Planning your money helps you get from where you are today (x) to where you want to go in the future (y).
Where I am today
You’ve already spent time determining where you are right now in terms of how you think and feel about money. The next step is to look at your money numbers and see what they tell you about where you’re starting. Knowing where you are is knowing from where to measure when you stop and look back at any point in the future. It’s knowing how to measure your progress towards your financially free future.
Where do I want to get to
You’ve also spent time thinking about the different areas in your Life and setting goals for them. You’ve written your future self a letter that you will read at the end of this programme. Now it’s time to think about financial freedom and what that looks like and means to you. You need to have an idea of what it is for you in order to know when you’ve achieved it.
How do I get there?
Building the foundation of knowing where you’re starting and having an idea of where you want to get to helps to reveal more about the “how” of what to do to get from where you are now to where you want to be.
Click on “Start Assignment” to begin thinking about what financial freedom means to you.
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Thanks to Carl Richards (Certified Financial Planner™ and creator of the Sketch Guy column, appearing weekly in The New York Times since 2010) for creating this awesome sketch that illustrates this concept. He has a regular newsletter in which he shares bite-size thought-provoking content about personal financial planning. You can sign up on the Behavior Gap site here.
