What’s Your One Page Financial Plan? Mapping out Your Future

Today, this is the first question Carl Richards asks his clients and it’s exactly what I was left asking myself just a few weeks ago — “Why the heck does money even matter?? What is it really doing for me??”

Sure, money is great for keeping food on the table, clothes on our backs, and a roof over our heads, but what about when we have those staples covered? What else is money really good for? That’s a question that no one can answer for you, and it’s why Carl leads with this line of questioning when he’s in front of his clients for the first time.

Within the book, as Mr. Richards presented the question to a middle-aged couple, the woman (after quite a long pause of deep thought) responded:

“Freedom”

Carl, sensing they needed to go deeper, prodded and encouraged her to provide a clearer answer.

“More time.”

“Tell me more,” Carl said with a smile.

The woman glanced meekly at her husband…

“I want to start a family”

Mr. Hubby was surprised. She was such a hard-charging woman in the workforce, he didn’t figure she wanted to start a family for at least five more years…if ever. Now they had their main financial goal – to work themselves into a position to start a family – both with their money and their time.

You’ve got to do the same thing. Think of your main goal in life – why money is important to you. Then dig deeper, and perhaps deeper again. Get down to your real reasons and write them down with a sharpie on a full sheet of paper.

We’ve got that $122k chilling in the bank just waiting to make a massive down-payment on the perfect property once it hits the market. The rest of the money will come from the sale of our primary house (which will likely net us another $170k or so). This way, we’ll own our property outright and be able to keep stacking up cash for future investments (ie. 401k contributions and rental properties).

So, in 12 years I’d love to have the option to retire. I likely won’t, but life sure would be freeing if I knew that I was owned by no one! How are we doing it? $800 a month into our 401k and $2,000 a month toward rental properties. I haven’t done the exact math on this yet, but it seems doable.

This is why I probably wouldn’t retire. My current job is uber flexible. I can work at home, I can work in the office, I can work in a coffee shop. Days, nights – it really doesn’t matter as long as I’m getting my work done and excelling in what I do. And, I absolutely love my employer.

We’ve already gotten a jump on this. We have $3,000 saved for Addi already and she’s only two. We’ll start to fund baby boy’s private education soon as well. Our goal is to always stay two years ahead of the costs (ie. $16,000 stashed in an account at all times for each of them). To do this, we’ll need to start putting $750-$1,000 a month from now until they’re…16 and 18 years old. Sheesh. I didn’t really realize the cost of this private tuition until this moment! (*gulp*) Good thing we don’t have any debt payments!!

This one sounds complex, but thankfully my college investment calculator makes it easy. We’re investing $150 a month into a 529 plan to fund half of their college education (that’s right, we’re those evil parents that think their kids should actually work for their education…).

This is basically our reminder to ourselves not to work so hard while our kids are growing up. We make plenty of money to fund our lives in the present and invest for the future, so what’s the purpose of working more hours? There is none, so stop, spend time as a family, and relish the memories.

Check. Already doing it. I’m the finance lead for fantastic new products in an amazing company. And, I change lives with blog articles like this. It’s a beautiful thing. 🙂

Another reminder to have fun and make memories as a family. I get nearly 4 weeks of vacation a year, so why not take a solid 2 weeks during those cold winter months to head south? We did it last year and it was awesome…Our tickets are already booked for next year!

Being a stay-at-home mom isn’t easy, so we put this down as a reminder to touch base each year to see if it’s still the right move for my wife. For now it is, and we couldn’t love it more!