Life Rarely Looks Like the Average

Averages have a way of showing up when uncertainty rises.

They’re neat, familiar, and reassuring. Simple rules and long-term norms offer a sense of calm at the very moment people feel least certain about what lies ahead.

But averages describe things as a whole. They don’t describe how anything is actually lived.

Imagine planning a drive across the country. You might be told that the average weather along the route will be sunny and 72 degrees. That may be broadly true, but it’s not especially helpful. It doesn’t tell you what happens when you hit a downpour in Kansas City, or how conditions change as you move from one region to the next. And when you’re driving through heavy rain, the fact that the average weather for the entire trip is pleasant offers very little comfort.

The issue isn’t that the average is wrong.
It’s that you don’t travel through the average.

You travel through whatever happens on a given day, in a specific order, with real consequences.

Averages are useful shortcuts. They summarize a lot of information and give us a sense of what usually happens. But they do so by smoothing out the ups and downs and ignoring the order in which things occur.

That matters more than it seems.

No one lives an average year. Conditions don’t arrive evenly spaced. People move through calm periods and stressful ones in a particular order, and the timing makes a difference. The same disruption can feel manageable at one point and overwhelming at another.

This is easy to miss because averages feel precise. They offer a story that makes sense. They give the impression that life unfolds more smoothly than it often does.

Financial planning leans on averages in much the same way.

Long-term assumptions and historical patterns can be helpful. They give structure and set expectations. But people don’t experience plans on paper. They live them over time.

Most financial models describe what tends to happen across many people over long periods. They assume that ups and downs even out and that things eventually settle near the middle. Real lives don’t work like that. Events show up in sequence, and the order matters.

This is why plans can come under strain even when nothing was “wrong” with the assumptions.

The long-term picture may still look fine, while the path to get there becomes harder than expected. The issue isn’t the destination. It’s whether the plan can hold together along the way.

When a plan is built around an average outcome, it quietly assumes the ability to get through whatever comes before that average shows up. That assumption often goes unnoticed, even though it carries a lot of weight.

The purpose of planning isn’t to predict what will happen.
It’s to stay intact when things don’t unfold as expected.

That usually means leaving some room. Holding more margin than feels necessary. Saving a bit more than the model calls for. Choosing flexibility over precision. These choices don’t always look optimal on paper, but they change how a plan behaves when reality intrudes.

Averages are useful summaries.
Lives are not summaries.

Good plans respect the difference.