EPISODE 11: How to Align Your Finances with Your Future Aspirations

SUBSCRIBE WHERE YOU LISTEN TO PODCASTS
↓

APPLE PODCASTS // SPOTIFY // AMAZON MUSIC // OVERCAST // CASTRO // GOODPODS

THE LOWDOWN

Welcome back to "Sex and Money with Jess," where we explore the intimate relationship between personal empowerment, sex, and finances. In this episode, we continue our journey into financial management by diving into the third part of our structure: making changes and planning for the future.

After organizing our finances and gaining a deep understanding of our numbers, we've laid the groundwork for the exciting part—envisioning and working towards our financial goals. It's time to ask ourselves what we truly want and what we're willing to do to get there.

I discuss the importance of identifying non-negotiable expenses and then looking at what's left to see where we can make adjustments. Whether it's saving for a house, investing, or paying off debt, the key is to start small, test changes, and see what works. It's not about perfection; it's about progress and being willing to tweak our approach as we go.

I share personal anecdotes about my own financial goals, like saving to buy a house and improving my health, and how I make daily decisions that align with these objectives. I also emphasize the power of asking for help and knowing when to reach out for support to stay accountable.

As we wrap up, I encourage you to take some time this week to think about your financial future. Play with the numbers, create scenarios, and have fun with it. Remember, it's about taking responsibility and being accountable for your money.

If you're struggling to find joy in financial planning or need some guidance, my doors are always open. Reach out, and let's make financial planning an enjoyable part of your journey to empowerment.

Until next week, may your days be filled with love and progress towards the future you desire.

MENTIONED IN SHOW:

Website: www.lovealwaysjess.com/getstarted

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/love.always.jess

SHOW NOTES:

Episode begins at [00:00:54]

TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] Welcome to Episode 11. This is Part 3 [00:01:00] of the structure in which I look at my finances and that I tend to help my clients look at their finances. Part 1 was organizing, an idea of the categories that your finances go into. The ins, the outs, the expenses, the income.

Putting your finances into small buckets to get an understanding of what is actually happening with them. Part two is that understanding that what I call financial intimacy. It's getting to know your numbers for their true value and how it's working for you or against you.

Both of those parts of the structure probably are not the most fun for people. Sitting down and taking different bank statements, and reconciling them into a spreadsheet, putting numbers together, And [00:02:00] trying to make sense of it all isn't fun. I find joy in it, but I'm an anomaly.

But for most people, it's not fun. It's boring. It takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of effort. And the end result isn't something that's wrapped in a pretty little bow. But both of those steps lead you to creating the foundation on which you can build upon. And that's where the fun begins. And that's what I want to talk about in today's episode.

The position that you're at now, once you've organized and gotten an understanding of what your true financial situation is. You get to decide what you don't want to do anymore and what you do want to do. You can make changes, tweaks, you can try out different theories. You get to have fun with your [00:03:00] money.

And when I say get to have fun with your money, I don't mean go on an all inclusive vacation in the Maldives. Maybe that is what you want to do with your money, and that does sound fun. But what I mean is, You get to decide where you want your future to be and from where you're at What direction do you have to go?

What sacrifices? What changes? What things do you add to your financial journey to make that future happen? Your future financial situation, I always say, sky is the limit. What do you want it to look like? Does that always mean that it's realistic and getting the million dollar mansion in five years is going to happen?

Maybe not, but depending upon where you're at, you might be able to get it in 10 [00:04:00] years.

That's the beauty of this step in the process. Is you get to sit down and break things down.

You get to sit down and ask yourself, what is it that you truly want? And what is it that you're truly capable of? Because let's be honest here, you might want the million dollar mansion in five years, but are you personally capable of making that sacrifice? that you need to make in order to get there?

Are there things in your life that are just way too important to give up? Like maybe you are a social person. And you like to go out with your friends a couple times a week. That money adds up. And after looking at your finances, you might realize, Oh, going out two, three times a week costs me a lot of money.

And I need to cut back on [00:05:00] that in order to get this house.

But now is the time to sit down and ask yourself, What is your true dream? Is your true dream the house? Or is your true dream building connections with people? And obviously you can do both, but that might delay the getting of the house to 7, 8, 10 years instead of 5 years. Or maybe you're telling yourself, going out is fun, but what I'd rather do is host parties, get togethers, hangouts with my friends at my place.

In the long run, that will be a lot cheaper than going out. So maybe you're willing to make the sacrifice and go out with your friends once a month so that in five years, you can have them over to your place two, three, four times a night. Because that sounds more enjoyable than going out on the town. It sounds [00:06:00] more fun and creative because then you can have different theme nights with your friends, whatever.

This is the fun part of this step in the process, because you get to ask yourself these questions.

You get to ask yourself, what do I truly want my future to look like? Not just a million dollars in the bank account, but what does that mean to you?

What does having a college fund for your children mean to you? Does it mean

generational wealth? Does it mean your kids aren't saddled with the student loan debt that a lot of people from the millennial generation came out of school with?

Does it mean more opportunities for them? Opening more doors?

What does that mean to you? And what is it going to take to make that happen?

Maybe you have other dreams with your finances. Maybe you want to play around with investing and [00:07:00] you realize, okay, if I cut back here, or I actually have an extra 300 of income a month that I didn't even notice. So I'm going to put 200 in savings. And then a hundred dollars into an investment account and play with play around with stocks or

I'm going to Take a crack at crypto. Whatever Sounds good to you. These are those fun moments those moments to Recognize where your money is going What additional discretionary money you have or maybe you're in a situation where you're like, damn it. I am You Way over my head. I don't know how to make ends meet and sitting down and looking at my finances was scary, but now I'm here and I have this foundation.

I have this understanding and I've realized that [00:08:00] I'm paying X amount of dollars in rent,

but I need to downsize. I need to find an apartment that's cheaper. Or maybe you're looking for a new car and you had your sights set on the new Lexus. And when you crunch the numbers, you realize, Oh, I only have enough to cover the car payment, not enough to cover the insurance. So, I need to find a different car that's more affordable, that will last me three to six years.

Maybe it means figuring out the difference between owning versus leasing. You know, you have your sights set on that Lexus. So what if you leased a Toyota for three years and saved up money so that you could get the Lexus in three years? There are a lot of different variables and a lot of different directions to go with [00:09:00] your finances.

And until you've sat down and organized them and then gotten intimate with the numbers and understood them, can you get here to step three?

Organizing, understanding, and then making the changes.

When I work with clients, Before I ask them, what are you going to change about this? The first thing I go through is, what are your absolute non negotiables? Most often for people, it's their rent or mortgage, their auto fees, which includes like registration gas, all that. For some people, you've got life insurance payments, and then obviously food and utilities.

Food is kind of non negotiable to a certain extent because we all have to eat. The method of eating, whether it's groceries or eating out, [00:10:00] that part can be negotiable for some people. Some people not. So we look at what are the most important pieces and then we ask ourselves. Is there any changes I'm willing to make here?

If not, all right, set those aside. Now you've got this list of a handful of items that makes up X amount of dollars. What are your goals?

Putting these items aside, what is it that you're looking to do?

And is your current financial situation getting you closer or further away from there?

If it's getting you closer and you don't want to change anything, Cool, don't change anything, but continue to monitor your finances and making sure that things are working and Continue asking yourself are my goals consistent? Have they changed? If they've changed, circle back. Do you need to change anything in your finances?

[00:11:00] To make your goals achievable

if your finances aren't getting you closer to where you want to be Then the next step to ask yourself is what will it take for me to get there?

Maybe you have to save an extra two to three hundred dollars a month So then you look at the grouping that you have that are negotiables and you ask yourself of this pile, where can I sacrifice? What changes can I make?

Once you've determined the items that you're willing to change, then over the next two, three, four, five, six months, make those changes

and then see what is happening within your finances. Are you seeing that you are getting closer to that goal? Maybe you wanted to put 500 away in savings each month.

Or maybe you wanted to pay off [00:12:00] a credit card with 1, 200 on it.

So you applied the 500 or you put 200 towards that credit card every single month. In six months, were you able to pay off that credit card? In six months, were you able to consistently put 500 a month away in your savings account?

Maybe the first two months you struggled and you weren't able to do that, but you were able to put away 200 a month. That's great. It's still progress.

And if you are able to continue towards achieving your goals via that, great. Continue. Keep it up. But also, check in with yourself. Maybe you want to increase that amount. Maybe seeing this, paying out the credit card or putting money into savings has sparked other ideas of, I actually want to put more away in my savings.

Or, I have this other credit card that I want to pay off. What is that going to take?

But [00:13:00] say in six months, you aren't consistently achieving that goal. You don't have the credit card pay down. Some months you're going backwards in your savings. Pause. Take a look at your finances again. And ask yourself, Okay, The areas that I said I was going to make change in, I'm not making changes in that area.

Why? Maybe those items need to be moved to the non negotiable item list. Or maybe I need to seek outside help. Ask a friend for support. I've held onto money for people when they knew that if it was sitting in their bank account, they would spend it. So they gave it to me for safekeeping until they needed it.

They would give me two 300 installments a month and then at the end of the six months, I'd give them back their money. When they were ready to pay for whatever it's, so maybe that's something you reach out to a trusted friend for.

We do have to be [00:14:00] responsible for our money. We do have to hold ourselves accountable, but sometimes it's okay to realize, Hey, I have this like vacation coming up and I told my friend that I pay her. And I think it would be easier for me to pay her over six months versus all up front. Talk to them about it.

See if they're willing to do that. One of the beautiful things you can do for yourself is know yourself. And if there's an area that you need help maintaining accountability, don't be afraid to reach out and ask for help. You might get shot down. Some people might tell you that you need to do it yourself, but it's worth asking.

It's worth getting supported.

So if there's ever a moment where you're not consistently moving towards the financial future that you want, you pause and you ask yourself, what about the [00:15:00] situation is not working? I said I was going to stop eating out with friends, but I continue to do so. Why? What is it about those social interactions that is important to me?

And then you would just ask them, Hey, can we cook something at home? Can I make dinner for all of us? Or if you guys want to go out, I'm going to pack my own food and bring it with me.

That way you're not spending the money, but you still get to enjoy your time with your friends.

And if that is something that you're not willing to do, that's fine.

Find another area within your finances that you can make a change, that you can give up, whether temporarily or long term, to reach that financial goal.

At the end of the day, everything boils down to shifting one or two things at a time.

And seeing if it works.

Honestly, this is probably the same information, [00:16:00] same tip that you would get for a lot of areas of life that you want to change.

Test it. See if it works. And if it's not working, tweak it.

Not everything is meant to be. To be a hundred percent, a hundred percent of the time.

You're not going to be perfect. You're going to make mistakes along the way. I know I have,

which is why continuing to organize your finances, continuing to stay familiar with an intimate with your finances and having check ins along the way of seeking that financial future is important

without those, we don't know where we're coming from. And we don't know the direction that we're going.

You're out there on a wild goose chase, trying to make things happen. I've talked about, over the past few episodes, how my goal for 2024 is to [00:17:00] save up enough money to buy a house.

I don't know if I'm going to get there. But I do know that I am trying my hardest. I am making sacrifices on trips that I had planned with friends I canceled, or making decisions about whether or not to go out and get a pedicure with a friend. For a little bit, I was getting manicures cause it was fun.

But after two months I was like, as fun as this is, I can't maintain spending a hundred dollars on a pedicure. Every single month for this. And that was something that I decided not to do. But that one was easy because I wasn't getting manicures regularly before. October. I decided to do it once for fun before I went to New York.

And then when I came back from New York, I was like, Oh, I liked that. Let me do another set. And I wanted to continue it. I thought they were pretty. [00:18:00] I enjoyed it. But from a financial sacrifice perspective, I was like, this isn't getting me towards my goal. So I'm going to stop.

There are other things that I leaned into. Working on self restraint, self control. After my mom passed away in December of 2022, I became obsessed with buying books. And it's kind of been my comfort thing,

but books are expensive and I'm, oh my gosh, I go into Target and I just, I go by the book section and I look at them and I go, do I need it? Do I need it? Do I need it? And like, then the next thing I know, five or six of them are in my cart. The last few times I've gone to Target, I've walked to the book section because it makes me happy, but I haven't allowed myself to put one in my cart.

You know, if I want to get over, if I want to get the free shipping on something, [00:19:00] sometimes I'm tempted to buy more. But I literally have sat down and done the math and said, it's six bucks for shipping, 30 to add what I want to the cart. Do I really need to spend 30 for something that don't exactly need, but I want.

to save six dollars? The answer is no. So I pay for the shipping. Which is hilarious because we've all become so accustomed to this free shipping option that when we have to pay for shipping it's like a punch to the gut.

But I've been paying for shipping recently and I only buy things out of necessity. I'm working on my health right now. I'm working on fixing my thinning hair, correcting my acne because I stopped taking the medication. eating healthier, working out, and I've decided that those for me are where I want to put my money.

So when I go to buy [00:20:00] things and spend money on things, my first couple of questions right now are, does this get me closer to buying a house? If not, is it going to help with my health in the long run? If the answer to that is yes, then I ask myself, is this something that I need now? Or is it something I could try down the road?

Or maybe there's a sample size. Let me just buy a sample size right now to see if it works instead of the bigger bottle. If the answer to both of those questions is no, then I don't buy it. That's like my hard stop right now.

So this is what I mean by stop, ask yourself the questions, look at things, figure out where are you headed? And not just financially, but in life. Financially I'm trying to buy a house. Life wise I'm trying to become healthier all around. So I've got two goals that I'm headed towards this year. The [00:21:00] healthier, at the beginning, might cost me a little bit of money that's going to affect me getting a house, and that's okay.

It's not going to put a huge dent in affecting my house buying, but at least it's not being spent, the money's not being spent on something

that isn't going to get me anywhere. In any of my goals in life.

Look at your life, see where you're at, see where you want to go. Not just financially, but all areas. And then figure out what type of finances is it going to take to get there. As I said, I don't know if I'll achieve getting a house. But I'm gonna try really, really hard to get that. One year might be unrealistic.

I might need two years. But one, I'm going to work really hard on my end to make it happen, and two, I'm going to have conversations with my partner, with my family, with all the people around me to make sure that I'm going to work [00:22:00] We're headed in the direction that we want to go. My partner and I have a dream of getting out of this apartment complex.

He's working hard and I'm working hard.

So we'll check in periodically, have conversations. Where are you at? What does this realistically look like for you? Same goes with my family.

We're all headed in different directions right now, and that's okay,

but there's still a part of my inner circle that I want to make sure that the decision I make when it comes to buying a house, one makes me happy, two makes my partner happy, and three gives me access to my family. More than once a year. So what does that look like?

And from there, I'm going to continue Every single month twice a month looking at my finances And figuring out the areas that I need to rein in a little bit. Oh, I'm overspending in the [00:23:00] food department this month. Let me, let me put a pause on that.

I'm going out with friends too much. I accidentally bought ten books at Target. So there's these things that you get to look at. And like I said, you're not going to be perfect. And that's okay.

But watch your trends over time. You want to change this? Change it. See what happens.

Did it work? Did it not work? Okay, decide from there where you're going to go next. It's fun. It's not meant to be a straight line from point A to point Z. It's meant to be pause. Did you take a step back? Did you veer off to the left? Did you loop de loop around?

Okay, where are you going next? How do you get back on course? Because if you wait too long, and you keep messing up, the longer you're going to have to wait down the road to get there. But if you [00:24:00] catch it right away, and you say, Hey, this isn't working, let's fix it here. That window of fixing, if it's shorter, it means that that correction helps you get closer to your goal faster.

If it's a longer window before you fix it, the slower you'll get to your goal.

At the end of the day, Once you've organized and become intimate with your numbers, ask yourself where you want to go. Then ask yourself if what you're doing right now, is it working to get you there? If it's not, what do you have to change? Do you need more income? Okay, how do you get more income? Do you ask for a raise?

Do you ask for a promotion? Do you apply for a different job? Do you add on a secondary job, or do you need to cut back on your spending? Do you eat out less? Buy less books. That one's for me. Um, stop buying stuff on Amazon that you don't need, but you want.

Your goals, your dreams are [00:25:00] possible. As I said at the beginning, it might take you longer than you think, but in order to know that, you have to know where you're at.

You have to organize. You have to become familiar with your numbers. And you have to look at where you're at now and where you want to go and make decisions based off of that information.

I find it fun. I love coming up with different scenarios in my head. I love planning out those scenarios two, three years in advance. And I love sharing it with my partner and saying, if I did this, I could do this.

Does that always come to fruition in reality? No.

But it's fun to sit down and think about it, and it's fun to see where I can get, because every small change, every small step in the right direction, does make an impact.

So begin today. If you've already [00:26:00] organized, and if you've already started to familiarize yourself with the numbers, then I encourage you to think. The rest of this week about what it is that you truly want. And then over the weekend, when you have some free time, sit down and look at the numbers, massage them and see what you can do and have fun with it.

Come up with the most outlandish scenario. And see what's possible right now, and what isn't possible right now, and what you need to change in order to get there, and make it possible. Have fun with it. But also, take it seriously, because this is your money, and like I said, you have to be responsible and you have to be accountable to it.

So,

my question to you is, where are you headed? And what is it gonna take to get there? I know where I'm headed, and I know what I'm doing this weekend. I get my bonus paid out this week. I get my cost of living adjustment this week. [00:27:00] So. I'm spending my weekend organizing, familiarizing myself with my money and deciding what to do with it.

I wish you luck with everything and you know, as always, if you have any questions on any of this or you want to sit down and talk about it, my doors are open. I, I thrive at this. I, I thoroughly enjoy it. So if it's not fun for you and you want it to be, reach out to me. Let's make it happen. I wish you the best with your future goal planning.

And I will talk to you next week. Have a good week. Bye. [00:28:00]