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December 30, 2023 18 mins

In this episode of "Elevate Your Paycheck," we walk you through a comprehensive exercise to create a robust financial strategy for 2024. As we bid farewell to 2023, it's the perfect time for reflection and forward planning, not just for your financial goals but for your personal aspirations as well.

We begin by sharing our  journey of reflection over the past year, highlighting the importance of learning from the past and planning for the future. We revisit some of the significant events of 2023, from impactful interviews to engaging webinars and personal client success stories. These reflections set the stage for a deep dive into goal setting and aligning your financial objectives with your personal life goals.

Key Highlights:

  1. The Importance of Reflective Planning: Understand the value of looking back at your past year to inform your future goals.
  2. Creating SMART Financial Goals: Carolyn revisits the concept of SMART goals - Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound - and how to apply this to your financial planning. (Revisit Episode 4 for a detailed explanation on SMART goals).
  3. Aligning Financial and Personal Goals: Learn how to ensure that your financial goals support and are integrated with your broader life aspirations.
  4. The Power of Why: Discover the significance of understanding the 'why' behind your goals to maintain motivation and focus.
  5. Quarterly Goal Setting: Carolyn introduces a practical approach to goal setting by breaking down the year into manageable quarters, making it easier to track progress and stay on course.
  6. Visual Gratification and Habit Tracking: Explore fun and effective methods like Bingo for goal tracking and the use of habit trackers for daily progress monitoring.
  7. The Role of Accountability: Learn how having an accountability partner can significantly boost your chances of achieving your goals.

Additionally, Carolyn offers valuable toolkit, including a worksheet on SMART goals and a personal habit tracker available on thefinancialmoment.com/smartgoals.

This episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to step into 2024 with a clear, achievable financial plan. Whether you’re aiming for personal growth, financial stability, or both, Carolyn’s guidance provides a solid foundation to start your year right.



Questions for Reflection:

  1. What were my major financial achievements in the past year?
  2. Where did I encounter financial challenges, and what strategies helped me overcome them?
  3. Did I stick to my budget, and were there any unexpected expenses that I can plan for in the future?
  4. What did I learn from my spending habits, and where can I make adjustments to save more or spend wisely?
  5. Did I make progress towards my savings goals, and how can I enhance my saving strategies?
  6. How can I improve my financial literacy and make more informed decisions in the future?
  7. What are my long-term financial goals, and how did my actions align with these goals in the past year?
  8. Did I prioritize building an emergency fund, and how can I strengthen my financial safety net?

Let’s Stay Connected!

🌐 Website: thefinancialmoment.com
📸 Instagram: @thefinancialmoment
💼 Money Coaching: Need deeper support? Visit my website to learn how we can help you take control of your finances.

📢 If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review the podcast! Your support helps us reach more people on their financial journe

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Carolyn (00:00):
You're listening to Elevate your Paycheck, the
podcast that is dedicated totransforming your financial
journey.
I'm Carolyn, your host andmoney coach that will guide you
out of that paycheck to paycheckcycle and onto a path towards
financial independence.
Are you ready?
Let's do this.
Hello, and welcome back to theshow.

(00:25):
Can you guys believe that weare in the final days of 2023?
Like, where did the time go?
I hope you've had a wonderfulholiday and some time off to
spend with family and friendsand a little bit of a chance to
reflect on how this year haspenned out for you financially.

(00:48):
One of the things that I'vetalked about, probably in the
past year on the show was theimportance of planning and
reflecting on the past in orderto learn from it so that you
don't make future mistakes.
The end of the year is theperfect time to do this type of
reflection and planning, so Ithought I'd walk you through an

(01:09):
exercise to create a strategyfor 2024.
Now you can use this for yourpersonal goals.
You can use this for yourfinancial goals.
Maybe it'll comply to anything.
Now, how many of you over theholidays did that last minute
running around to find the finalthings that you needed?

(01:31):
Now, if your hand is raised,then you're in company of a lot
of people, including myself, soit doesn't really matter how
much you plan.
There's always something thatyou forget or you just didn't
include in your list, but youknow what.
That's okay.
It's okay to deviate a littlebit from your plan, because life

(01:53):
is like that.
It's going to throw usunexpected turns and twists, but
having that foresight as to thedirection you want to go is
really critical when you aretalking about creating financial
goals and reaching them.
So, to start this process andagain to get your mind going, I

(02:13):
just pull out my calendar.
I went straight back to January2023 and I started to look at
some of the events that happened.
So, as I was looking, Iremembered some of the great
interviews that we had on theshow.
I remembered the savingschallenge that we ran I think it
was in February.
I also worked with somefantastic clients who got great

(02:37):
results, and so that wasenjoyable to see the different
appointments I had bookedthroughout the year and to
remember the progress that theymade and all of the webinars.
There were so many webinars ondifferent topics, and I remember
the feeling of coming onlineand watching the people join in
the events and some were reallypacked with.

(02:59):
I think the most this year wasmaybe like 50 people online to
really small ones, where therewas just a handful like 10 or so
people, and just the engagingquestions that they had and the
feedback that you get from afteryou've done the presentation,
and it really gave me a sense ofaccomplishment.
And then there were thein-person presentations.

(03:21):
That was a whole other level.
I enjoy talking to peopledirectly and really getting into
their personal situation, andso the in-person presentations
were quite different than awebinar, because in a webinar
I'm just talking on and on andon, but in person people stopped
and asked questions in betweenand it's really interactive, and

(03:43):
so I really appreciated that aswell.
And then this year for the firsttime, I decided to have a quote
unquote retreat, and right nowI'm a team of one, so it was
just me.
There was really a time just toreflect and again to plan out
what I wanted to do in thefollowing months.

(04:03):
And then it was financialliteracy month.
That was the most insane monthfor the financial moment.
But again I got to meet somegreat people, do a lot of
presentations, met new clients.
It was really just a whirlwind.
So, reflecting on all of that,I kind of put it in a column

(04:24):
like needs improvement or donereally well, and I just kind of
fleshed out where I could makeimprovements on each one of
those items, where I couldpossibly take something that
went really well and duplicatethat somewhere else.
And that's kind of the idea ofthis brain dump right, just to

(04:45):
get your ideas flowing so thatyou can really assess and see
what are the good things andwhat are the things that need a
little bit of work.
So once you're done all of thereflective type work, you're
going to head in to create somenew financial goals.
This is where you can thinkabout what it is that you want

(05:06):
to achieve, whether that be morefree time with your family, aka
vacation or perhaps starting anew business or changing jobs or
saving for your retirement.
You know there's so manydifferent things that people
prioritize and what we need todo is really create some

(05:29):
realistic, achievable goals.
And these goals need to bemeasurable, right?
Because what we're going to dois we're going to take them and
break them into little chunks,but more on that in a minute.
So if you want more informationon how to set up what we call a
smart goal.
Head way back to episode numberfour, and I did a whole thing on

(05:51):
how to create a smart goal.
But what a smart goal means isit is specific, measurable,
achievable, relevant and timebound right, so you want your
goal to include all of thosecomponents, because in order to
do that, you're creating babysteps to get to the master goal.

(06:13):
So head to episode four andyou'll get a lot more
information on what a smart goalis.
But once you got that down,then that's the second part of
this process.
Okay, so for step number three,we're going to integrate those
financial goals with your lifegoals, right?

(06:33):
So this is where I said thisprocess works for personal as
well as your financial goals.
So what we want to do is ensurethat what your aspirations are
for your personal self are tyinginto your financial goals,
because, let's face it right,most of things that we want in
life revolve around money.
You know, even if we want toget in shape, you may need a gym

(06:56):
membership, you may need somefitness equipment.
You know, everything we do kindof is ties back to how much
money that we really have.
Right, we want to provide agood life for our children that
means buying a house or, youknow, sending them to school,
and so everything is kind ofinterrelated, and we want to
make sure that your financialgoals are aligned with your

(07:17):
broader life goals.
So, after you've got yourfinancial goals listed, go ahead
and list your life goals andlet's see if they line up
exactly.
And if they don't or you havesomething that's very
unrealistic, like, say, let's goon a vacation four times a year
, but your budget really doesn'tallow for that then there's a

(07:38):
mismatch there, right?
So either you need to boostyour income in order to attain
that goal or you need to make anadjustment to the goal itself.
So this is where I mean, but bybeing aligned and then this
part is probably the mostimportant.
What you wanna do is, for eachgoal that you have that is
aligned with your life goal, saywhy it is important to you, why

(08:02):
do you really want this morethan anything?
Because that is the driverthat's going to force you to
kind of stick to what's requiredwhen you really don't want to.
So let's take the example of afitness goal.
So this is a personal goal, nota financial goal, and we say
that we wanna work out five daysa week.

(08:22):
And the purpose of that, thewhy behind it, is so that you
can live a healthy lifestyle, sothat you can spend more time
with your kids, have more energy.
Perhaps it even ties intoeating healthy.
So these are the whys behind a,why you want to be healthy or
be fit, because they're going tobe some days that you're not

(08:43):
going to want to work out.
Right, can I get an amen?
Ha ha ha.
When it's pitch black outsideand you have to get up and put
on your coat and it'sblizzarding out and you have to
go to the gym, you're not gonnawanna go.
And what I want you to reflecton is your why.
Why are you doing this?
Why do you want to get in shape?

(09:05):
And the same applies to yourmoney situation.
Right, there are going to betimes when you just wanna spend
some money.
Right, you just wanna go outthere and shop and buy
miscellaneous things or scrollon Amazon and put it in your
cart and check out and have itshow up at your door the next
day.
And before you make thatpurchase, you gotta think.

(09:27):
You know what am I doing?
Why am I saving?
Why am I putting myself throughthis restrictive kind of
behavior and it's because youhave a greater goal.
Right, you have a greater goal.
You wanna take that vacation,you wanna change jobs.
This is the things that we haveto think about when we just
wanna go against the grain.

(09:47):
All right, so we have done ourreflection, we've created some
goals, we made sure that italigns to our life goals and
we've determined why it'simportant to us.
So now here's the fun part weneed some visual gratification
For us.
As humans.
We really get enjoyment out ofseeing something complete Start

(10:12):
to finish, right.
And so if the goal is too farout there or it's too vague,
then it becomes very difficultto kind of stick to the habits
that are required.
So the key to all of this isreally not to map out 2024.
I know that's strange, becausemost people are saying set up

(10:36):
your whole year and make sureyou have it all planned out, and
I'm saying you know what?
Let's take it in smaller chunksand let's do it by quarter.
So every three months we createthese goals and we create some
habits that are gonna beassociated with those goals.
So, again in my fitness example, right, working out five days a

(10:58):
week is gonna get me closer tobeing fit, but you know, maybe I
need to change it up, maybe Ineed to do some cardio and some
weight training and do someweightlifting or whatever.
It is right, you need to dodifferent things in order to get
that fitness goal, and soyou're gonna build some habits
around that.
When it comes to your moneysituation, you have to look at

(11:18):
your expenses and see, okay,where can I kind of cut.
It may not be something thatyou wanted to do right now, but
it's something that's needed inorder to get towards your goal
right, and so taking it at athree month increment is much
easier to manage than thinkingof that.
You know I have to cut thisitem for an entire year, so what

(11:41):
you can do is, if you're doingthis on paper, you can just cut
the paper into four pieces andyou have January, february,
march, april, may, june, july,august, september, october,
november, december, and you'regoing to create your goals for
this small three month periodand chunk of time.
A fun exercise that I've seenpeople do is actually to create

(12:05):
bingo, so you can find on theinternet, you know, a bingo
template, and what you do is,for each item that you've
completed within your threemonth period, you can check it
off or exit off, and when youget bingo, which means you've
checked off five or whateveracross or diagonally, you then

(12:26):
can reward yourself with a smallreward, and again, it doesn't
have to be monetary, it can beanything.
We've gone through that beforebut having a list of things that
you enjoy can be your monetaryreward for hitting all the
markers.
So that's kind of a fun way toget that visual gratification.

(12:47):
And of course, another way is tojust record it on a spreadsheet
.
So of course that's what I did.
I have a huge habit tracker andI can just check off each day
that I've completed theparticular habit, and it
actually tells me how muchpercentage I can get to more
than my goal.
So I guess I'm just a numbersgirl, but I find that fun as

(13:09):
well, okay, and so now here is abonus tip.
So you have personally createdthese lists, you have trackers,
you have incentives, you have avisual kind of laid out plan,
but you're doing it alone, andthe bonus in this is if you can
create an accountability partnerto do these with, to support

(13:34):
you in achieving those goals, itis going to be so much easier,
right, so, whether that be yourspouse, whether that be your BFF
, your parent, your child, evenlike you know just someone that
can hold you accountable for thethings that you want to do.
And, of course, you know acoach.
You know what's better than acoach to push you along right.

(13:56):
So just getting thataccountability is really
important and it'll actuallyexponentially help you to reach
that goal a lot faster.
And that's the process.
So, if you're going to take onthis exercise, you know, find a
time where you are in acomfortable space maybe it's

(14:16):
your favorite coffee shop, maybeit's just getting up early
before all your family does.
Just give yourself a little bitof time to do this.
And, of course, I have sometools to help you along in this
process.
So if you head tothefinancialmomentcom backslash
smart goals S M A R T GO A L Syou're going to have access to

(14:43):
my live training, a videotraining of me describing what a
smart goal is and how to createone.
You're going to get a worksheetthat you can actually fill in
and complete, with all thedefinitions and everything that
you need to include, and then,finally, I've also included my
own personal habit tracker andit's Google sheet, and you can

(15:05):
just make a copy of it.
It becomes yours and it is adaily tracker where you can just
check off everything that youwant to do to get incrementally
closer and closer to your goals.
So I hope that's super helpfulfor you guys.
Oh, I also wanted to leave youwith some questions that are
going to help you in yourreflective time.
Maybe there are things that youmight not have thought about,

(15:28):
and so I'm just going to readthem through now, and I will
also include them in the shownotes just to make it easier for
you if you'd like to print themout.
So here we go.
Number one what were my majorfinancial achievements in the
past year?
Number two where did I encounterfinancial challenges and what

(15:50):
strategies helped me to overcomethem?
Number three did I stick to mybudget and were there any
unexpected expenses that Ididn't plan for?
Number four what did you learnfrom your spending habits and
where can you make adjustmentsto save more or spend more

(16:12):
wisely?
Number five did I make progresstowards my savings goals and
how can I enhance my savingsstrategies?
Number six how can I improve myfinancial literacy and make
more informed decisions in thefuture?
And number seven what are mylong term financial goals and

(16:37):
how did my actions align withthese goals over the past year?
And then finally, number eightdid I prioritize building an
emergency savings fund and howcan I strengthen that financial
safety net?
And there you have it.
That is your complete plan onhow to develop a strategy for

(17:00):
2024 that you're going toimplement in three month
increments.
And remember to head tothefinancialmomentcom backslash
smart goals and you're going toget all the resources that I use
personally to make this happen.
So I hope you have a wonderfulnew year, happy 2024 and we will

(17:23):
see you on the other side, takecare.
Thanks for listening to theelevate your paycheck podcast.
If you love this episode andneed deeper support, head to
thefinancialmomentcom backslashsupport to see how we can
support you, no matter where youare at today.
We help our clients organizetheir finances, create savings,

(17:48):
eliminate debt and create aroadmap to their financial goals
, which makes them more incontrol than they ever dreamed
possible.
So head tothefinancialmomentcom backslash
support and make this the nextstep in your financial journey.
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