A 2024 study published in the Journal of Happiness Studies provided insight into why success doesn’t always satisfy.
It suggested that while significant milestones—like a major promotion or the final mortgage repayment—provide a temporary boost in life satisfaction, the ‘hedonic adaptation’ back to a baseline level of happiness occurs much faster than most people anticipate.
Psychologist Tal Ben-Shahar coined the term “Arrival Fallacy” to describe this exact phenomenon: the illusion that once we reach a specific destination, we will finally be happy.
In our work with families across Melbourne and regional Victoria, we see this play out most vividly during the transition to retirement or the final wealth creation push. The danger isn’t the goal itself; it is the mental state of treating the present as a waiting room for a future that may never feel as good as we imagined.
The ‘Someday’ trap in the middle years
For many professionals in their 40s and 50s, life can feel like a series of checkboxes.
We often tell ourselves that happiness is waiting on the other side of the kids finishing school, the SMSF hitting a certain balance, or the house renovation being completed.
We defer joy, assuming it’s a finite resource we can only tap into once the work is done.
The reality is that when you arrive at the summit, you don’t find a new version of yourself. You find the same person, just with a different set of tasks.
If we haven’t practised being content during the climb, the view from the top often feels remarkably like the view from the bottom, just with thinner air.
Shifting the focus to ‘Living Capital’
We often talk to clients about their financial plan not just as a roadmap to a destination, but as a tool to facilitate “living capital” right now. This involves two practical shifts in perspective:
- Routines as the destination: If your daily routine—the morning coffee, the walk along the Barwon River, the Tuesday night dinner—is miserable, no amount of accumulated wealth at age 65 will retroactively fix those years. The goal is to design a life you don’t feel the need to escape from.
- Process-based milestones: Instead of focusing solely on the end balance, we encourage focusing on the habits the plan creates. Stability, clarity, and the ability to say “yes” to a spontaneous weekend away are the real markers of success.
Financial planning is frequently viewed as a way to secure the future, but its most immediate value is the peace of mind it provides in the present.
When the technical details—the superannuation contributions, the personal insurance, the cash flow—are sorted, we stop living for the ‘arrival’ and start living in the moments that actually make up our life.
If you find yourself constantly looking at the horizon rather than the path under your feet, it might be time to look at your strategy through a different lens. It’s about doing the simple, smart things today so that you can enjoy the journey, not just the summit.
We are always happy to chat about how to align your finances with the life you want to live now, rather than just the one you’re waiting for.
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