This week we close out our Awesome Finances Challenge by continuing our daily sessions, letting go of any guilt about what you haven’t done … and working on creating structure for our finances going forward that will keep them in an awesome place.
We are going to start building an Awesome Finances machine!
First, let’s quickly review what we’ve done so far:
- We started facing our fears and sorting messes in Week 1
- We started & finished a quick financial assessment
- We looked at budging, tracking & planning out spending in Week 2 (and started finding an amount to pay off debt)
- We continued to sort & organize, and face the fears, in Week 3
- We found a Power Amount for debt payments (or investing)
That’s quite a lot! It’s entirely possible that you haven’t done all that yet, but that you’ve made some progress. Don’t worry — you can continue to work on this beyond this month, but now you’ve gotten the ball rolling and know what to do.
This week, let’s talk about setting up structure for beyond this month.
Yearly, Monthly, Weekly, Daily
It’s helpful to structure things into large, medium and smaller units, and we already work with calendar units, so let’s go with those. Here’s how you might think of your calendar structure for finances:
- Yearly session: Take a look at your overall financial vision, and set a direction for yourself for the year. Set aside half a day for this on your calendar.
- Monthly session: Review how your finances are going, and whether you’re going in the direction you set for yourself (or need to adjust). You can also list any actions to take this coming month. Set aside 30-60 minutes.
- Weekly session: A quick review, updating what needs to be updated, planning what bills need to be paid this week. Should be quick — set aside 15-20 minutes.
- Daily session: A very quick update of your financial tracker/budget (see my recommendation here) and pay any bills that are due. This could take 5-10 minutes, but for me often just takes 2-3 minutes.
What you want to do is add these to your calendar, and don’t skip them if you have any inclination to do so. Doing the weekly, monthly, or yearly sessions with your partner (if you have one) can also be very helpful.
The Yearly Session’s Financial Vision
At the end of each year, you can set a financial vision for yourself, which helps you set a direction for the coming year. However, you can get started on that now if you like.
A financial vision is best done with your partner if you have one, so you’re on the same page. It might look something like this:
We want to live a life where we:
- Are debt-free
- Track & plan our spending
- Have at least 3 months of expenses in an emergency fund
- Contribute automatically to savings & investments
- Are saving towards our goals
- File taxes on time
- Have our estate planned
- Check in with our plan every year, month and week
Of course, your vision will be different than this one, it’s just an example. What would yours look like?
Your vision might not be something you can achieve in the next year — that’s OK! From this, you can set goals for the next year that feel achievable, and plan for those goals. Then implement them using the monthly and weekly sessions.
Start setting up your vision and structure today, and let us know how it goes in the #finances channel!