How a Long-Term Approach Can Help You Predict the Future

We have discussed many benefits of taking a long-term approach to your life.  These include building a solid foundation of good habits and skills, building a solid financial foundation and not being affected by short-term setbacks.

One benefit that is often over-looked because it is so obvious is the effect of long-term thinking on future events you may not have even considered.  If you buy a home with the intent of staying in it long-term, you will probably choose the home and area wisely, knowing that you will be there for a long time.  This is all obvious, but if you have purchased well, that area’s properties will very often dramatically increase in value.  This is not something that you can predict necessarily but making good decisions with a long-term view often exposes you to these positive results.

Also, the neighbourhood might be too expensive for someone to purchase a home in in the present but having invested prudently in the past has created a positive result in the present that could not have necessarily been predicted.

Many people have exercise equipment at home because they prefer it to going to a public gym.  There is no way that the present shortage of exercise equipment could possibly have been predicted, but these people’s workouts have been completely unaffected by this circumstance. 

Naturally these two things are not related, but the point is that unforeseen results can come from planning into the future.

One of the classic areas where long-term planning has been particularly effective is finance and investing.  It is almost impossible to predict what will happen in the economy and the stock markets, but the most effective strategy has been to invest prudently for the long-term.  This method of investing smooths out shorter-term volatility in money markets and has been extremely successful in creating wealth for many decades.

Having a long-term approach can help smooth out the ups and downs of life, even if most of them are completely unpredictable.