Creating Your Money Map to Financial Freedom

by Sherri Richards

• I can sleep at night knowing that I have a plan and am seeing progress!

• This is fun, I can’t wait to tell you about how much we have been able to save this past month.

• My husband and I actually had a real conversation about money, and we want to make a plan together.

We just need help with the steps to do this.

• I GET IT! I get why forecasting is important. It’s a plan of what I want to do, rather than always feeling behind and stressed.

• You mean, we can compare how much money we make in our business with how much money we need to pay our bills? I had no idea.

• I can see how much my business and profit is growing, now that I have clean numbers in Quickbooks.

Wahoo!

These are the real comments I received from a few of my clients this week. As I have said many times, we are not taught in our society how to work with our money. These are smart people. They are very good at what they do. Managing money is a skill that is no different than learning to read or write. I know you know how to read and write. You can learn the tools to use your money to create the life you want. My favorite phrase is “You start where you are, and that’s OK.”

Given this is the start of a new year, ask yourself the following questions?

1. What events/goals do you want to create in 2021? What will they cost? ► Become debt-free? ► Do you want to have fun with friends and family, new family traditions? ► Do you want a new kitchen? ► Maybe learn to cook? ► Have 50 cups of coffee with new people?

2. How much income comes into your home?

3. How much do you spend?

Add in the total from Question 1 and Question 3. Subtract that total from Question 2.

What is the gap between 2 and 3?

When you can answer these questions, it is like saying you want to go to Chicago, and you know that you are in Houston. You can plan what resources you need to get from Houston to Chicago. You know what you need. You look at a map. You see how far you have to go. Gas or plane tickets, time to travel, clothes to take, etc. These questions become easy to answer if you have a map and you know where you want to go. If you can’t answer these questions, it’s like saying you want to go to Chicago, but you have no clue where you are, so you just keep driving where the next road takes you. You could end up in LA or Montreal. You have no idea. Then you wonder where you are and you ask why am I not in Chicago? You are lost and have no idea what resources you need to get there. This includes time and money. You need a map to see where you are relative to Chicago.

I promise you this is not rocket science. My clients have AHA moments every day, once they start making and following their roadmap. If you need help getting started, look for someone in your community to help. There are all kinds of resources out there. If this doesn’t work for you, send me an email, Sherri@goodfatlife. com. I’ll walk you through it, or as some of my clients say, hold your hand while you take those baby steps. Financial freedom is about making a choice. The coolest thing is, you ALWAYS get to choose.

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