ABOUT THIS EPISODE
If you've ever looked up how to set financial goals, you were probably handed a number that sounds responsible, and that is usually the problem. A goal you adopted out of obligation runs on willpower and willpower runs out. Once you budget by paycheck, a goal stops being a wish and becomes a line in the plan.
Chapter 14 is where you hear something you do not often hear from a financial professional. Money is not the most important factor in your financial goals. Buy-in is.
Here is the grocery version. Say you are spending $800 a month and traditional advice says cut it to $600. You meal plan aggressively, buy the cheapest options, skip the foods you like to prepare. It works for a while and you feel disciplined. By month three you are miserable, your family is complaining, and you stop. You saved $600 total and you have reinforced a story that you cannot stick with things. Now imagine you had cut to $700 instead. On paper it's the worse plan, but it's one you can actually live with, so you keep going. Twelve months later you have put $1,200 toward your goals instead of $600. Less effort and a better result, because you stayed with it.
Then comes the MeaningFirst Method, which starts nowhere near the numbers: five questions that get underneath the goal you've been carrying around to the reason you actually care about it.
Susan came in wanting out of $18,000 of credit card debt, and when I asked why it mattered, her first answer was, "Because I should. I mean, debt is bad, right?" A few questions later she said what was actually true. She wanted to stop feeling guilty every time she swiped her card and to go out to dinner without a voice in her head. And underneath that, she wanted to start planning for a house and a real vacation, things she had been putting off because she felt like she had to fix this first.
What you will walk away with is a way to tell the difference between a goal that excites you and one that exhausts you, before you spend a year on it.
SpendFirst comes out November 11 and you can pre-order now.
If you want to run the MeaningFirst Method on your own goal, the full walkthrough is free.
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