How I Got Unstuck at the Start of 2020 + My Financial Goal
2 weeks holiday from work was a blessing I didn’t know I needed. A forced shutdown was a welcome relief after working through the festive season in previous years.
It’s been over a year since my last post, I’ve been super busy.
If for no one else, I write this to remind myself of my journey. Hopefully, those who seek this information come across this post and find it useful.
At the end of 2019, I was completely burnt out. Sending emails to the CEO up to Christmas Eve after launching 3 campaigns in the last 4 weeks was all fun, and a great way to end the year.
Now, the first day back at work, I realised I had gotten back into my pattern of trying to figure out how to get back into the swing of things.
This is my 2-step process that I apply each time with success. It’s simple and obvious, but effective.
1. Declutter
I take small steps each day to clear out
- My thoughts via mindfulness acts of
- meditation or
- conscious breathing (from the Wim Hof method) or
- physical activity or
- a change of scenery
- cooking
2. Clarify
I ask myself many questions around what I want to achieve, what do I want my life to look like, etc. A review of what’s important and what my main life goals are. Previously I’ve had 6 per year – 3 personal and 3 professional. I always hit my professional goals and either 2/3 or all personal goals. This time I will make things a lot simpler.
I will focus on 1 goal at a time, chunked down to daily / weekly / monthly targets. Right now, my main goal is a financial-based one so that’s easy to track. I don’t track in terms of $ value though. I track consistent action towards my financial goal.
It all comes down to simple mathematics; in this case, success = input > output. Cash in is greater than cash out. I’ve read in several articles how super-wealthy people don’t have budgets – they know how much money comes in and they make sure they spend less than that. Pretty simple.
Examples are:
- Education – how can I learn more about improving my financial situation?
- Example action item: listen to a relevant podcast about micro-investing
- Awareness – how much do I know about my situation?
- Example action item: calculate my net worth
- Example action item: categorise my spending for the previous month
- Increase input – how can I make extra cash?
- Example action item: find 1 thing I don’t want/need anymore and sell it
How it worked for my financial strategy
The last time I did this in a big way, I evolved my financial situation with the automation of wealth creation. This came about from the education aspect and regularly meeting with my accountant. My setup looks like this:
- Monthly salary comes in, then these automatic recurring transfers occur 1 day later
- 10% goes to a separate bank account for investing purposes
- Automatic recurring transfers from this account to various investments occur 3 days later
- 10% goes to an emergency funds savings account
- 10% goes to a holiday savings account
- 19% goes to rent
- 51% goes to loan repayments
- 1 main credit card where all regular bills are directly debited from and used for everything. Even if this has a $0 balance, adding cash means I’m ahead of the payment that month for bills
- 1 credit card with the highest rate gets allocated more than the minimum with the goal to close it out first
- Another credit card with the minimum due paid
- 10% goes to a separate bank account for investing purposes
By streamlining my finances, I’ve been able to focus on increasing my income. Any money I make gets thrown at the credit card that I want to close.
I use stebt.com to track and forecast my debt repayments.
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