Have you noticed how, just when everything appears to be going swimmingly, life has an uncanny habit of hurling you a completely unexpected challenge?

Once the initial shock has subsided, it is a question most of us can answer without any need for consultation — life’s like that.

I will not bore you with the details but what followed, mostly out of necessity, resulted in both a prompt amendment to our immediate financial (and other) plans, as well as a change of several longer-term commitments.

To say that doctor’s visits, a prolonged spell in hospital, major surgery and a protracted convalescence did not feature on my radar even five months ago is an understatement of colossal proportions.

A couple of years ago, I tweaked an existing ambition to effectively retire at 60, devising an alternative plan to reduce the number of days I worked each week.

Yet what happened recently meant I had to revise this strategy again, as to get to the reduced working week meant working full-time for the next few years while salting away as much money as possible into a personal pension.

It is only by stepping aside for a moment, as I have been able to recently, and analysing — or perhaps ‘considering’ is a better word — every aspect of your life that you realise the element of planning involved in a seemingly perfectly reasonable financial objective is, in fact, negligible.

With hindsight, it became clear that my ‘financial planning’ consisted of creating nothing more than a tax-shelter delivery system which was due to mature when I reached the age of 60.

It became screamingly obvious that there is nothing other than one rudimentary element of financial planning involved in this particular strategy, namely a slightly ambitious projection of what the finished pension pot might look like.

Clearly, this hardly falls into the category marked ‘comprehensive financial planning’ because it takes no account of other, more esoteric aspirations and goals.

Defining those goals before creating an efficient tax shelter is a much lengthier process than calculating how much you may accumulate inside a pension over any given period.

Yet these ambitions are the most important of all, the ‘why’ you are doing it. The ‘what’ you do to achieve it is merely noise if there is not a cohesive, reasonably realistic plan.

Generally speaking, our objectives take no account of what is referred to as ‘financial life planning’, an area of the financial services industry gaining significant traction amongst folks eager to break away from working for 45-50 years in the hope there will be enough for them to enjoy (and fund) every aspect of retirement.

Financial life planners pose important questions that make their clients think.

A recent report by asset management company Black Rock revealed that most people will spend longer planning their next holiday than considering how they are going to live for the decades following retirement.

I would say that unless you do undertake some serious financial life planning (and admittedly, I have had plenty of time to do this recently), heading off on summer holidays could become a distant memory.

My recent experience made me realise that, with a bit of luck, I am somewhere around life’s halfway stage.

We all know how fast time goes, but as this is not a rehearsal, some serious planning was essential in order to enjoy what will hopefully be a prolonged second period. I would recommend it.