In our intro to achieving financial wellness, we suggest getting started with three things to reflect upon.
How do you feel about your current financial situation?
What are your life goals?
How does your financial plan fit into these goals?
Take a few minutes and write down or think about how you would answer these questions. Here’s how I would answer them:
I feel hopeful about my current financial situation. I’m making enough and able to live freely, but feel like I can always be doing more.
My life goals are:
Fund travels and activities
Save up for home renovations
Have enough for our family to live comfortably
Fund future business endeavors
Retire comfortably if and when I choose to do so
Make giving a priority
Create a positive difference in this world
Money is required for each of my life goals. I recognize that money is a necessary tool to help me live my best life. There are so many things I want to accomplish in life whether that’s professionally or personally, so many experiences I want to have, so many places I want to go. Money is a necessity to do all of these life things.
When thinking about your own life and money goals, you’ll have to think about what being financially healthy means to you. Financial wellness can mean different things to different people. For me, I feel good about my current financial situation. My income isn’t quite high enough for me to be super comfortable at this point, but that’s what I signed up for when I decided to start my own business. I feel good about the money I have put away to fund this endeavor and am optimistic and ambitious about the future.
Some people may be comfortable with 3 months of expenses in their emergency fund while investing in higher growth, higher risk assets such as equities, while others may feel they need to have a year’s worth of expenses saved up with investments in relatively safe, but low growth assets, such as bonds. Figure out what you need to feel good about your financial situation.
Now that we have our life goals sorted out (That’s hilarious. Be ready to change your life goals at least a hundred times because life changes and all we can do is adapt.), we can come up with a financial plan to get us there!