BACK to the Future is a science fiction film trilogy which follow the adventures of time-traveling high-school student Marty McFly and inventor Dr. Emmett Brown, as they travel throughout several time periods in the past (1855 and 1955), present (1985) and future (2015).
In the first of the trilogy, Marty (in the present 1985) is accidentally hurled into 1955, where he met his “parents” and he has to help them be romantically involved, otherwise he will not exist in the future (his present).
In the second installment, after repairing the damage to history done by his previous time-travel adventures, Marty and his friend Doc travel to 2015 to prevent McFly’s future son from ending up in jail. However, their presence allows Biff Tannen (his father’s arch-rival way back in 1955 and is presently their household help) to steal Doc’s time machine and travel to 1955, where he alters history by making his younger self wealthy. When Marty went back to his present, he found a different present so he has to go back to 1955 in order for him to change the future.
In the final installment, Marty is stranded in 1955, and he receives written word from his friend, Doc, as to where can be found the time machine. However, an unfortunate discovery prompts Marty to go to his friend’s aid. Using the time machine, Marty travels to the old west where his friend has run afoul of a gang of thugs and has fallen in love with a local schoolteacher. Using the technology from the time, Marty and Emmett devise one last chance to send the two of them back to the future.
Like everybody else, I enjoyed this kind of time-travel movies and others like Time Cop and If Only where people travel back in time just to alter the future.
There are two basic financial principle we can learn from the concept of time travel.
The past cannot be altered. Although Marty was able to alter the past, in the real world, nobody has yet gone to the past to change history. If it can be done, it will definitely have a negative impact on our present. The past is already past and it can not be undone. Whatever error you might have committed is already a canceled check. Although the past has an effect on our present, we can learn from it and correct the mistake by doing it right now. As an example, let us assume that you have started working five years ago and you mismanaged your finances. All is not too late as you still have the time to correct the error of the past but at a heavier price. The time you lost (in investing) can be bought back by investing a higher premium just to be able to hit the same dream as you had way back five years ago. By not acting today and procrastinating further, this will translate to a loss in terms of millions in your future which is definite to come.
The future has not yet happened and only you can make your own future. In theory, the future has not yet happened so we cannot go there, unless the present we are in is already the past. Since the future has not yet happened, we are the ones who are going to create our future by making a decision in the present. As the saying goes, the future is a promissory note. What we do today will be the result of tomorrow. Just like in investing, the future is not guaranteed, but what is important is we have to do something now that will be of benefit to our future. Like in No. 1, if a person failed to manage his finances properly in the past, he can correct his past error and start all over again but at a higher price. If he is not able to buy back his lost time, he will have a loss on the future but that is still a lot better than having none at all. The present time is only what we have and we should use that gift properly. The gift of time is our real money so we have to invest it wisely. Time waits for no one. Once we lose it, we can only look back with regret but we can never go back.
As physical time travel is almost impossible, we can do time travel in terms of personal finance. As author Stephen Covey said, begin with the end in mind. We can use our mind to travel forward to the future and see the future we want. Knowing the future, we can now plan ahead by doing the right thing today so that when tomorrow comes, it will be most likely be the future we once saw in our mind. When the future becomes our present, we can look back to the past and tell ourselves, well done my younger self. Isn’t it good to go back to the future?
Edmund Lao is registered financial planner of RFP Philippines. To learn more about financial planning, attend their free personal finance talk on December 4, e-mail info@rfp.ph, or text <name><e-mail><RFPinfo> at 09173464126.