Most years, the world only adjusts.
2012 turned into 2013 and nobody had to rebuild anything. The rules held. You tuned your life at the edges and carried on. That's how most of history feels from the inside, a long series of small corrections.
But not always. After Rome fell, people had to build their world again from the ground up. After the American Revolution. After the last war. Whole societies were remade because the old structure was simply gone.
And here's the thing – rebuilding doesn't guarantee something better.
Often it went well, sometimes it didn't. The Europe that rebuilt itself after the First World War built something worse and paid for it.
So, the rebuild years are not just bigger versions of the adjustment years. They ask more of you, and they punish getting it wrong.
I think AI might be a rebuild moment rather than an adjustment one. I could be wrong. But it has that feel, and we moderns are badly out of practice at rebuilding. We've had decades of adjusting.
None of this is a reason to guess what's coming. You can't. The point of a plan was never prediction. It's the thing that holds its shape while the world changes shape around it, so that when the ground moves you're standing on something, not scrambling for footing.
Rebuilds can go well or badly. A good financial plan doesn't decide which. It just makes sure you're not starting from nothing while it happens.