Money Listens

Traveling the road to financial peace is like going somewhere you’ve never been before. The 4 essentials to make your trip more enjoyable are:

• Self-discipline
• Planning
• Resourcefulness
• Relationships

Today, we’ll tackle #2. Planning is everything. Planning is thinking in advance with an eye toward the future. It’s keeping the bigger picture in mind while you decide on your actions. What do I have to do, in what order, to get where I want to be? First, you have to ask yourself some questions:

• What do I want my future to look like?
• How would I feel if I were debt free?
• Would I be less stressed if I had an emergency fund and savings?
• Will a vacation be more fun because I have the cash to pay for it?
• What do I want to do when I have enough money to quit my job? Travel? Spend time with family? Volunteer? Start my own blog?

Spend some time envisioning your future. How does money fit into your future? What will financial peace look like? We must have enough money to pay for the necessities in life– food, shelter, clothing, and transportation. It’s a plus to have a little more money to make life fun. Does there have to be a trade-off between the present and the future? Will you be unhappy now because you can’t spend as much as you are used to spending? No, because much of what you’ve spent in the past hasn’t really brought you satisfaction. And it certainly hasn’t brought you closer to any thoughtful goals.

What are your financial goals for the next year? Set some long-term goals, some big picture goals. Then break those down into short-term goals. Plan how to reach those goals. What do you need to do this week to move you towards your goal? What’s working and what’s not working?

Planning is everything. You have to see it, but then you have to write it down. Begin a list. Embellish it. Reorder it frequently. Be realistic. What means the most? What would make the biggest difference? What do I want to accomplish and what am I willing to change to make it happen? What’s the first thing I need to do? You can’t just make a plan, you have to keep on planning. Planning is everything.

This entry (Permalink) was posted on Thursday, April 10th, 2008 at 9:31 pm and is filed under A to Z, Goals and Dreams. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response , or trackback from your own site.