What Golf Can Teach You About Financial Planning

I was out golfing earlier today for the first time in about four months.

If you ask most golfers how their day went after being away from the course for that long, you will more than likely hear a slew of four letter expletives that I will not repeat here. However, I had one of the best rounds of my life, and walked off the course with an ear-to-ear grin on my face.

Wait, what does this have to do with financial planning? To answer that, a brief history lesson is required:

In my younger days, I was very active lifting weights. Not for a sport, not to impress the ladies (well, not entirely), but more so because I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it so much it’s all I did, with no regard for what it was actually doing to my body.

When I started golfing, like most people, it was a disaster. Not only because I didn’t know anything about the mechanics of the golf swing, but also because my body was so inflexible from the weight-lifting I was unable to rotate my body more than five to ten degrees in any direction.

Understanding that I had caused significant damage to my body, I sought the help of a professional trainer. At our first meeting, we did a thorough evaluation of my current physical strengths and limitations. As you can guess, there were many more limitations than strengths.

We met for about two hours and discussed some of the problems I was facing and how I got there. He took a lot of time to educate me on the different issues he was noticing and how they came to be.

During the follow-up session with the trainer a week later, he presented me with detailed information about my physical limitations, ordering them from most to least significant. He had created a detailed plan to correct these limitations, with specific exercises, the frequency with which they were to be completed, and next-steps once we reached certain milestones.

This was in July of last year.

I met with the trainer weekly throughout the year and into the winter, following to the “t” the plan he had laid out.

After nine months of disciplined training, I had one of my best golf performances ever, even after not having physically lifted a golf club all winter.

Amazing.

While it was challenging to maintain this discipline for so long without seeing any tangible results, the encouragement and support of the trainer helped keep me on track, and at the end of the day it has paid off handsomely.

Going forward, I plan to continue working with him, improving, and moving closer to becoming the best golfer I can be. I know that I would not have the knowledge, discipline or will to do this on my own.

I’m sure you can see where I am going with this. Sure, I could have attempted to go on my own, save a few dollars, and gotten reasonably better and slightly more flexible over a period of time.

However, by taking the time to seek professional help, create a plan, and maintain discipline to it, I am in a far better position than I ever would have been otherwise.

Sure, you can continue to plan your finances on your own. You may even be successful in doing so. But I can guarantee you that if and when you take the first steps to seek help, you will make unimaginable progress towards financial security that you may never have been able to achieve on your own.