Investing Today For Future Generations

Lifestyle Financial Planning is designed to enable you to live your ideal lifestyle in the remaining time you have on this planet. To do this we help you answer some fundamental questions such as:

What do you want to achieve between now and the day you die?
What gives your life meaning and purpose?
How much do you need to be financially independent?
How much do you need to maintain your lifestyle both now and in the future?
How much do you need in order to secure your family’s future, whatever happens?

Lifestyle is different for everyone and unique only to you which makes Lifestyle Financial Planning such an enjoyable part of my job.

I’ve worked with clients who have trekked to Everest Base Camp, who have snorkelled at the Great Barrier Reef and who have witnessed the great wildebeest migration in Kenya. For some of these clients, the trip represented the family holiday of a lifetime and an opportunity to spend time with their teenage children.

For those with significant wealth, as well as securing their own ideal lifestyle, there is a wish to pass wealth to future generations so that they can enjoy similar experiences with their children.

But, here’s the question, is wealth on its own sufficient to secure the lifestyle of future generations?

Let’s look at how climate change might impact some of these amazing experiences that, today, we often take for granted.

Mount Everest

The South Col Glacier is the highest glacier in the world at around 7,906 metres above sea level on the main climbing route to the summit of Mount Everest. Scientists have found that since the 1990s, ice that took around 2000 years to form has melted away.

Although the South Col Glacier is relatively small, the melting of the glacier is likely to make the climbing of Mount Everest more difficult because there will be more exposed rock.

More widely, the impact of glacial melting can have a significant impact given that millions of people rely on the Himalayan mountain range for drinking water and irrigation.

Climate change is also one of the reasons that the Nepali authorities have given for the decision to move Everest Base Camp to a lower altitude.

The Great Barrier Reef

According to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, climate change is the single biggest threat facing the Reef. Global warming is impacting the Great Barrier Reef in a number of ways:

Coral Bleaching which increases the risk of starvation and disease. There have been four mass coral bleaching events on the Great Barrier Reef in just seven years.
Ocean Acidification which means corals are less able to build skeletons and form coral reefs which help protect coastlines from storms and provide habitats for thousands of species of marine life.
Severe Weather Events which saw ten cyclones of category three or more cross the Great Barrier Reef between 2004 and 2018 causing significant damage to coral reefs.
Habitat Changes whereby as water temperatures rise, many marine species are forced to move to cooler habitats which can have a huge impact on reef communities.

According to the Climate Council in Australia, it is estimated that by 2034, the extreme ocean temperatures that led to the 2016 and 2017 bleaching events may occur every two years. Such a short period between bleaching events is not sustainable as the development of coral assemblages takes at least a decade.

Great Migration

One of the greatest spectacles of animal migration is the annual trek of wildebeest, zebra and gazelle from the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania to the Maasai Mara in Kenya.

However, this is now under threat due to increased human settlement as well as climate change which has caused more erratic weather such as more frequent and severe droughts and sporadic flooding.

Research conducted by the University of Hohenheim in Germany found that there used to be four different wildebeest migrations in Kenya and this is now down to one. Researchers have also found that the number of wildebeest have fallen by nearly 60% since 1977 and there are concerns that by 2050 the migration could collapse completely.

How Long Do We Have?

In 2018, the IPCC published a special report to try and quantify the remaining carbon budget that could feasibly keep global warming below 1.5℃. This was updated in 2021 when scientists estimated that, beginning in 2020, humans could release an additional 400 gigatonnes of carbon and still have a 67% chance of limiting warming to 1.5℃.

The climate clock was created to show the time we have left to limit global warming to 1.5℃. It shows when the carbon budget will run out given the amount of carbon we continue to emit globally. It currently stands at 6 years and 165 days.

Aligning Your Wealth

If we want to ensure that these types of experiences are not lost to future generations, we need to take action on climate change.

I believe that one of the best ways to do this is to be more mindful of where our wealth is invested.

According to Make My Money Matter, investing your pension in a responsible way is 21x more effective at cutting carbon emissions than stopping flying, going veggie and switching energy supplier combined.

We work with a few selected fund managers that look to provide a positive impact with their investment funds. They do this by avoiding sectors and companies that do the most harm and actively invest in companies that are making a quantifiable positive impact on people and the planet.

Contact Us

If you would like to discuss how your wealth can make a positive to future generations, please do get in touch.