What would future you thank you for?

On the balance of agency and anxiety, richness and wealth

‘ey up!

How’s your week started?

I’m one energy drink in and typing this from a revisited happy place after a weekend with my day-one university mates — whom I got to ride Snake Pass to see in the sunshine on my bike — and two solid training sessions yesterday, the second with a new running group whose “conversational pace” is 4:30/km (7:15/mile for you old money folk), ideal for my second stage of 10K training.

And I’m buzzing.

Not because anything major has changed since we last spoke. I’m still not sure where I want to live, my project income is still nowhere near what my corporate one was and I’m objectively fitter but still grinding and grimacing through a lot my current running and lifting training rather than flying as it felt when I was just bodybuilding.

I think what’s changed though, in part through the conversations and research I’ve had and am doing for Fitness & Thinking, is my perspective on what it means to be “financially fit”.

Over the last year, I’ve bought a motorbike outright, earned my advanced diving certificate, and launched a project I believe in more than anything else I’ve done.

And the richness I feel right now — of time, of alignment, of freedom — has come from both saving and spending.

Having money’s not everything, not having it is

The financial aspect of being is one I’ve navigated for as long as I can remember, possibly starting from a jarring moment when I was shouted at for “knowing the price of everything but the value of nothing” as a ten-year-old.

I was surrounded by adults who made a thing of money being “tight,” so, without them telling me to (and in part to save them telling me off again), I intuitively saved at least 10% of everything I was given or earned.

In my first serious relationship, my then girlfriend’s stepdad recommended The Richest Man in Babylon. Look, we both clearly loved her, but seeing in words habits I recognised both he and I had that he clearly wished his stepdaughter had too made me chuckle:

Save 10% of everything you earn; don’t spend more than you earn; be generous with your time if you can’t be generous with your money.

Just because something’s hokey doesn’t mean it’s daft.

The saving years

I opened an ISA at 16, bought premium bonds at 17 and put spare cash into quick-access savings.

I worked in a backwater town for two years to make sure future me could live somewhere he liked. I swapped legacy media for a riskier startup that paid more and contributed to a pension. And when that same startup ran out of money, I had savings to take a chance on coaching.

I upset mates by not necking pints and watching the football or going on lads’ holidays. Instead, I swapped two nights out a week for a night or two behind my favourite bar — where I got paid, sometimes tipped, often danced to tunes I loved and drank alcohol I actually liked — and afforded solo inter-railing and skiing with the army by working all summer.

Look, if I’m going to disrupt my bowels and brain, I’m not drinking pish! And while a few of the lads have softened their stances since, telling me they get why I did what I did, I recognise that I also could have said yes to more time with them, if only I’d recognised that it was never really about the boozing, rather it was about the being together (exactly as it was this weekend gone).

I said no to a lot of things to say yes to things today and tomorrow.

I’ve played it safe with accommodation and investments, and I’ve rolled the dice. But nothing’s ever felt that risky — because past me built up the ISA and the bonds, the pension and the emergency fund, and has always wanted to work.

But I wasn’t saving for a house. Or a wife. Or kids.

I’ve never wanted all-inclusive holidays or designer clothes. I’m proud of my former titles — account exec, events manager, account director — but they’ve never excited me.

Almost by default, I’d built financial safety without knowing what I actually wanted to spend it on.

So I started asking myself:

What would future me thank me for?

A year of intentional spending

I stopped paying rent on my dream flat in the UK so I could have funds to pay for things like my advanced diving certificate when traveling. I went into my savings to pay for a course that got me my motorbike license in under a week. I sold investments to buy the bike I really wanted — outright.

I’ve spent more time and money with and on friends and family this year than I have since I left home.

And now, I’m swapping further income for time to build Fitness & Thinking, the project I believe could reach more people than I can currently coaching 1:1.

It’s fucking scary. Letting myself spend. Letting go of the protestant work ethic of earning long enough to just be. But it’s also thrilling.

The coaching point

I don’t coach people just to help them lose weight or get stronger — though those things obviously matter.

I coach people to figure out what they really want… and help them feel capable of going after it.

Look, I get to spend all Tuesday writing and editing because I work on Sundays and I’ve saved up — I’m not telling you for one second to give everything up!

But I see so many people waiting for safety before they act. Waiting for permission. Saving, like I did, for a future without questioning what it is they actually want.

So:

What would future you thank you for?

Is it stability? Or is it stories? Maybe it’s both?

Present me is eternally grateful to past me for biding it out in bang-average accommodation, and for learning to say no to alcohol not wanted, for investing in coaching qualifications through lockdowns, for saving from as young as I did.

But present me is also spending in a way that past me would be proud of, building on that trip around Europe by myself as a 19-year-old, building on that backpacking around Australia at 21 and Southeast Asia at 32, getting the bike at 33. There’s a very real chance that I won’t be able to afford the time or money to do anything like this again for a while but money saved and never spent could also be seen to be money wasted right?

Future me might not love the starting financial position of next year but I doubt he’ll be regretting the miles he’s already driven through the Peak District in the summer sun, or wishing that he’d stayed home rather than explore a whole new culture and cuisine in a country only a few of his mates have been to so far.

What financial decision now — however small — would future you be proud of making?

Final thought

Whenever it comes to investment — in whichever pillar of fitness you’re most interested in — you will always have to consider the costs and benefits.

If it’s a six pack, then that doughnut might be better not bought; if it’s better performance in the test tomorrow, then maybe it’s not a late one tonight; if it’s feeling connected, then maybe it’s joining a book club rather than scrolling TikTok.

Financially speaking, maybe it’s not always about saving more.

Maybe it’s about knowing what you’re saving for.

And maybe — if you already know what that is — it’s time to put your mouth where your time, energy and money is.

If this week’s newsletter sparked something for you, reply and let me know what your version of “spending it” might look like — I’d love to hear.

If you enjoyed this, you might like this

While I was aware of religion growing up – my mum’s side are Catholic and my dad took my sister and I to a Protestant church on Sundays, and we even moved into a house whose appended kitchen was a former Wesleyan chapel – I never saw myself as religious. I loved that my mate Dan, a proud Catholic boy, used to describe me as a “crazy non-Catholic mystic” in the vein of Jack Kerouac. But what if I simply swapped my “god” for “work” and became as orthodox as anyone in my devotion?

Podcast

The latest episode of the F&T podcast is available on Spotify and YouTube every Wednesday.

In this week’s episode, I catch up with David Forrest a keen runner and Professor in Film & Television Studies at The University of Sheffield to discuss portrayals of sport and masculinity alongside the ways in which running have helped us both re-contextualise what it means to be fit and from the North of England.

And that’s it from me!

Much love and I’ll see yas in the next one
J x


P.S. Feel free to forward this to someone who needs to be reminded: their future is still theirs to build!