At Financial Journey Partners, you will often hear us say that “we help our clients make smart decisions and align their money with their goals so they can Enjoy the Journey.” In this blog, we will take a closer look at what we mean when we say that “we help our clients align their money with their goals.” We believe it is important to make your money work for you, helping you to reach your goals. In some cases, making the wrong decisions with your money can leave you further from achieving your goals. As we start 2025, let’s take a closer look at aligning your money with your goals and we will give some tips and examples that may help you.
In this blog, we will discuss
- Start with Your Values
- What Are My Goals?
- How Do I Know If I Am on The Right Track?
- Avoid Temptation
- Taking Action
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Start with Your Values
When it comes to money, we encourage folks to think about their core values. Why is this so important? Because our values drive everything we do in life. They have a profound impact on our lives by the decisions we make.
We believe that an excellent place to start when thinking about one’s values is by asking, “What do I want my money to do for me?” We often hear responses like, “I want to maintain my current lifestyle” or “I don’t want to run out of money.” Thinking about this further, we’ve also heard comments such as, “Money gives me a feeling of security and financial freedom.” And occasionally, we hear “I want to use my money to make the world a better place.”
Great. Now ask yourself: Why are financial freedom and security and for a few, bettering the world important? Maybe it’s because you want to take care of your family and friends, or you want to leave the world better than you found it for future generations. Now ask again: Why? You may realize it’s because that is your purpose in life or because it brings you happiness. Each person is unique, and their answers will be unique as well.
What Are My Goals?
After considering your values and what is important to you, it’s time to consider your goals, both short and long-term. We’re talking about goals in all areas of your life. This includes goals for yourself, your family, your career, the groups you belong to, your finances, and the causes you are passionate about. Timeframes for your goals can be the next 90 days, one year, three years, or the remainder of your life.
Elaine and Scott have the family ritual of updating their one-year goals on January 1st of each year. It’s a great time to reflect on how much has been accomplished in the past year and to re-evaluate the unfinished goals to see if it makes sense to keep them on the list, delete them, or replace them with something that means even more.
We encourage you to think big, review the first draft of your goals and ask yourself, can I think bigger? Ask yourself, what would I want for my goals if anything were possible? If you look at your list of goals and you feel excited and inspired, then you’re on the right track.
How Do I Know If I Am on The Right Track?
Once you have clarified your values and goals, it is time to build the plans and take the actions to help you reach your goals. As you make each financial decision, ask yourself: is this in alignment with my values and will it help me reach my goals? As we have worked with clients over the past decades, we have seen situations where they were making decisions with their money that were not in alignment with their values and goals. In some cases, the decisions being made were sending them in a direction further away from reaching their goals.
A great way to start is to create a spending budget that allows you to pay all your monthly bills, plus enough additional money to fund your goals. In addition to creating a spending budget, our experience working with clients has shown us that it is important to regularly review your spending to stay within your allotment. If you are not within your plan, then it is important to identify the situations where you are spending more than you designated.
For those who are still in the working part of your life, a goal should be to spend within your budget. Furthermore, there should be enough money to fund your goals and to retire with a lifestyle of your preference. For those who are retired, spending within your budget should help you avoid running out of money in your later years. Managing your budget and spending can be made much simpler with online tools that download and categorize your expenses. At Financial Journey Partners, we provide an excellent software tool to help our clients do this. We recommend everyone find a tool that works for you to make managing your spending and budget easy and efficient.
Avoid Temptation
One of the most prevalent problems occurs when no budget exists. We live in a world filled with temptations—delicious food, stunning luxuries, exotic travels, cutting-edge technology, thrilling experiences, championship sports, sleek cars, addictive apps, and more. The urge to spend is constant and often irresistible, whether someone makes too much money or not enough.
But when we take the time to align our money with our true goals, we gain clarity about what genuinely brings us happiness and purpose. These insights empower us to resist the pull of daily takeout, the latest must-have gadget, or impulse buys that derail our bigger dreams.
Yes, indulging in the moment feels satisfying, but too many impulsive choices can quietly pull us further from what truly matters. Financial discipline isn’t about deprivation— the key is to set spending goals for necessary monthly expenses, recreation, charitable giving, financial goals and retirement. Then monitor your saving and spending to make sure you remain on track.
Taking Action
Some people are very successful managing their finances on their own. We have written two books to help you with your finances so you can achieve your goals.
These books explain the FJP Retirement FrameworkTM, designed to walk you through the important areas to consider for your finances. Both books include exercises to help you complete each of the important steps. Each book comes with a free workbook that can be downloaded from our website to record your answers.
If you are facing challenges with how you spend your money and aligning your money with your goals, we encourage you to get help from a financial professional. Elaine, Scott and Linda are also happy to answer questions and provide a second opinion about your financial situation. For our clients at Financial Journey Partners, if you have questions about your specific situation, please talk with your Wealth Manager and we are happy to help you.
We are here to help you make smart decisions to align your money with your goals so you can Enjoy the Journey.
Be a Part of Bringing Our Next Book to Life!
Are you, or someone you know between the ages of 25 to 55? If so, we need your help! We are writing our next book targeted at this age group. We are conducting a survey and will incorporate the results into the book. Go to: financialjourney.com/book-survey to complete your survey today. Thank you!
Financial Journey Partners - Partners in Your Financial Journey®
Our Financial Journey Partners office is based in San Jose, California. We have clients that live in many states across the country. If you have questions about your investments or financial situation, call us to schedule time to talk about your specific situation.
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