©Michele Monticello Essay  all photos ©Michele Monticello  
The Migrating Bird

The thought first occurred to me while reading speculation about the future of British politics. With Keir Starmer’s resignation dominating the headlines, attention quickly turned to who might come next. Among the names being discussed was Andy Burnham. Before any leadership contest had even begun, the conversation had already moved to taxation, wealth, and who should pay more.

What caught my attention was not the politics itself. Governments come and go. Policies change. What caught my attention was the language. Once again, the discussion centred on taxing “the wealthy.” But who exactly are the wealthy?

Few would argue that those with vast fortunes should not contribute their fair share. Yet increasingly, the people being discussed seem to be those who spent decades doing precisely what previous generations were encouraged to do: work hard, save carefully, invest wisely, and prepare for retirement.

Many are not living lives of extraordinary abundance. They still watch their spending. They still worry about inflation, rising costs, and whether their savings will last. They simply made sacrifices over many years in the hope of creating a degree of security for themselves and their families. The market may have increased the value of their assets. It has not necessarily made them feel wealthy.

Perhaps that is where the unease comes from. Not the prospect of paying more tax, but the growing sense that the definition of wealth is changing. That people who see themselves as ordinary savers and investors are increasingly viewed through a different lens. Whether that perception is right or wrong is a political debate. What interests me more is what such moments reveal. Reading those headlines, my first instinct was not anger. It was something closer to uncertainty. The feeling that the landscape may be shifting beneath our feet just as many people are approaching the stage of life they spent decades preparing for.

As I reflected on this, I found myself returning to a story my father often told me: Joseph and the seven lean years. For most of my life, I believed the lesson was about saving during times of abundance. Today I think it runs deeper. Joseph did not store grain because he expected the future to look like the present. He stored grain because he recognised that circumstances were changing. The grain was not the lesson. Adaptation was.

Perhaps that is the real challenge facing many people today. The question is not whether change is fair. The world has never stood still. Governments change. Economies change. The assumptions that guide one generation rarely survive intact into the next. The question is whether we recognise change clearly enough to position ourselves for it. For some, that may mean changing investments. For others, reducing risk. For some approaching retirement, it may even mean considering a different country altogether somewhere with a lower cost of living, a different tax structure, or simply a greater sense of stability.

Not because they are abandoning home. Not because they are running away, but because, like the migrating bird, they are responding to the season. A migrating bird does not hate winter. It simply understands that winter has arrived. Perhaps wisdom is not found in resisting change, nor in complaining about it, but in recognising it clearly and adjusting accordingly. The true lesson of Joseph may never have been about grain.

It was about seeing the future before it arrived and having the courage to position yourself for it !