You'll Change

Think back to when you were six. What was your absolute favourite thing in the whole world? Maybe a cartoon, a toy dinosaur, a particular colour you wanted on everything. You were certain you'd love it forever.

Now imagine you had been made to promise, at six, that this would stay your favourite thing for the rest of your life - no changing allowed. By sixteen, you'd be miserable. Not because six-year-old you was silly, but because sixteen-year-old you is basically a different person with different tastes, different dreams, different everything.

Here's the surprising truth: this never stops. The you of ten years from now will want things the you of today can't even imagine yet. We're brilliant at remembering how much we've changed in the past, and terrible at believing we'll keep changing in the future. We quietly assume the person we are right now is the finished, final version. They're not - there's no such thing as a finished version, only the newest one, which will keep on changing too. We badly underestimate how much future-you will want different things than today-you does, so never lock yourself into an extreme, do-or-die lifelong money plan built only for who you are right now - leave room to bend for the person you're still becoming.

Notice how lopsided our thinking is here. If someone asked you, "How much have you changed in the last ten years?" you'd have a long list ready - new tastes in music, new friends, a whole new idea of what a good day looks like. You know you've changed, because you can look back and see it. But ask the same person, "How much will you change in the next ten years?" and most of us shrug and say, "Not much, really. I'm pretty much who I'm going to be." That's the trick our minds play. We treat the past as a river that kept flowing and the future as a lake that's suddenly gone still. It hasn't. The river is still moving; we just can't see downstream from where we're standing.

It's a bit like standing at the top of a tall staircase you've already climbed. You can see every step behind you, all the way down. But the steps ahead are hidden around a bend, so it's easy to believe the climb is basically done. It isn't. There are just as many steps to come - you simply can't see them yet.

Why does this matter for money? Because money plans stretch across decades. And if you build a plan today that only makes sense for exactly the person you are today - locked in tight, no changing allowed - you're handing future-you a life they never chose. Just like being stuck forever with the toy dinosaur. The cruel part is that the plan can look wonderfully responsible on the day you make it. "I know exactly what I want, and I'm building for it" feels like the grown-up thing to say. But "exactly what I want" is written in pencil, not stone, and the plan too often gets carved in stone anyway.

The lesson isn't "don't plan." It's: plan in a way that doesn't trap the person you're becoming.

Here's the machinery. Any plan sits somewhere on a line between two extremes. On one end is "live only for today" - spend it all, save nothing. On the other is "live only for tomorrow" - save every rupee, enjoy nothing now. Both extremes feel bold and clear when you pick them.

But extremes are exactly the choices that hurt when you change. Save nothing at all, and the older you who suddenly wants security is left stranded. Save so hard that you skip every friend's outing and every small joy, and the older you looks back at years you can never get back. The person who made the extreme choice and the person living with it are two different people - and the second one didn't get a vote.

The middle is different. A plan that's roughly balanced - saving a fair share while still living a little - is the easiest one to nudge later. If future-you wants to save harder, there's room. If future-you wants to loosen up, there's room. You don't need to guess who you'll become. You just avoid the corners you can't back out of. A roughly-balanced plan you can adjust beats a perfect-looking extreme you'll be trapped inside.

There's a simple reason the extremes are so brittle. Think of a plan as a spot on that line, and think of "how much you can bend" as the space on either side of that spot. Stand in a corner and you've got space on one side only - the wall is right up against your back. When life pushes you toward the wall, there's nowhere to go, so the plan doesn't bend; it breaks. Stand in the middle and there's room on both sides. Whatever direction life shoves you, you can take a step and stay standing. The middle isn't the timid choice or the lazy compromise - it's the sturdy one, because it's the only spot with give in every direction. And give is exactly what a plan needs when the person following it keeps quietly turning into someone new.

It helps to see the extreme for what it really is. When you pick a corner, you're making a very confident bet - a bet that you have already guessed, correctly, who you'll be for the next twenty years. That's a bet almost no one wins, because the one thing we can be sure of about the future is that it will surprise us. The middle refuses to make that bet at all. It says, plainly, "I don't know exactly who I'll become, so I'll build something that works for a range of people, not just one." Admitting you can't see around the bend isn't a weakness in the plan. It's the strongest thing the plan can do.

Let's give this real rupees. illustrative

Meet Arjun, aged 25, earning ₹60,000 a month. He reads that saving hard makes you rich, and he goes to the far edge: he vows to save an enormous 70% of his pay - ₹42,000 every month - living on the bare minimum, no outings, no small treats, for the next twenty years. Locked in. No changing.

It works, in the narrow sense that the money piles up. But watch what time does to Arjun. At 30 he marries and wants to travel a little; the plan says no. At 34 a child arrives and he wants a bigger home; the plan says no. At 38 he's simply tired of a life with zero joy in it - and now he swings to the opposite extreme, quits saving entirely, and blows through a chunk of the pile out of sheer burnout. The rigid plan didn't just fail to bend. It snapped, and the snap did more damage than a gentler plan ever would have.

Now meet Sara, also 25, earning the same. She picks a sensible middle: she saves a solid but livable 25% - ₹15,000 a month - and spends the rest on a normal life with room for friends and small joys. It's not the most heroic number on paper. But it's a number she can keep through every version of herself.

And she does keep it. When her life changes, the plan changes gently with her - up a bit in good years, down a bit in tight ones. She never has to rebel against it, because it never trapped her. Sara wins not by picking the most extreme number, but by choosing a plan she can actually stick to as she changes - the sticking-to-it is the real engine, not the number itself. Twenty years on, the balanced plan she kept quietly beats the heroic plan Arjun couldn't.

That first example was about how much to save. But you can trap future-you in a completely different way - by locking into a fixed, hard-to-undo commitment that only makes sense if your whole life stays parked exactly where it is today. Let's watch that one. illustrative

Meet Aayra, aged 28, working in a big city and earning ₹90,000 a month. She's certain she'll live in this city forever - her job's here, her friends are here - so she takes the boldest step she can: she buys a large flat that stretches her right to the edge, with a home-loan EMI of ₹55,000 a month locked in for the next twenty years. On day one it feels like the ultimate grown-up move. She's planted her flag.

Then life does what life does. Two years in, a wonderful chance opens up in another city - better work, closer to family. But the flat can't come with her; the EMI can't pause; selling in a hurry means taking a loss. So Aayra says no to the opportunity, not because she weighed it and chose to stay, but because the plan she built for who-she-was-at-28 won't let who-she-is-at-30 move. A year later she wants to switch to a lower-paying job she'd love; the EMI says no to that too. The flat didn't just cost money. It quietly took away her choices - the very thing a growing person needs most.

Now rewind and let Aayra choose differently. Same ₹90,000, same city, same dream of a home. But this time she rents a comfortable place for around ₹25,000 a month and puts a steady ₹20,000 into savings she can actually reach if she needs to. It feels less heroic - no flag planted, no "I own this." Yet when the chance in the other city appears, she can simply take it. When she wants the job she'd love, she can take that too. Her money kept growing the whole time, and - this is the part that matters - so did she, because nothing was nailing her feet to one spot. The flexible-but-modest choice let Aayra bend toward every new version of herself; the bold-but-locked choice would have caged the person she was becoming. The lesson isn't "never buy a home." It's: before you sign away twenty years, make sure the plan can survive a you who wants something else.

The slip has two faces.

The first is planning for a self that won't exist - building today's plan around today's exact wants and assuming they're permanent. It feels responsible ("I know exactly what I want!"), but it quietly locks future-you into a cage. The more extreme and unchangeable the plan, the tighter the cage.

The second is the opposite overreaction: deciding that since you'll change, planning is pointless, and just drifting. That's not freedom - it's how years slip by with nothing built. The answer isn't "no plan." It's a plan loose enough to grow with you.

And there's a sneaky third slip that catches even careful people: refusing to update a plan because you already committed to it. This is the "I've come this far, I can't turn back now" trap. You made a bold promise at 25, life has clearly changed by 32, and every honest signal says the old plan no longer fits - but changing it feels like admitting the first choice was wrong, so you grit your teeth and carry on. Notice what's happening: you're now serving the plan instead of the plan serving you. The money exists to give your life room, not to be a promise you keep out of pride. When the person changes, the plan is allowed - required, even - to change with them. Loyalty to an outdated plan isn't discipline; it's just the extreme choice refusing to let go.

Every good idea has an edge where it tips over into a bad one, and this one is no exception. "You'll change, so stay flexible" is true and useful - right up until it becomes an excuse to never commit to anything at all.

Here's the danger. If "I might want something different later" is allowed to win every argument, you end up changing your plan every few months - chasing this idea, then that one, never letting anything sit long enough to grow. And money has a quiet secret: much of its magic comes from staying put. A modest amount left alone for fifteen years can quietly outgrow a larger amount that got yanked around every year. So a person who "stays flexible" by constantly tearing up and rewriting their plan doesn't get the benefits of change - they get the costs of never sticking to anything. That's not adjusting to who you're becoming. It's just restlessness wearing a sensible costume.

The repair is to tell the two kinds of change apart. There's the deep, slow change - a marriage, a child, a new city, a genuine shift in what you value. Those are real, and the plan should bend for them. Then there's the shallow, fast change - a new mood, a hot tip, a passing envy of what a friend just bought. Those aren't future-you arriving; they're just today-you being nudged. The skill is to hold your plan loosely enough to bend for the deep changes and firmly enough to ignore the shallow ones. A useful test: if a change would still feel right a year from now, it's probably the deep kind, and worth updating for. If it would look silly by next month, it's the shallow kind, and the plan should quietly ride it out. Flexibility is a tool for following the real you as you grow - not a licence to abandon a good plan every time a passing feeling knocks.

So flexibility has a partner, and the partner is patience. Bend for the person you're truly becoming; don't uproot yourself for the person you merely felt like this morning. A plan that changes for everything is no plan at all - it's just drifting with extra steps.