I was asked to host a session as a part of an organization’s overall Wellness Initiative. This was first for me, but tying Money into Wellness is pretty darn easy.
“Cash rules everything around me – dolla dolla bills y’all” – Words from the WU-Tang Clan are so true.
The relationship we have with our money affects our mental, emotional, and even physical wellbeing.
There are two things I have learned from the worlds of yoga and meditation whose truths hold in almost every area of life. Those are setting intentions and being mindful.
What does your tweenager have to with money
Like most things in life, your money, without direction, is often wasted. I like to compare money to your tween-agers at home for summer break. As parents, we know if we don’t assign them some duties, they are most likely going to sleep until 2 PM, play video games all day, eat junk, and then turn night into day. In order to keep that from happening we sign them up for things like camp. We give them chores, we might assign a little math or reading in order to make sure those scholarly muscles don’t lose all strength over the summer.
We do this, usually in advance, because we know what that our ultimate goal for our kids is to raise competent adults. (and camp fills up fast)
We do it on Purpose with Intention.
How to be intentional with your money
In order to be intentional with your money, you first have to decide what you most want it to do for you. Do you want it to buy you the best stuff because you like the way that makes you feel? Do you want to buy you security? Do you want to retire ASAP because you don’t love what you do? Do you want to be able to have a great home, on a safe street where you kids grow up? Do you want to live as cheaply as possible so you can travel a lot?
Once you know what your financial values are, you can start giving your money a job. The second step is to write down all the things you have to pay for in order to support life – rent, food, clothes, car stuff, utilities, internet (this has moved up to a basic of life if you want a job), childcare and cell phone. Depending on your age and health, regular medications or healthcare might need to be in there as well.
Third, write down your other financial must haves – for example debt payments not included above. This would be mostly student loans, credit card debt, and any medical debt.
Once you have accounted for the must-haves you can start aligning the left over money to your money values.
For example, if you want to retire sooner rather than later, value security, or want to ensure your kids have a fully-funded 529 plan you will want to divert a big chunk to savings.
If vaca is your thing, you will want to divert money into a specific savings account to use for travel.
You have little athletes? Time to start allocating some regular money into that club soccer fund.
How to guarantee success
Ok, guarantee is a strong word, but if you want to raise your likely hood of actually getting the money to the places you need it to go in order to live your best life, I highly recommend automation.
Using automated tools like direct deposit, a 401(k), automatic bill pay, and automatic transfers to savings keeps you from relying on discipline.
Moving it out of your “general” spending bucket and into your specific spending buckets will allow you to budget without feeling like you are budgeting.
Your Action Items:
1. Write down your money values
2. Give your money a job
3. Automate
In the next blog post, I will cover how to use mindfullness to keep from derailing your money goals!