Key Decisions that Affect Future Wealth

While we often focus on the stock market and our investment decisions as those that will most affect our future wealth, as I look back and around me, it seems that two other decisions we make during our lives have far more influence. I note in advance, to avoid getting into trouble at home, that neither of these decisions should be made exclusively or even primarily as financial decisions. It is true however that they both inevitably have a very large lifelong financial impact. My comments are descriptive, not prescriptive!!!

1. Career Choice - over a lifetime, the difference in income between a Zeller's cashier and a dentist adds up to quite a lot. Without going into the details of which career pays best, suffice it to look at the simple arithmetic of a lifetime of earnings, which has conveniently been made into a neat table by the Fiscal Agents website. Of course, choosing a career simply for the pay is likely to lead to stress, burnout and eventual abandonment. On the other hand, you get the opposite when your make a good choice - fun and fulfillment, which I would maintain is a non-financial form of wealth.
2. Spouse - pick the wrong person and you can have years, maybe a lifetime of misery, financial and otherwise. Think of divorce, its causes and its consequences. Pick the right person and it's the opposite - a lifetime of emotional happiness, of course, but this spills over into financial success. Not that the spouse brings a pile of money into the marriage but the support from a trusted advisor to not waste, to spend wisely, to invest wisely whatever money is earned makes a huge difference. Investing one's time, effort, love and attention in a marriage brings a very high rate of return. And a stock holding is just a number on a printed sheet, not very huggable. ;-)

In my case, the spouse element has been predominant in whatever financial success I have achieved. Would be interested to hear anyone else's views.