Stop Waiting Until 67 to Start Living Your Life

So here is the thing that nobody really talks about when it comes to money and planning for the future. Most of us are deferring the life we actually want to live, stacking it up behind some finish line called retirement, and just trusting that we will get there healthy enough and energetic enough to enjoy it. And the math on that bet is not as safe as we think.

I had this conversation recently with Ohan Kayikchyan, a certified financial planner and registered life planner who runs Alohana Financial, and it hit me in a way I did not expect. You can check out the full conversation in the full episode.

The 80 percent most planners skip

Ohan came to the United States through the Diversity Visa Lottery, started as a bank teller, and worked his way up through every layer of the financial system. He earned his CFP designation, became an enrolled agent with the IRS, and did everything a technically rigorous financial planner is supposed to do. And then he realized something that changed how he works entirely.

"The numbers are only about 20 percent of the work," he told me. "The other 80 percent is behavior, psychology, and belief. How you grew up. What you actually believe money is for."

That is a pretty big deal coming from someone with his background. And it lines up with something I have seen over and over in the work I do with service providers. The strategy is rarely the problem. The gap between where someone is and where they want to be is almost always a clarity and awareness problem first.

The EVOKE process

Ohan developed a five-meeting process he calls EVOKE. Each letter stands for a stage.

• Exploration. He creates a judgment-free space and simply listens. No agenda, no solutions, no steering.
• Vision. Clients work through what he calls inspirational exercises, not homework, to surface the life they actually want.
• Obstacles. They look at what is standing in the way, and Ohan said something worth sitting with here: in most cases, the client is standing in their own way.
• Knowledge. This is where the financial plan actually comes in, built around the life vision they have already articulated.
• Execution. Implementation, tailored to the complexity of their situation.

Here is the part that surprised a lot of his clients. The first three meetings have zero numbers in them. No statements, no projections, nothing. Just conversation about who you are and what you want your life to look like. Couples who have been together for decades, Ohan told me, sometimes learn things about each other sitting in those early meetings that they never got around to saying anywhere else.

The honeymoon effect and the cost of waiting

Ohan walked me through something called the honeymoon effect in retirement. When people first retire, there is a rush of energy. They travel, they pick up hobbies, they do the things they put off for forty years. But that honeymoon fades. And by the time it does, many people are in their late sixties or early seventies, dealing with health realities that limit what they can actually do.

"If you want to make that Italian dream trip," he said, "do it early. Because in Italy there are no escalators or elevators. You need to climb those stairs."

He is a big advocate for what he calls mini-retirements. Six months, a year, a sabbatical. Testing the life you want before you are 67 and hoping it still fits.

I shared something personal in this conversation that I do not talk about much. My dad worked relentlessly, kept putting off retirement by a few more years, built up a pension he planned to leave for my sister and me. He got sick with pancreatic cancer, filed his retirement paperwork, and passed away before the first check arrived. Because he died technically still on the job, neither of us saw any of that pension he had spent his whole career building.

I took that to heart. I am not sitting around waiting to build something before I start living. I am going to start living the life I want now and build around it.

That is not YOLO thinking. Ohan is clear about the difference. Spending without a plan is just chaos. What he is talking about is intentional, backed by a real financial plan that accounts for the long term. The point is not to blow everything now. The point is to stop treating life as something that starts after a certain date on a calendar.

Who this hits hardest

Ohan works primarily with two groups. First, immigrants, especially second and third generation, who have a financial foundation but have never had space to think about what they actually want beyond the next milestone. Second, what he calls HENRYs: high earners, not rich yet. These are doctors, attorneys, professionals who are making real money but dealing with lifestyle creep and student loans and jobs that leave no room for a weekend. They are optimizing everything except the part that matters most.

Pay attention to what works for you

The through line in everything Ohan shared is awareness. Not a bigger spreadsheet. Not a more aggressive investment strategy. Just stopping long enough to ask what you actually want, and being honest enough with yourself to answer it.

That is true in financial planning and it is true in building a business. The capable service providers I work with are almost never stuck because of a lack of effort. They are stuck because they have not taken the time to surface what they are actually working toward and whether the path they are on is pointed there.

If any of this landed for you, a solid next step is to take the free 6-Principle assessment at /assess. It will help you see which of the six principles in the Prime Performance Process deserves your attention right now, so you can stop spinning and start generating some real momentum.