Ep. 44: FOUR Actions For Better Financial Health
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Welcome back to Money Matters where I help guide you in becoming a better and more confident investor. In this week's episode, I want to quickly touch on four actions that you or anyone can adopt where you can drastically improve your financial health. Financial health can be linked to creeping into not only your physical health but the health of the relationships you have you and your general wellbeing so why not take a second to reflect on your relationship that you currently have with money and if you realize it could use some work then here are four ways to renegotiate the terms as you strive for a healthier relationship.
The first is to start an emergency fund. I go into way more detail on this back in episode 18. I'd encourage you to back and check it out! The cliff notes if you will are to have a fund that can cover 3-6 months' expenses if something was to happen to you unexpectedly. This helps take the edge off trust me! Because it’s not a matter of if, but when something unexpected happens such as an injury, or something happening with work, to car trouble, etc. And don’t think I’m saying simply put 3-6 months of your salary into a savings account. I understand not everyone has $10-$70k laying around depending on your needs but start working towards building this up over time. Even if it’s $50-$100 a month. You’ll be surprised just how fast this money will grow, and you’ll be happy it’s there for not if, but when you need it!
Secondly. Start setting goals. You may already be doing this with your sales goals or workout goals, or maybe you’ve set reading goals. Whatever goals you’re setting in life you know just how important those are so why not do this with your finances? Once you write things down it allows you to better understand what you’re working towards. And studies show you’re way more likely to achieving success when you write it down! I once read someone say that you never truly understand something until you write it down. Which is brilliant. Because we all have thoughts running through our head or what we say to ourselves, but when we write things down it forces us to really articulate our thoughts and understand them enough to discuss intelligently. So write down some goals and get working towards them! Even if it's just one goal.
Third. And full disclosure this is how 90 plus percent of how I run my finances and that's to automate them. I've already done a few episodes on this concept you can check out. In episode 10 I touch on Reverse budgeting and in episode 5, you'll find more on the strategy of dollar-cost averaging. I’d encourage you to check these videos out if you’re looking for a cruise controlled disciplined approach to investing and getting on track. These automation ideas revolve around building healthy financial habits and will only benefit you over the long run and simplify your life by paying yourself first and of course living within your means.
Four. Setting expectations. Capitalism is great for many reasons, but two things that are for sure is it helps create greater wealth and is a catalyst in facilitating social comparison. If you don’t set expectations then your default answer is going to always be more more more! Understand how much is enough. When you’re working with your financial planner, or decide to work with my team - either way, you need to discuss what you’re looking to achieve goal-wise, and then we can get into which investments could help to get you there with expected rates of return. This way we’ve set expectations and now know what we’re working together to achieve and we’re not chasing more, because at the end of the day you’re going to ask yourself more of what? Or when do I have enough? If more is always what you're trying to achieve then I'm sorry to say, but you're setting yourself up for failure because one thing is for certain, someone is always going to have more than you!
Call me. Email Me. Hit me up on social media. Whatever works for you works for me, just know that my team and I are here to help you in your pursuit of financial wellbeing! Thank you for watching and as always thank you for giving your finances the attention that they deserve!
