words of Mahatma Gandhi: “The future depends on what we do in the present.”

Sue Couper is the general manager at LOM Asset Management Limited in Bermuda. This communication is for information purposes only. It is not intended as an offer or solicitation for the purchase or sale of any financial instrument, investment product or service. Readers should consult with their brokers if such information and or opinions would be in their best interest when making investment decisions. LOM is licensed to conduct investment business by the Bermuda Monetary Authority.