Episode 017: Defining Your Goals to Get Started Financial Planning

On this episode, we work through Kristy’s Money Goal Workbook to demonstrate how to get started with financial planning based on your personal goals and grand vision.

Kristy, owner of On Route Financial, and I really start to dig into how to get rolling with a superb PERSONAL plan to get your money in order.

Episode Transcript

Braden: (00:00)
Hello and welcome to episode 17 of the unpack your biz podcast. As always, this is Brayden, your favorite host ever of all time for the specific podcast. I don't, this part, this intro is really fallen off the wheels here, Christie, um, all my fault. Anyhow, on this episode, Christie and I are going to be chatting about defining your goals to get started with financial planning. If you haven't already listened, go back and listen to episode seven. I think it was about 15 or 20 minutes where I introduce you all to Christie and we talk about the differences between bookkeepers, accountants, CPAs, CFOs and CFPs. That's a lot of letters, but if you want to know what all those things mean and what Christie does, you can go back and listen. If you want to do that later and just want the brief recap here. Christy is a certified financial planner and also a an outside CFO.

Braden: (00:58)
Long story short, that means that she helps business owners plan for both their business financial decisions and their personal finance. How is that intro? Did I do okay? Crushed it. Braden. That's a great way to describe it. I like how I just do things that I specifically request compliments, so we'll go from there. Tell me. I did great. Yeah, tell me how great I just said. So this episode is releasing on November 28th which was Thanksgiving, so happy Thanksgiving, everyone. I'm assuming a lot of you are probably listening to this on Friday, black Friday maybe before you're going shopping or you're catching it the next week. That's totally okay. Our last episode, interestingly released on Halloween, so we're just really out of Rovio with these holidays. I did not plan that intentionally, but let's dive in. Christie, you're going to walk us through the money goal workbook. That is one of your free downloads, which everyone can and should go [email protected] forward slash episode forward slash zero one seven for episode 17 Christie, what exactly is the purpose of this workbook?

Kristy: (02:09)
Yeah, so this workbook is really designed to help you to get started with your financial planning because a lot of people are like, okay, I'm overwhelmed, I'm avoiding my money. I don't know how to make my financial decisions. Where do I start? You want to start with your goals and what is important to you and creating a financial vision for yourself because that is going to be the basis off of which you make your financial decisions and create your plan. Your plan is based on what you want, right? There's no, you should do this. You have to do this. You do with your finances, what is going to get you closer to your goals. So this workbook is designed to help you create that big picture, financial vision, and then also we bring it back to the here and now and help you to focus and prioritize because it can get so overwhelming with all the different moving pieces so that you have something that you can focus on and begin to take action on today.

Braden: (03:14)
Love that. Okay. I love me like a good actionable task. So while we're going to do is actually work through this and I thought it would be super fun if instead of just talking about it, we did kind of like a coaching session. So Christy's gonna walk us through the workbook and then I'm going to give my personal answers. Hopefully I can be open and slightly votable on this podcast. Not really a strength of mine, but I will do my best. So where should we start?

Kristy: (03:39)
Yeah. So do you want to just go lesson through lesson and I'll kind of ask you some questions and we'll see what comes up and go from there.

Braden: (03:46)
Yeah. So instead of like me leading the podcast, now you're going to pretend like it's just totally your show and you're going to run like run it. Yeah.

Kristy: (03:53)
Awesome. I love it. And thank you for being willing to go through these exercises. I think it's super important and money is such a taboo topic too, that being able to have these open and honest conversations about money is so important.

Braden: (04:08)
Yeah. You know how people always say like you shouldn't talk about money, religion, or politics at the dinner table, like no, those are the first and the only topics I actually want to talk about because everything else just feels like bullshit. And you're just skirting around like all of the real conversations. So I'm ready for it.

Kristy: (04:24)
Yeah. And when you start talking about money too, it starts to remove that shame and that embarrassment and those feelings that we all have, like we're alone. So I'm excited for this conversation. And the first lesson is related to creating that big picture financial vision. And it's to discover what matters most. So I have three questions for you to help you get to the root of what's truly important to you in life. Because oftentimes we're setting our financial goals based off maybe you know, a should or what someone else tells you your financial goals should be. So this is to help you to cut through that noise and discover what's most important to you. So question one is, let's say that you don't have to worry about money anymore. You right? As of today, you have enough for ever. How would you live your life? Would you make any changes with your career or your health or your relationships or how you spent your time? What would life look like?

Braden: (05:28)
Okay. If I had as much money as I wanted. Luckily I played this game in my mind all the time. My husband and I, especially when we run a lot and whenever we want them with our friends, we like to play a game of if you won X amount of money in the lottery, what would you do? So really I found the really fun answer is fi are really fun prompt as if you won $5 million cause after taxes that's like $3 million and it's enough to do some fun stuff but not go hog wild. Okay. Anyhow, that was not really productive to your question. Let me circle back. So what would I do? I would probably, honestly I would probably just keep doing what I'm doing because I really like my job and my work. I wouldn't be as worried about hitting revenue goals like each quarter, but I would just probably just keep running my business. I would buy a bigger house for sure with an ocean view in San Diego cause I love it here. I have no intention to move and I would want that house to have like a really killer home office like with a podcast studio and everything. And then I would probably just give like my mom and like everyone in my family, like an annual spending allowance. So they would have enough money to come and visit me whenever they wanted.

Kristy: (06:45)
Yes. I love that. And I especially love that you wouldn't change much, which means that you're already beginning to align your life in that vibe of being financially free. Um, and, and really what I'm pulling out from what you said is some of your values and things that are important to you is giving to others, right? Living in your dream home and maybe removing some of that financial stress and financial anxiety that that revenue goals can cause all of us. Um, so those are some things to pull out as like, OK, these are things that are important to me. Right?

Braden: (07:25)
Totally. I'm not like a super altruistic person, so I'm not going to like pretend like I'm going to donate all my money to a lot of natural causes, but I'll certainly like pick some do I what I feel like is ethically required of me. But other than that it mostly just revolves around like freedom and being able to do like whatever the fuck I want.

Kristy: (07:44)
Yes. And you're already living a lot of that, which is great. Yes. Cool. Okay. So this one, this one's fun. So this is kind of imagining this scenario where life as you know it is ending in 10 years. So instead of killing you off, I'm going to go with the scenario that you know, the world is getting destroyed, whether it's global warming or robots are taking over or nuclear war. Planet earth is going away in 10 years and you have to leave and go start this new civilization in space, which is just going to be a totally different life. So the question is, what would you do with the time you have remaining on earth? How would you change your life? And this is assuming that your finances are the exact same as they are now.

Braden: (08:35)
Okay. So I don't have any more money but I'm only here for 10 more years. This was kind of tough. Okay. So the first thing that really comes to mind is when I moved to San Diego, I committed to a much higher cost of living. And my promise that I made to myself is every day I express a minor form of gratitude for the weather and the beauty that I was surrounded by. And I feel like I've done a pretty good job with that. But I've been here for six years and still could probably use the reminder. So I would probably make a commitment to make sure I see that. Like physically see the ocean at least once a week. Cause that brings me like a lot of happiness and it just takes, it immediately takes my stress level down. So I would do that. And then I've been wanting to run the Boston marathon for a long time, but that goal was kind of goes in and out of my mind. So I would probably really commit to that. And then, I don't know, I feel like I need to do a little bit more brainstorming about what else I'd want to get done in 10 years.

Kristy: (09:34)
Yeah, this one's tough cause it kind of is having you to face a limited amount of time oftentimes where like, Oh yeah, I have, I'll just do it later. I have so much time. Um, but this question really brings out the things that are like, okay, if I didn't have that, what seems like however much time, what is super important to me. And you can pull some actionable things out of there as well if you wanted. So if you wanted, for example, you could go see the ocean once a week and start training for the Boston marathon or putting in your bid to, to run.

Braden: (10:09)
Yes. I really liked this question too. It makes a lot of sense to me because most people, I feel like, especially at the age I am now, I turned 30 last month. Woohoo. But I'm kind of at this point where I tell myself, you know, I can just like hustle and grind it for the next 10 years and hit my financial goals and then like really live the life I want it 40 so it's kind of forcing you to be like, okay, well no, you should still like live your life now.

Kristy: (10:34)
Yes, exactly. It's that reminder that you can both hustle and achieve your financial goals and live your life and enjoy it. Yes. Beautiful. Amazing. And then the third piece of this, discovering what matters most to you is thinking about who you want to be in this life. So this isn't, what do you want to do or what you want to have, but who is it that you want to be? So I have a couple of examples. You know, I'm a person who.dot, dot is compassionate. Feels free to choose what I work on, spends time with people I love. So Brayden, who is it that you want to be in this life?

Braden: (11:16)
All right. This one I feel like is probably the hardest. I mean this, I'm like a goal oriented person, so I was wanting to just circle back to that.

Kristy: (11:25)
The have and the do.

Braden: (11:26)
Yeah, the having to do some very action oriented. But for me like probably not a surprise to a lot of people. I don't consider myself like the most empathetic or compassionate person. That's like, not really my thing, but I do place a really high importance on making time for friends and for family. So mine would probably circle around flexibility and having ample time to visit like friends and family because I have most of my family's in Indiana. Then I have a sister in Florida, so I like to spend at least like five weeks total in Indiana every year. So like three weeks in the summer and two weeks of Christmas. Yes. Again, I kind of circle back to like an action item.

Kristy: (12:13)
I want to be someone who has time or spends my time with my family. And so that's what this looks like five weeks here. Yeah, I love it. Yes, exactly. Do you feel like you are being that person right now?

Braden: (12:27)
Yeah. So I did go, um, I haven't shared this on the podcast yet, but I'll get a little serious for a moment. My mom was diagnosed with stage three ovarian cancer this year, so I did make time to summer to go spend five weeks in Indiana, which was the longest I've ever, like they'd gone from San Diego since I moved here, but that was really nice. I was able to notch my work down to like 20 hours a week while I was there and I found it didn't really negatively impact much. So it's totally doable. And then, yeah, we usually spend four days in Washington with my husband's family and then I'll spend like two weeks in Indiana after that with my family at Christmas time. But yeah, I am doing that. But I would like to get to the point where my business, where I can just look online and be like, Oh, you know what? Flights are really cheap next week I'm going to fly home for a week.

Kristy: (13:18)
Yes, those on the fly decisions to just go and be wherever you want to be whenever you want to be there. That complete freedom of time and location,

Braden: (13:29)
especially because I'm at the point where I don't think I want to have children, but I also want to be like really close with my nieces and nephews.

Kristy: (13:37)
Yes. Best uncle ever. Yes. That's the goals. I love it. So how did you feel about exercise one? Any big takeaways? Yeah,

Braden: (13:49)
I mean I've done a lot of this kind of self discovery before, but I didn't think it's helpful to get it out on paper. And again, I think for me the recurring theme is just like freedom and flexibility. And if anyone is super familiar with the Enneagram, I'm a type seven so none of this should be super [inaudible].

Kristy: (14:06)
Awesome. I love that. I think that's a huge takeaway. And you, many of you may have gone through exercises like this if you've been in the personal development world, which is great. Um, where you can kind of take a spin on these is thinking about that as it relates to your money, right? And the financial decisions that you're making. So keeping in mind your answers as it relates to the F the money and the way that you're spending and saving and all of that good stuff.

Braden: (14:35)
Yeah, I liked, I always tell people I was like the difference between like a seven and a three if I, I really want to do it, another Enneagram episode, but I was like a three, like once a new Audi because it's a status symbol and it's gonna make them feel good that other people know that they drive an Audi and a seven, which is be like once a new Audi because they're going to enjoy the feel of the supple leather and they're gonna roll down the windows and like feel the wind through their hair. So it really just, it's like external versus internal and a lot of my financial ideas and goals just revolve around like what I want to be able to have the freedom to do and what I enjoy.

Kristy: (15:14)
Yes. I love that whole Enneagram and money episode too would be super fun.

Braden: (15:20)
We should do that. Maybe I'll bring on an Enneagram expert and we could do like a three way call.

Kristy: (15:26)
Yes. Okay. And I'd be curious. I'm a nine so I'm like, Hmm, what is the nines money peacemaker? That one's interesting. We'd have to dig into that one. Yeah, we'll save this for another day though. Okay, awesome. So lesson two is to discover your core values. So again, exercise as some of you may have done before, but we're thinking about this in the lens of money. And I believe Braden you went through and did your core values before we jumped on, right?

Braden: (15:55)
I did. I cheated and already went through the workbook to help save you guys some time. So the way Christie has it laid out is how many core values are on your first page. There's gotta be at least like 80 here, probably a hundred.

Kristy: (16:08)
So there's a bunch of different words. I'm just pick out a couple, you know, boldness, flexibility, leadership, serenity, and you go through all the words and anything that resonates with you, your circle, or check off anything that doesn't, you cross off. And then from there you narrow it down to your top 10, and then you get to a place where you narrow it down to your top five. So what did you have for your top five core values?

Braden: (16:37)
So my top five are flexibility. They Emily, health, fun and decisiveness.

Kristy: (16:45)
Ooh, okay. I love this. So where you can start to dig in next is thinking about each value as it relates to your money. So you said fun. For example, how do you spend and save and relate your money to having fun?

Braden: (17:04)
So I actually derive a lot of fun out of material possessions and I feel like that's a taboo thing among a lot of people because especially us, millennials now you see these Facebook memes all the time. You should spend your money on experiences, not things. And it's like, yes, but some people like things, it's just not, it's just not like hoarding everything but really understanding what you like. So I collect luck per se, cookware. I really liked that. I liked nice successories, but then I saved money and other areas, but then also travel. Um, I love to eat out as well. So to me like it's always nice to have the money to like get a nice dinner or buy like I like to buy bougie groceries too and cook I art carton style recipes. So all those things are fun for me.

Kristy: (17:50)
That sounds amazing. I want to come over and eat one of your meals sometime.

Braden: (17:56)
I got you. Yeah. We you to have like short ribs and lobster bisque and go the whole nine yards.

Kristy: (18:01)
Yes. Okay. Amazing. Let's do another one. How about flexibility? How do you spend and save and align your money with flexibility? [inaudible]

Braden: (18:10)
so this is kind of the tough one because the goal is to get to the point where I feel like I have the flexibility I won, but really for me money-wise, that just always revolves around not ever feeling stifled. Like not ever feeling like there's something you can't do because you don't have the money. And that's why, that's why I feel like people like myself strongly resist budgets because if anything it feels like a restraint.

Kristy: (18:36)
I get that. I hear that a lot. Budgeting equals restriction in many, many people's minds and I would challenge that in that a budget doesn't have to be a thing that is super restrictive and strict and telling you exactly where money needs to go. But at least for me it's more of a mindfulness tool and being aware of where money is going and asking yourself related to the values, is my money going towards the things that I value. If you have money in your budget going towards whatever and experience or whatever flexibility means to you, great, then your budget is doing what you want it to do. Right? So I like to look at your budget as kind of a tool that's just bringing you awareness on where money is flowing. And then on the flip end, maybe you notice you're spending money on something that isn't a value of yours. You're spending money doing something that you don't like or on something that's not aligned with your values, then that's where you could, you could cut that and make some changes. But

Braden: (19:44)
yeah, like I spent a lot of money on burritos so I could probably cut that down to like one a week. That might be your fun value though. Yeah, one of them. Can you, uh, so I want to flip the script for just a second. Do you know your top five values? Just because I think it will be helpful for listeners to get at least one other perspective because based on what I know about you, I feel like ours might be different.

Kristy: (20:10)
Yeah. I might not remember all of them off the top of my head, but I have family, I have fun, I have wellness which is similar to your, to your health. So I think those three we share, but then I also have authenticity and w O freedom, freedom's my up. Did you have freedom to

Braden: (20:34)
I have flexibility. So freedom, freedom made my top 10 interesting. I guess it makes sense because we're both entrepreneurs and a lot of entrepreneurs are probably going to value the same things. It's probably why we start our own businesses. Yeah. But some other interesting ones, like I thought, I thought uniqueness was interesting is dumb risk-taking, resilience and or harmony and I'm kind of listing stuff that I probably wouldn't pick right now, but it's just kind of, it's interesting to think that other people would have these in their top five like loyalty and meaningful work. Um, yeah.

Kristy: (21:11)
Yeah, I love it. There's so many different options and different personality types and it's all right. Right? There's no, again, no right or wrong, whatever resonates with you and aligning your life and your money with those things that you truly value most. To me that's financial success,

Braden: (21:33)
right? Like I could, I could see my friend who runs a nonprofit choosing like compassion, commitment, meaningful work, all these types of things. Whereas I'm like, I just want to make enough money to do whatever I want and then that I can donate money to your nonprofit. Yes, I am like that too. Okay, perfect. Let's hop to lesson three.

Kristy: (21:55)
Okay. So lesson three is to think abundantly. So this is kind of speaking to how we sometimes have that scarcity mindset. We don't think things are possible for a S we set goals based on, Oh you know what's actually realistic for me. And we really hold ourselves back in going big. And maybe as entrepreneurs it's not as much as um, you know, the regular people, I dunno [inaudible] employees and stuff. Cause we, we do kind of have that mindset of thinking big. But I think we even as entrepreneurs hold ourselves back sometimes. So this is kind of like the question that you were referencing earlier. They want to, one part of this is if you won the lottery, what would you do? Uh, and I were to in a couple of different ways, you can answer it in that way. Or another way to think about it is you have a magic wand and you wave that wand. You can have whatever you want, you know, what would you bring into your life? So we might've touched on this a little bit already, but if you won the lottery or you had a magic genie, what would you do with it?

Braden: (23:04)
Okay. So if I had my magic wand, what would I do? That's a good question. I've thought about this a lot. Um, FYI, have you ever done StrengthsFinder? Christie?

Kristy: (23:16)
I have a little while ago, so I kind of forget all my results. So

Braden: (23:22)
if you guys are all wondering why I have such specific answers for a lot of these things, my number one strengths, strength on the strengths finder test is futuristic. So I often joke that like my brain actually lives in the future. I have a struggle focusing on day to day tasks. So with that in mind, um, I decided that my dream is to have a 2.5 to million dollar house in San Diego with a view of the ocean. The reason that I came up with that number is it's because the amount, it's the amount of house I determined that we could afford to pay the property taxes on after we paid cash for the property. Does that make sense? It does pay the upkeep. Right? But then also like that would get you probably, I mean we're in San Diego guys, so if we're talking to ocean view property, it's like 3000 square feet.

Braden: (24:10)
This is not a mansion we're talking about. Okay. Um, and I think that anything bigger than that you kind of get like lost in your own house and it's like living in a different neighborhood from your spouse. So that I'm not really on board for, it's my 3000 square feet as my, my version of ideal minimalism, I guess. Yes. But doing that, taking like a six week vacation [inaudible] hiatus once a year, like touring Europe sounds great. But I've learned, I definitely don't want to be a nomad. I very much like the creature comforts of my home and my communities. So we'll just leave it there. I got a lot of other stuff, but no, I love that. I think that's great. So all y'all, you know, think big think, don't hold yourself back even if the numbers feel ridiculous, go for it. Say it out loud.

Braden: (24:57)
You never know, right? Yes, exactly. Cool. So lesson four is to focus and prioritize. So we've been doing some dreaming here. Now we're going to start to get a little bit practical. The first piece of this lesson is to set your goals based on short term, mid term and long term. So we'll start start with short term for you. So these are goals for you in the next one to three years. What are some goals that you have within the next three years? Okay, let me get out my notebook cause I have this written down. Yeah, yeah. Christie and I, you guys are actually, I'm kind of booked clubbing this book called traction right now about how to develop an operating system and your business. And I had to write down like your specific goals going through that. So I kind of have this cover.

Braden: (25:47)
So my one year picture I don't, I'm like, I don't know if I want to, I don't know if I want to give these numbers. You don't have to say numbers. Could you share without giving numbers, I'm going to do it. So part of, one of the things that we're going to do on the podcast is I starting in January of 2020 I want to start doing profit reports. And it's not something I'm very excited about. I'm kind of nervous, but I want to actually start sharing my like, um, month and P andL on the podcast every month and make full transparency baby full transparency. So my one year goal, I'm trying to get really into passive income funnels and advertising next year. So my goal will be more or less to more than double my revenue while keeping it at 30% expenses. And that would be, um, like $150,000. Yes. Love it. Yeah. So that's one year. And then basically my goal is to double that, like double and double the next, the second year in the third year. Oh right. Doubling years. I love it. Yes. So go like one 50 to 300. We'll see. Um, it's gonna rely heavily on like how well all of those kind of automation things work.

Kristy: (27:07)
Yeah. But you had the, uh, you have the vision, you have the goal and that's a great place to start cause then you can start to work backwards and create a strategy around that.

Braden: (27:16)
Yes. And you guys all talk about when I do my profit reports, but I'm in my third year in business right now, so I don't want any of you guys to think that I just started yesterday and I'm like trying to make $1 million. It's been a very slow process. I think I made 12 grand in year one. So if that, if that, if that helps make anyone feel more reassured about the process they're in business right now. I was around there too and it's very normal. Very common. You know, it takes time to build a big Zack way to build an audience to figure out even like what the fuck you're doing. I didn't even know what kind of law I was doing in year one. So here we are. Literally, you're like, who am I? Who am I serving? What am I doing? Precisely

Kristy: (27:54)
get that. Do you have any personal short term goals? I mean maybe some travel

Braden: (27:58)
or, yeah, well, so we're planning on going to Paris next year, which I'm very excited about, but I've never been. But otherwise, yeah. I mean I have some fitness goals. None of them are super measurable. I want to get abs next year, so we're going to work on that. But I kind of put the Boston thing off for the time being. My really, my focus right now is not trying to race races, but just uh, being consistent I guess as my, like my core focus for this year and next year. Otherwise I have some other like measurable business goals, like number of people I want on my email list, a number of members in the membership, all that kind of stuff.

Kristy: (28:39)
Amazing. Love it, love it, love it. So let's flip to midterm goals. Next three to five years. These can be personal, these can be business, it can be both. What are your thoughts over the next three to five years?

Braden: (28:53)
Okay, so I'll, I'll lump qualifying for the Boston marathon in here. I would love to do that. I would also love to eventually qualify for the half iron man world championship, not the full Ironman. That's not really my, my primary distance, but the half Ironman would be great. And then also my goal for 2021 is to hire my first employee. Oh yeah. What type of employee, what would they do for you? Probably an integrator. So basically someone who's just in charge of managing day to day operations.

Kristy: (29:29)
Love it. Amazing. Any personal goals in there where you mentioned [inaudible]

Braden: (29:34)
a marathon? Yeah, we also want to buy are basically like our house in 2021

Kristy: (29:42)
love it. That beautiful view of the beach, right?

Braden: (29:48)
Yeah. I mean we're not going to go like too Gracie. So like the house I talked about when we were winning the imaginary lottery, Palliser, we're talking about buying it in half, but you get the picture,

Kristy: (30:00)
it's one step closer to that. Right, exactly. Love it. Okay, cool. And then how about any longterm goals? Five plus years

Braden: (30:09)
or it starts to get a little foggy? Uh, I mean I have like big audacious revenue goals for my 10 year plan, but other than that, I mean I still still still see myself running my business, but it's kinda hard to say. I mean 10 years from now I might have like a skydiving company who knows.

Kristy: (30:27)
You never know. You'll, and you'll have that freedom and flexibility to make that choice at that point, that flexibility, that core value coming back. Yes. I think that's great. And then like some of the stuff you didn't mention, but I hear commonly just as a financial planner or things like paying off debt and saving for retirement and you know, some of the less sexy sounding goals, yours are a much more fun but

Braden: (30:52)
okay. I do have those. I do need to put, um, paying off student loans is definitely a 10 year goal. Um, but yeah, I just try to avoid thinking about that as much as possible.

Kristy: (31:04)
Hey, focus on the fun and that stuff will come. Right. Yeah.

Braden: (31:08)
It's also a good balance because uh, my husband has like a much more conservative job, so I want to make money to pay for all the fun shit and then he can worry more about retiring.

Kristy: (31:19)
I think that's great. And, and kind of referencing, you know, couple's finances and how you work your finances together. But we do something similar where my husband's covering bills and then my income goes towards fun and then savings. And so it's would however you want to work it within your household as well. Um, but if and if you are partnered, share this stuff with, with your partner, with your spouse and you know, do these exercises together cause couples and finances. That's a whole other ball game as well.

Braden: (31:51)
Totally. So Christie, just looking ahead for a quick second and it looks like less than five is pretty related to what we've been talking about, but lesson six, is that more of what we were planning on discussing on part two of this episode next week?

Kristy: (32:05)
Yes, we can definitely dig into that in part two. That's starting to put some of the numbers to your goals.

Braden: (32:12)
Let's do that. So let's wrap this up with less than five and then that you guys, we are going to go offline to really strategize about how to bring you some killer information to get super tactical next week.

Kristy: (32:23)
Yes. Okay. So lesson five, well one thing we didn't do in the previous, but we can lump that in with this is to find your why for your top three goals. So now we've just done all this big picture visioning. Let's pick three goals that you want to focus on right now. So do you have your top three or do you want to brainstorm through what your top three might be?

Braden: (32:45)
Sure, we'll do the um, the 2020 revenue goal as kind of the top one.

Kristy: (32:51)
Cool. So 2020 revenue goal is your top goal. Um, and I have you listed out in order of importance. So I think this is great. You know, your main priority and focus with your financial goal is to hit that revenue number. So in this exercise, and you guys may have done some of these Y exercises before, right? But it's, it's asking yourself why is, why is this a goal that I have? Why is this important to me? So Braden, why do you want to hit that revenue number in 20, 20?

Braden: (33:24)
Yes. So my, our, I should say our goal is to, I would really like to pay down all of my debt within five years. And if you guys knew how much I have in student loans, you would realize how big of a goal that is. Oh, I'm basically planning on living off of the same revenue that I've been making and putting the difference towards debt pay down and then saving for the next.

Kristy: (33:53)
And why is it important for you to pay down your debt in five years?

Braden: (33:58)
Um, you, you know what, to me, it's actually not super important, but my husband is much more risk averse than I am. And I think that that honestly could be like the greatest gift I could give him.

Kristy: (34:12)
[inaudible] so continuing with the whys. Why do you want to give your husband that beautiful gift of serious sort of loans?

Braden: (34:23)
We're getting it. We're getting like real serious now, aren't we? Um, so we started dating my, like the second week that I was in law school and my, so my husband's basically if financially supported me now for five years. Um, and I really feel like without getting like too into our own personal relationship that, um, he sacrificed a lot of his personal financial goals in order to help me do that. So if we got all of my debt paid down, then uh, with our joint income, we'd really have the freedom to do like whatever we want to do year after year from that point on.

Kristy: (35:01)
Yes. I absolutely love that. And I think this is the, the deeper you dig and the more you get to the heart of it, this is your motivation right now. Instead of thinking like, Oh, I just want to pay down debt, you can think about like, I want to give this beautiful gift to my husband because he's given me so many beautiful gifts and allowed me to, to pursue my dreams. Right? That feels much more exciting than, Oh yeah, just want to knock off those student loans. Yes. Makes sense. So that's the point of that exercise and that's the last one before we really start putting some numbers to your goals and into strategy.

Braden: (35:38)
Okay. Love it. So what we'll do, everyone is next week. Let's just, we'll probably just continue with the one goal that we talked about. Maybe we'll come up with the second one of like an example goal that you see from a lot of your clients that might be different from mine. That way we can just give some more context to people who are listening that's like, you know what? Brayden's personal situation sounds a lot different than mine. I want to hear something a little bit different. And then of course after our next episode we'll give all the information on how you can get in touch with Christie so that you can start your process on a one on one basis. If you want to download this money goal workbook again, go to the show notes. You can just go to unfuck, your biz.com and if you click on the episode button, it's super easy to navigate. You can download this and I'll put all of Christie's contact information as well. Christie, any other final notes from you before we say goodbye?

Kristy: (36:34)
Just, you know, start thinking about what you want unapologetically and you deserve everything that you desire.

Braden: (36:42)
Love that message. Okay. My last tip, uh, we mentioned at the beginning, it is Thanksgiving. So if your black Friday shopping tomorrow, remember not to spend all your money because the next week Christy's going to tell us what else you could do with it. So with that message out of the way, I hope you enjoyed this episode. It went a little longer than usual, but I think it was super awesome. I definitely enjoyed it. As always, don't forget to subscribe and leave a review. If you enjoyed it, shoot me a message. Say hello and I will be back in your ear buds on Tuesday. I have a good one.