Are you prepared for a secure financial future?

I grew up on a dairy farm and learnt quickly that good times will come, hard times will too and the key is being prepared for both.

Every day Dad was up at 5am, home for lunch, a short nap, then back out working until 6pm. Every. Single. Day.

During school holidays I would shovel cow manure and sell it by the side of the road to earn pocket money for ice creams. We experienced severe drought, so severe that the grass snaps when stepped on, extreme floods too, where eels will swim through the paddocks.

I’m very grateful for these life experiences. I learnt about cycles, good seasons and bad, droughts and floods, abundance and scarcity.

These lessons helped shape a mindset that still serves me today:

• You don’t overextend in the good times.
• You prepare for the inevitable dry season.
• You manage resources carefully.
• You fix things before they break.
• You think long term.

This mentality has stayed with me. But I’m not a farmer anymore, now I help families build the financial foundations that can endure life’s inevitable cycles.

When markets are booming, we don’t assume it will last forever. When markets fall, we don’t panic, because downturns are part of the cycle. In strong years, we build buffers and in uncertain years, those buffers protect us.

Just like on the farm, the goal isn’t to chase the biggest harvest every season, because things can always change: job loss, illness, economic downturns, unexpected life events. But, the families who weather them best aren’t the ones who stretched the furthest in the good years… they’re the ones who planned for the dry ones.

By James Mottram, Smart Financial Adviser