The ONLY Thing Important Than Financial Goals

if your financial plans aren't going according to plan this is where you need to [Music] start those who struggle with financial plans versus those who don't what is the difference in this video we'll reveal a super simple process that will take you from overwhelmed and frustrated when it comes to your financial goals to someone who does it much more quickly and easier if you don't know us I'm Larry and I'm and we're from under the median where every week we bring you videos on practical frugality we talk a lot about the importance of having goals and there's one simple reason for this because we can tell you all day long how to spend less and save more but if you don't have a plan for what you're going to do with all that extra money really what you're getting is half the picture when it comes to frugality and the reasons for frugality but there is one thing that's really important in fact it's so important that it overshadows having all of those financial goals and the answer is systems here is a quote from a really fantastic book and it is called Atomic habits now James clear the author in that book says you do not rise to the level of your goals you fall to the level of your systems now what does this look like when we discuss it in terms of financial goals we have a super simple six-step system that we have used for years and it will help you not only to clarify your goals to but to make sure that you are also making progress on them and out of all of these six super simple steps number six guys is the most important so make sure that you are listening for that step so what are systems I think we kind of need to look at that just a little bit in brief a system is simply a way to get you from where you're at right now to where you want to be to meet a goal you have to have some kind of a plan in place that'll get you there in short this system is going to show you the essential tasks that you need to be focusing on every single day in order to reach your financial goals step number one is you are going to always start with the end in mind you have to know ultimately where is it that you are heading with that goal in order to make a path from where you're at to where you want to be if you think about traveling you have a goal set in mind that you want to go someplace now let's say we want to go to Denver Colorado that's the end place that we have in mind so what we have to work out is how to get there how to travel there and all the nuances that have to do with getting from where we're at right now to Denver Colorado that's the same thing that you're going to do with these systems in order to meet your goals goal step number two is to create written goals and when you create those written goals you're going to create also a set of action steps that are going to help you to reach that goal real briefly what constitutes a goal is it a goal to say we would like to save more money not a goal no that is not a written goal that's going to help you make Progress written goals should always be smart goals a smart goal is it's it's things it is specific measurable achievable relevant and time based so if you have all of those incorporated into your goal then you've got a very specific usable thing to shoot for and what are action steps action steps we always add to goals because if you just create the goal and you don't have a game plan to get to the goal it's not a whole lot of help those action steps are what are going to keep you moving forward to reach that goal action steps in short are four to six steps that you are willing to take in a specified amount of time to help you reach the goal how do we use action steps well we use them in our quarterly monthly and weekly goals but we call our our weekly goals the big three and we call it that because first of all it just sounds way cool to say the big three we're setting our big three doesn't that sound very awesome to say and it also doesn't give us too much information to fit either into our day or into our brains to keep track of that week three seems to be the magical number it works for us number three is that you want to make your goals interlocking that means one goal is going to be related to another goal they're not apart from each other they actually fit together and work together we always like to talk about this in terms of a stairstep approach when you have qu orderly goals which are also resting on your monthly goals which are also resting on your weekly goals that means that you have a set of steps that you're going to climb and it helps you to continue making forward progress on the goal rather than just setting quarterly goals and setting that list aside and going well I hope I make it your monthly goals are always going to be related to how you did on your quarterly goals you're going to set a goal for instance for January February March which is the first quarter of the year your February goals are always is going to be related to what progress did I make in January on that goal yes where did I fall down what did I achieve where did I do really well you're going to always be analyzing that and making those monthly goals related directly to the quarterly goals that way you make adjustments as you need them because there are certain things that just come up in our finances we can't always plan for now stick with us because we're going to give you a very specific example that we wrote out that shows you how the quarter monthly and weekly goals do interlock and how they build on one another but we want to give you just sort of an overall really quick uh example of how this process works right now we are working on a really fun family goal and that is that in about a year from now we are going to take a family trip we're celebrating our youngest son who will be graduated from high school and we're all going to go all four of the kids the spouses like everybody's going to go on this trip we have a budget we know the general dates it'll be in June or July of 2025 we've got it narrowed down to that so that narrowing down has happened so it is a smart goal we know exactly how much we have we have to save and we know who's coming with us those are set in stone what's not set in stone is everything else so you can see that the goals we're working with right now those subsets those action steps we talked about those are pretty broad right now yeah yeah there's not a lot of specific things that we've added into this but as we develop it we will build those in and then we'll have more specific goals to add to the list so the thing we want you to understand is that The Closer you get to a goal the shorter period of time you're working with that means the more specific those action steps are now if this is making sense to you do us a super big favor will you tell us in the comments that makes sense cuz it helps us to know if we are describing the process accurately for you and you're understanding what we're saying that would be super helpful and while you're leaving a comment do us another big favor will you hit that big like button because that lets YouTube know that you're enjoying the content and they will show this content to others let's look at an example as to exactly what this process looks like we just described a yearly goal now we're going to give you kind of an example of our quarterly monthly and our weekly goals and how those work together you're going to start out with with a worksheet kind of like this this is our actual Financial goal worksheet this happens to be for the second quarter of the year we have one for each quarter of the year I'm going to show you how this works we generally work on about three quarterly goals each goal is tied to a specific area of our budget now we have enough room on here for six goals but six goals we have discovered kind of makes our head explode we just don't we don't have enough it begins to feel for us like kind of an octopus with eight arms going different directions I'm like no do I we've tried four I think we've done okay with four yeah three seems to be our absolute sweet spot when it comes to quarterly goal planning that's enough to work on and and I keep showing you this worksheet you can get your hands on the worksheets we're going to be showing you uh in this video they are available in our goalwise a Frugal life planner it is a workbook and I'm going to make sure there's a link to it guys in the description of the video so you can do up to six but for us three is usually where we top out the example that we're going to use for today's video is one on food now hope put this together uh looks like last year and we discovered what we needed to do with the food budget was to lower it that was the goal we wanted to lower it by $50 a month so she's got a plan here are the steps analyze overspending in the past 3 months and make a list of problems areas so this is related to the food where have we been overspending on food and track those down number two menu plan around the markdowns this means that when you go to the store and you find things marked down on sale you need to plan your menu around those items so you're utilizing the things that you're spending less money on number three bulk cook twice a month this is wonderful because this keeps you from eating out if you have food in the freezer already made all you have to do is get it out it's all prepared warm it up that's going to save you the temptation of wanting to eat out when you're tired from working all day number four shop once every 10 days the less that you spend time in the store the less you're going to spend money on the items that they have to offer now the main thing we want you to notice about this form and the action steps underneath of the goal which was to reduce our food budget in the second quarter to $250 a month now I was doing this for very specific reasons because we had other financial goals which were dependent on me being able to lower the grocery budget you adapt what we're showing you in the process we're showing you to whatever your personal financial goals are but what I do want you to see is that each one of those action steps that's underneath that goal are pretty doggone broad they're not specific at all they all relate to the food budget but they're not very very specific yeah let's take a look at monthly goals now remember hope mentioned that monthly goals are a reaction to your last month's progress so you take the figures from last month and you work those into your next month planning all right so I'm going to show you the monthly goal sheet this was for May of last year and the goal that we showed you was reflective of the second quarter which would have been April May June so we've already been through April this yeah is May so this is reaction to exactly what happened in the month of April uh you'll notice that the gal says that we're going to spend no more than $160 this month what the heck happened I'll tell you what happened I got a little spendy on on our Amish Hall and you're going to see that right underneath there in the action steps sometimes my action steps are reminder to me of what I did that did not work so well the Amish haul the April food bill was $370 which clearly clearly is more than what my goal was all right so then I'm going to remind myself once again menu plan it's like it's it's like when you repeat a directive it's like menu plan menu plan remind yourself what it is that you need to do better around markdowns and sale items bulk cook I actually was doing this this was my bulk cooking reminder okay track leftovers better that is a reaction to the fact that in April throwing yeah exactly we're throwing out more than we're really comfortable with our stated goal for throwing things out guys hold on your hats has always been 3% or less food waste yeah because we're very specific about trying to track what we have on hand and eat it before it goes bad so we hadn't done as well in April so you never get to get everything right but the next month is your opportunity to sort of write the wrongs from the month before and figure out how to get the ship back on track that's the whole purpose behind the monthly goal worksheet is to make adjustments that will fix things from the previous month and you notice that my fifth action step is once again a reminder to me that our weekly CSA boach begins in mid May yes that means that we have a bushel basket of food that is coming to us every single week during the growing season and it's all prepaid so it doesn't come out of our budget because we've already accounted for that that is an example of how your monthly goals are going to support your quarterly goals so what does it look like when we finally get down to weekly goals how are they more specific than what we've already talked about let's take a look at weekly goals weekly goals are much shorter they're simpler they're a little more easy to do and they're very specific it takes Larry and I 10 minutes or less to set our weekly goals and what do we call them again we call them the big three just because it's sounds cool all right Big Three Financial priorities and one thing I want you to notice that this worksheet is a little bit different than the one that I just showed you because I like to have a lot of space on my weekly worksheet to take into account that things don't always go according to plan and so I found myself constantly making changes and adding notes to myself so I wanted to make sure that there was a lot of space on here to be able to do that you'll notice that the lines that I use for the big three they're not very long because I want to be very short and very specific with what I'm asking myself to do and you also notice that the Big Three Financial priorities were all three of the financial areas that we were working on that quarter which clearly used perishables before they rot that had to do with the food Budget Check the estimated utility bill one of our goals that quarter was also to lower our utility bills we can see our estimated bill on our company website and it was a little bit higher than I really wanted so we'd been implementing some things I wanted to go on and see are these things working to help lower the estimated bill and the other thing is it's a little oopsy on my part um evaluate first quarter goal success because clearly second quarter began in April 1st and this was May 1 when I was making this and I had not yet evaluated exactly how we had completed the first quarter goals and hell that had gone so I needed to get that done because I was already a third of the way through the second quarter we always share these things with you guys because we want you to know we don't do everything perfectly sometimes things learning proc slip through the holes and we're like you know we want you guys to know that people are too prone to say well I missed that window of opportunity so I'm just going to have to not evaluate the first quarter at all no go ahead go back evaluate how you did you still got you know at this point I still had two months left in the second quarter there was plenty of time to make adjustments if I needed to on the form hope left you room to do some daily note taking so you can write some ideas to down in order to meet these goals now just remember that our our one of our big threes that week was to more effectively Ed perishables so this area in here I just made it bigger so you'd be able to see it um that area is for me to put daily things that I'm doing to help achieve that goal so you notice on Monday I'm taking all the produce that I got in my CSA box on Saturday when I picked it up I'm making sure I'm using that produce in order from the most perishable to the least perishable items there's not something on there every day notice on Wednesday it said that I was going to use green leaves I dehydrated Carrot Tops yes Carrot Tops are edible did you know that they're actually really really good for you so I took some fresh uh Carrot Tops that I had I put them in the dehydrator dehydrated them uh by the way I have a nin tray Xcalibur dehydrator which I absolutely love I'll leave a link for you guys in case you're interested in it I'll leave it in the description of this video uh but I I love this and I use it all season long I wanted to make sure if I don't remind myself this is it guys it is training your brain to do what you know you need to do and do it consistently that's all this is it reminded me get those Carrot Tops in there get them washed get them in the dehydrator otherwise they're going to be a slimy mess and you're going to wind up doing what throwing them out which is the exact opposite of what I want to do right so on Wednesday I made sure those were dehydrated and I cooked down those be greens Thursday always always on Thursdays we create a a perishable food inventory it I I wish I could express to you how much of a GameChanger that has been for us as far as reducing our grocery bill and reducing food waste oh very definitely just once a week going through and listing all those perishables and then menu planning from the perishables you already have on hand because by the time Friday comes around you are tired you are stopping by some fast food joint on your way home from work because it's Friday we all do it or we're getting we're getting you know a take and baked pizza we're doing something that is a shortcut and we're not against occasional shortcuts please hear me out but most of the time when you walk into the store and you're just getting a take and baked pizza you walk out $75 later with a cartload of stuff that first of all you were hungry and everything looked really good and you have convinced yourself there's no food at home but if you will do a perishable food inventory Thursdays you're going to find out there's a whole lot of food in your house you didn't realize it hey just a reminder if you like the forms in this video that Hope's been talking about we're going to leave a link in the description of this video for those forms step number four is to see each small step as equally important I'm going to say it again because that is so important see each small step as equally important this is where we fake ourselves out guys we make a goal and convince ourselves that a step that we are taking that we know in our heart is not an alignment with achieving that goal is okay because it's just a small step it's just a small deviation yeah it's just a small Choice it won't make any difference but it does and it will so make sure that each step that you you are taking is in alignment with your goals always determine your next step because you want to know where you're going so you want to know which Step you're going to take after you finished the one that you're on if you're uncertain what to do take a beat take a breath make sure that the next step is the one that you really want to take because sometimes okay I can Rabbit Trail just a little bit I know that's shocking I can go oh that looks fun and Freddy soon I'm off and Larry's going wasn't the goal this I'm like oh shoot so you have to make sure that you're staying on course because I can get a little bit where I'm looking at other stuff and thinking that looks like a really fun thing to do and pretty soon I'm way off and left well I think we all can I can do that too that's not a problem this six upep is probably the most important one we're going to teach you so we really really want you to hang in there and listen to this one this one step is the one that allowed us to reach crazy big financial goals on a low income MH never accept no as an answer what does that no look like specifically we're talking about phrases that you might say to yourself or to your spouse like this won't work we can't do this we'll never reach it how about you can't change I would never say that to Larry I mean that for myself you say it to yourself convincing yourself that you can't change this isn't going to work I just can't change I've been living life this way for a long time I just really can't change and that's not possible I want to remind you really briefly what James Clear said he said you don't rise to the level of your goals you fall to the level of your systems your systems must include your s talk what are you saying to yourself about those goals and whether you can do it and whether you can reach it that is so incredibly important a lot of reaching goals has to do with what's being said right up here because that can determine whether you're really going to do it or not there are more habits that will help you to be able to reach your financial goals we just sort of dusted the top level of them in this video we did a video that talked about a lot more of those habits and it could prove to be super helpful to you we're going to leave a link to it right over there go take a look we are talking about a goal which is I can't find it specific good God thank you oh I couldn't find it I couldn't find it I was looking for it I found it

Channel: Under the Median

Views: 17,233

Keywords: frugality, frugal living, frugal living hacks, frugal living tips, frugal habits, under the median, practical personal finance, financial goal setting, how to set financial goals, financial goal planning, financial goals, setting financial goals, how to get out of debt, how to pay off debt, goal setting, how to set goals and actually achieve them, how to set goals and stick to them, 2024 financial goals, financial goals for 2024, frugal hacks, financial habits

Id: Hr1yx8SRews

Length: 22min 14sec (1334 seconds)

Published: Tue May 07 2024