This post is 726 words a 4-minute read.
One of the reasons most of us suck with money is because we have NO VISIONS or GOALS for our money. We have never taken the time to decide what we want our lives to look like.
You might be wondering what does vision have to do with money.
Having a strong vision of what you want your life to look like makes decision-making much easier. It removes a lot of the stress we all feel when there are decisions to be made. Examples:
Do I pay off this low-interest debt or invest this bonus I just got?
Do I take this higher-paying role that will have more responsibility?
The answers to those questions can look very different based on the life each person wants to live.
For a person whose vision is to be completely debt-free, they'll forever decide to use the money to pay off the debt. For someone else, they'll see investing as the way to go because they want to maximize their return.
For a person for whom spending time with family is important, taking a job that will take away from their family time would be an automatic HELL NO! Because they know what is important and priority for them.
Having a vision is like having an internal navigation system that helps direct your life. You struggle less choosing to ignore the popular and seemingly obvious directions everyone else wants you to go.
The danger of not having a vision is perfectly summed up with this quote, "A man without principles [vision] is like a leaf in the wind."
Or as my pops would say, "If you don't believe anything, the world will give you something to believe."
Proverbs put it the best way in chapter 29 verse 18.
Where there is no vision, the people perish
When you have no vision for your life, you give up the agency of your life. You allow society to decide everything you live for. This is why so many people live with regrets because they never decided what they wanted life to be. They followed a script that was given to them without asking the question, "Is this script made for me or anyone?"
The irony is most of us believe we are bucking the trend. We believe we are going against the scripts of society. When in reality we are following it to a tee, self-included!
The question we have to ask is WHAT DO I WANT?
And we have to face the fear from within that keeps us from answering that question. The fear comes in two forms:
Fear of not being able to accomplish what we say
Fear of being boxed in to stay with the vision.
My answer to both those fears (which I struggle with as well) is:
The striving for a seemingly impossible thing is more beautiful than you can imagine. We need something bigger than ourselves to keep us pushing. Important to distinguish between goals and visions.
Your vision should change as life changes. You are not beholden to a younger you who had no idea what life had in store for you. This is why I'm big on killing old dreams that no longer serve me.
It's important to note.
Vision is what you direct your path with. Goals are things that you accomplish along the way on your path.
Some goals are small ie save $1000.
Some goals are big: Financial Independence.
However; a goal in itself doesn't do anything if it is not helping you push towards the life you want for yourself.
If you struggle with answering the question of what you want, here are a few recommendations that helped me.
Every month do a review of what you loved in the month and what you didn't.
As you start defining your life vision please write it down. Then do a quarterly review of how often you're able to live the life you want. Slowly remove things that aren't part of the life you want. By doing that, you'll soon realize just how much of your money is freed up to be used for the things you want to be doing.
This is the vision I have of my work life:
I want to lead a group of folks to creative solutions to various energy problems
I want to regularly see those I work with improving as we work together
I want to be able to work with people on their finances outside of my 9-5
I want to join a board in education, non-profit, and business
I want to get paid to speak and write on personal finance
I have visions for my life with family and friends. A vision of the wife that I wanted. A vision of the experiences I want to have. A vision of my faith life and how I want to walk that out. Having a vision has allowed me to make a bit better decisions. To get better at letting some things go and welcoming in other things.
I would love to hear the visions some of you have for your lives. If you are willing to please reply to this newsletter and let me hear some of them. I would love to take a week of the newsletter to share those visions with everyone. Because I believe sometimes we need someone to tell us, it is okay to dream. Reading or seeing someone else doing what we dream, permits us to pursue the same.
Thanks for reading
Remember Generosity>greed
God Bless You
✌🏾
Recommended Reads
Morgan Housel is my favorite writer and speaker. I never knew that he struggled with stuttering. He details his struggles in a post from 2017, Overcoming Your Demons. So powerful!!
A new podcast I am loving is called 50Fires. It is by Carl Richards, a recovering Financial Planner and Advisor, who although could help other people with their finances. Had a difficult time talking about money with his wife and children. It has quickly become one of my most anticipated podcast to listen to every week.
Katie Gatti Tassin answers the question Does Focusing on Systemic Issues Create a "Victim Mentality"? I loved this quote from the blog post, “You can confine your scope of concern to individual advice, but you will never be operating outside the bounds of objective reality [because we live in a society]”