“YOLO” is the popular Gen Z acronym for “you only live once.”
We hear this everywhere, and if we are honest, most of us have used it to justify a financial purchase at some point in our lives. Book the trip because you may not get the chance again. Quit the job because it is not paying you enough. Spend on the experience because, after all, you only live once.
To be fair, there is some truth in that thinking. Life is uncertain, and there are moments that genuinely cannot be recreated later. Time with your elderly parents today, your energy in your 20s, creating and cherishing experiences when your children are young, these are not things you can always delay and expect to come back to.
But when YOLO becomes a default way of making financial decisions, your financial health tends to deteriorate. Initially, everything feels manageable. But over time, the lack of planning will limit your future. You may realise that the “freedom” you thought you initially had “bought” actually constrained your future.
Think of it as buying an expensive home you can’t afford. Or quitting a job that you actually needed. What started as a choice to create “freedom” actually limits your options for the future.
“Think About 5 Years From Now”
A lot of people approach money with one of two extremes.
The first is that they focus only on the present, spending freely and frivolously, hoping the future takes care of itself.
Alternatively, they swing the other way, becoming overly fixated on the distant future, saving aggressively and postponing anything enjoyable in the hope of delaying gratification for as long as possible.
Neither path is ideal.
Instead of thinking about retirement at 65 or what you want to do this month, it is more useful to think about your life five years from today. This is not some abstract, distant version of you. It is still very much you, just dealing with the midterm results of what you chose to prioritise today. If you are 25 now, your 30-year-old self is not that far away, and the difference between those two versions of you will largely be shaped by your habits and decisions today.
This timeframe is long enough for meaningful and sustainable changes to happen in your life, but short enough to feel real. You can realistically become much fitter and healthier, successfully switch careers, build your savings and investment portfolio, or even start a family or repair important relationships during this period. And because it is not decades away, the consequences of your decisions will feel more impactful.
What Will You Regret Not Doing?
Instead of asking what you want right now, a more useful question is this: In five years, what will you regret not doing today?
This question is important because it changes your thinking from what your current self prefers doing (or not doing) to what your future self would regret if you don’t do it today.
Health is one of the clearest examples. In your 20s, it is easy to ignore your poor diet, bad sleep habits, and lack of exercise. None of these seems urgent because the effects are not immediate. But over a few years, these habits compound. If you instead put in even a modest amount of effort to exercise a few times a week, improving your diet slightly by replacing some junk food with fruits and vegetables, and aim to get more rest, the difference after five years can be significant.
It’s fair to say that very few people ever look back and regret the effort of maintaining their health. A lot more people regret not doing so.
The Problem With Living Only For Escape
There is a certain type of advice that sounds disciplined but is actually just another extreme. Work as hard as possible now, save everything, and aim to retire early so that you can finally be happy. On paper, this sounds like a solid plan. In reality, many people following this path are not running towards something meaningful; they are simply trying to escape something they dislike.
It is similar to how a student who dislikes school tells themselves that life will start after graduation. Then work begins, and the same thinking continues. Happiness keeps getting pushed further away, always tied to the next milestone rather than something that can exist in the present.
The objective should not be to suffer now so that you can stop the suffering later. It should be to build a life that is sustainable and meaningful along the way, even if it is not perfect.
You Do Not Need A Better Retirement Plan. You Need A Better Job
If you are already feeling burned out in your mid-20s, the issue is usually not that you are working too hard. Is your day-to-day life not working? Yet, many people try to solve this problem with money. They tell themselves that if they can just earn more, save and invest more, they can eventually escape.
Sometimes the better move is uncomfortable in the short term. You might need to take a pay cut, switch industries, or start at a lower level again. That may feel like you are going backwards, especially when you compare yourself to peers. But if the new path allows you to build relevant skills and gain meaningful experience, the trajectory can change. Five years later, you are not just earning, but progressing in a career that you are passionate about.
The alternative is to stay where you are and hope that money alone will compensate for everything else.
The Bottom Line
“YOLO” is not wrong, but it is incomplete. Yes, you only live once, but your life is not just today. It is also about building a version of yourself five years from now that you actually want to step into.
Because if you get this balance right, you are not choosing between present happiness and future security. You are building both in a way that your future self will thank you for.
Read Also: Why Many Of Us Stay In “Urgent Mode” Longer Than We Need To
