Clients come into Susan’s and my medical and Lifecycle Law offices complaining they are stressed for a variety of reasons. Most of those reasons stem, however, in one way or another from money issues and usually they are not complaining they have too much of it. On the contrary, the majority of urgent medical and lifecycle legal stress-related issues usually involve a lack of money.
If you have decided you want to have more money than you need whenever you need it, then you have already taken the first step to being financially Great! All the time! You’ve already done the proaction step. Now, it’s time to do some Great! Financial Planning.
Promoting yourself from proaction to practically perfect performance in your financial facet only takes the following five steps:
- Perception – Perceive three things in immaculate detail. First, perceive your financial values, how your values drive your financial vision, and how performance of that vision is your financial mission going forward. Second, perceive your status quo, where you are financially. This will require taking a full inventory of your assets, liabilities, income, and expenses and your current financial and estate management and planning documents, if you are in the less than 30% of people who even have as much as a balance sheet and a will. Third, perceive how much of each type of your life’s precious resources of self, time, effort, energy, emotion, intellect, property, and people can you coordinate to get you from where you are to where you want to be. This third level of perception will require you very much to get in touch with each and all of your relationships with a lot of people, places, things, and ideas that either make you money or cost you money. I have developed a Great! tool for this, which I call “The Great! Life Relationship P10 PEELing Tool” and you can get a free copy of it by clicking here.
- Planning – Start with what you perceived (in immaculate detail) as your ultimate practically perfect performance financially in life and then move back to the present one step at a time considering exactly what steps you need to take (creating, using, and recreating you life’s precious resources effectively and efficiently) and move back step-by-step to your present condition. You may want to make a fishbone analysis of your spending topics to look at why you are spending what you are spending how you are spending it. Uncomfortable hint: a lot of this planning process is going to involve figuring out how to spend less money than you make.
- Preparation – Last things first being your actual practically perfect spending performance, document that practically perfect financial plan in life by creating a budget based on your past spending habits with thoughtful changes made to reflect your new ideas about how to spend your life’s precious property resource of money better. Next, look for ways to control impulsively spending your money and stick with your budget. Set up policies, procedures, and work instructions for your self to follow so you stick with your budget.
- Practice – Because you have perceived, planned, and prepared effectively, practicing your new financial plan should be much easier than it has been in the past. Live your policies, by following your procedures, and executing your work instructions.
- Persistence – Persistence requires checking on what it is you have planned, prepared, and practiced (track your financial events and analyze them); recognizing, first, the good things you are doing and, second, how you can improve the quality of your practices in the future to more you faster toward your practically perfect performance financially. Do this by reviewing daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and semiannually to see where you can constantly improve your financial performance.
Following these five steps will give you the financial foundation to need to be Great! All the Time!
No doubt, there will be bumps in the road as you practically perfectly perform financial. Do not get discouraged. Keep looping back through the loop all year long. Most importantly of all, however, Get To It! Now! Seize control of your financial life and stop letting your financial life control you.
[reminder]Have you ever made a financial budget for yourself? If so, then how long did you follow it?[/reminder]
I’ll see you in the next post. In the meantime, you GOTTABGATT! So go out there today and be Great! All the time!