Flexibility is Priceless
Dad’s Letters
by Kyle Mast, CFP®
Letters for living life on purpose.
To my sons,
I should probably apologize. No doubt, by the time you’re all old enough to read this letter, this principle will have been so drilled into you that the last thing you’ll want to do is read a letter on it. However, that doesn’t make it any less true, so you get to hear it from me again here.
The pricelessness of flexibility in work and life comes back to the fact that time is that uniquely precious resource that we can never get back.
Once your time is spent, it is gone. Whether intentionally spent by you or by the dictates of someone else, the result is the same.
We are so blessed to live in a time and place with more choices than any other time in human history. We can choose where to live, what to eat, where to work, and who to marry. The list is nearly endless.
And yet, so many people choose to box themselves in by making choices that ensure inflexibility.
Things like employment, where we spend most of our lives, are chosen without much thought toward flexibility other than how much vacation time is offered. Things like housing, where, under the guise of “happiness,” many choose to buy the most house they can "afford" without thinking of how this locks them into their current needed income, which limits their ability to weather job losses, pay cuts, or simply no longer enjoying their work.
Regarding flexibility in work and life, I most definitely grew up with the advantage of seeing this modeled by your grandfather, my dad. We grew up on a Christmas tree farm, which meant hard work was never far away, and from early November to the end of December each year, Dad worked long hours, often from 4am to 11pm or later, to harvest the Christmas trees, usually in the cold Oregon rain. This brings back memories of elbowing Dad in church during those months as he would be caught “resting” his eyes.
I could go on for far too long about the lessons I learned on the farm and from your grandparents. But the one we are focused on here is flexibility. Although we never had lots of money, we had enough, and Mom and Dad made it go far. And more than that, we had Dad. In the off seasons, Mom and Dad took us on cross-country trips, four to five weeks long, visiting family and their college friends all over the US. All of us would pack into a van, pickup truck, or motorhome and spend weeks together as a family. The flexibility to do this created some of the best memories for all of us kids. During the year, Dad was able to take off work early or take days off for more important things in life (like my basketball games).
The benefits of Dad’s flexibility were never lost on me, and it has shaped many of the decisions I make today in what I choose to do and the commitments I take on.
You will find that maintaining this flexibility requires you to be very intentional in the choices you make. You cannot simply assume that others will allow you to have this flexibility. You must constantly defend it and build your life through its lens.
I am still learning on this journey, but twenty years from now, will I say to myself, “I really wish I would have worked those extra months during the first years of my sons’ lives and made more money rather than taking extended time off?” Never. This is a time that I can never get back, so I must choose to spend it wisely.
Flexibility doesn’t happen by accident. Others won’t give it to you. You must choose it and plan for it. You will not be sorry for building the pricelessness of flexibility into your work and life.
With love,
Dad
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