Good Financial Reads: How to Craft Your Goals & Make Personal Finance Decisions

Strategic Planning for Your Finances: Use This 5-Stage Process

by Eric Roberge, Beyond Your Hammock

In this episode of the Beyond Finances podcast, we’re talking about strategic planning for your money.

We’ll dig into what a formalized financial planning process actually looks like, and take you through the inner workings of the framework and systems we use at Beyond Your Hammock to help people use their money as a tool to get more of what they want in life – now and into the future.

This is a multi-part series to explore all 5 stages of the strategic process you can use for your own money:

Stage 1: Setting goals, clarifying priorities, and stating values
Stage 2: Building out a formal plan and choosing specific strategies
Stage 3: Developing investment strategies (the engine of financial growth over time!)
Stage 4: Protecting yourself, your family, and your assets
Stage 5: Measuring, managing, and maintaining your financial plan on an ongoing basis

This episode covers stages 1 and 2… while also taking a moment to get grounded in the why behind all this process and planning talk.

Your wealth doesn’t grow by accident. It grows with intention, care, and deliberate effort.

[Listen to the Podcast]

Become the (Female) Millionaire Next Door: 5 Small Steps to Take Today to Retire in Comforta Summer Bucket List

by Michelle Francis, Life Story Financial

What does the word “millionaire” conjure up for you?

If you’re picturing private jets, yachts, and couture…then this isn’t the blog for you. For my “millionaire” clients (some of the most unassuming people I know), it’s about setting yourself up for retirement while still enjoying life today.

Unfortunately, statistics show that women have a longer way to go to catch up to men when it comes to their income in retirement. Though women are becoming more financially empowered these days, retirement savings isn’t yet at the top of the list.

Here are some small steps you can take today to close this gap and eventually become the female millionaire next door:

1. Develop a Millionaire Mindset
2. Steadily Increase Your Income: Ask for a Raise Every Year or Pay Yourself First if You're a Business Owner
3. Avoid Consumer Debt and Take on Other Debt Responsibly
4. Invest Early and Often: The Power of Compound Interest
5. Live Under Your Means (or Within Them, at Least) 

[Read the Full Article]

Economists Versus(?) Financial Planners, Part 3: Housing, and Weirdos

by Britton Gregory, Seaborn Financial

Let's finish up our discussion on the Freakonomics podcast episode on economists and personal finance, shall we? In part 1 and part 2 , we covered a wide range of topics, from consumption smoothing to dividend investing to debt snowballs; now, let's wrap things up with a couple of thoughts on housing -- and personal finance in general!

Expect to hear insights on the following:

• Should I pay off my house early?
• Renting forever
• On being a weirdo

[Read the Full Article]

Your Financial Success May Come Down To Knowing One Critical Thing About Yourself

by Eric Roberge, Beyond Your Hammock

Everyone wants to reach a level of financial success that allows them to flourish, now and in the future. And I’d argue that’s points to a great starting point if you want to define what wealth actually is:

Wealth is having the resources you need to experience want at every stage of your life.

Most people focus on the question of how do you enjoy that kind of financial success for yourself. A lot of financial advice, in turn, focuses on the mechanics of building wealth.

That’s important—but it’s not the whole story.

Yes, you have to know how to earn, save, and invest money if you want to increase your net worth. That’s the “how” and there’s no shortage of content online that will try to teach you that.

What most of this how-to advice misses, however, is what and why.

If wealth is, as Morgan Housel puts it in the Psychology of Money, being able to do what you want when you want it for as long as you want, then we have to know what we want in the first place.

That brings us to an overlooked but critical part of financial planning to grow wealth: knowing not just your goals, but how you shoud prioritize those in the context of your money and your priorities.

[Read the Full Article]

Following along with the blogs of financial advisors is a great way to access valuable, educational information about finance — and it doesn’t cost you a thing! Our financial planners love to share their knowledge and help everyone regardless of age or assets.