Your Financial Toolkit for a Successful 2020
On the first episode of the New Year, Tim Ulbrich talks about 5 ways you can accelerate your financial plan in 2020. This episode is full of resources you can use to put these ideas into action.
Summary
Tim Ulbrich shares five tangible ways you can crush 2020 in this week’s episode.
1. Get Clearer on the So What
Getting clearer on the “so what” pushes you to dig deeper into finding your why. Why are you focusing on your financial plan or financial goals for 2020? Is it because you are wanting to create flexibility in your job or time? Are you wanting to radically give? Are you hoping to have more control or choice in your life?
2. Build or Modify the Road Map to Achieve Your Goals
When you are clear on your purpose, it’s time to put your plan in place. Without a monthly plan, it’s easy to find yourself in a position where your financial plan is happening to you rather than the other way around. Creating a plan and executing your budget are key.
3. Get a Side Hustle off the Ground
Having a side hustle isn’t only a way to bring in additional income to accelerate your financial goals, but it also allows you to fill the creative expression you might be craving. Plus, it can also satisfy that entrepreneurial itch you may have! If you have an idea in place, what barriers are you facing on taking it to the next level? If you don’t have any ideas on what your side hustle could be, what’s one next step you can take to figure it out?
4. Set One Stretch Goal for 2020
A stretch goal is one that seems out of reach, but you’d absolutely love it if you could achieve it. These types of goals allow you to think beyond what’s possible. Set one big, audacious stretch goal for 2020 and focus on visualizing it into action.
5. Get a Coach
The value of a financial planner isn’t in choosing the right investments or allowing you to have the best return as you can ultimately learn anything online now. Instead, a financial planner carries the most value as being your accountability partner and coach. They help to see the bigger picture of what you’re wanting to achieve and help get you there.
Mentioned on the Show
- Credible Home Mortgage Refinance
- Enter the New Years Giveaway
- YNAB
- Your Best Year Ever by Michael Hyatt
- 100 Side Hustles: Unexpected Ideas for Making Extra Money Without Quitting Your Day Job by Chris Guillebeau
- YFP 032: Find Your Why (Part 1): 3 Life Planning Questions w/ Tim & Jess Ulbrich
- YFP 033: Find Your Why (Part 2): The Path to Success w/ Tim & Jess Ulbrich
- YFP Planning
- YFP 028: New Year, New Budget
- 5 Steps to Creating Best Budget
- YFP Budget Template
- YFP 057: The Power of Automating Your Financial Plan
- Mvelopes
- Mint
- YFP Financial Fitness Test
- YFP Podcast
- YFP Blog
- YFP Facebook Group
- YFP 063: Intro to the Side Hustle Series
- YFP 126: Going Beyond Six Figures with Medical Writing w/ Brittany Hoffmann-Eubanks
- YFP 131: Secrets to Building a Successful Side Hustle w/ Eric Christianson
- The Miracle Morning: The Not-So-Obvious Secret Guaranteed to Transform Your Life (Before 8 AM) by Hal Elrod
- YFP 124: The Behavioral Investor w/ Dr. Daniel Crosby
- YFP 015: Financial Planning Series: Interview with Tim Baker – Part 1
- YFP 016: Financial Planning Series: Benefits of a Financial Planner – Part 2
- YFP 017: Financial Planning Series: Questions to Ask – Hiring a Planner – Part 3
- YFP 054: Why Fee-Only Financial Planning Matters
- YFP 055: Why You Should Care How a Financial Planner Charges
- Nuts and Bolts to Hiring a Financial Planner Guide
- Schedule a Free Discovery Call with YFP Planning
Episode Transcript
Tim Ulbrich: Hey, what’s up, everybody? Tim Ulbrich here, and excited to turn the page on the new year and a new decade. Wow, hard to believe here we are at the start of 2020. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m over the whole 20/20 vision thing. That seems to be trending over the past several years leading up to this year. So I’m going to spare you any of the cheesy references to having 20/20 vision or having a clear vision for the future. But we are going to talk about five tangible ways that you can crush 2020 and accelerate your financial plan. Now, many of these things we have talked about before on the show. However, I don’t know about you, but I know for me, sometimes it’s helpful to hear things more than once or presented in a different way. As I mentioned in the introduction, we have an awesome giveaway to go along with this episode to kick off the new year the right way. And for me and my financial plan, finding great resources and tools has been a big part of the success and of the learning along the way. So again, this giveaway includes five winners. We’re giving away for each of those winners a one-year YNAB subscription, a copy of “Your Best Year Ever” by Michael Hyatt, and a copy of “100 Side Hustles” by Chris Guillebeau. So if you’re interested in that awesome giveaway, head on over to YourFinancialPharmacist.com/giveaway, and you can enter to have a chance to win.
OK, in somewhat of a rapid-fire format, I’m going to walk through these five things, five steps that I think you can take sooner rather than later to make 2020 an awesome year and accelerate your financial plan. So let’s jump right in.
No. 1, get clear on the so what. No. 1 here, get clear on the so what. So you’ve likely heard us talk about before several times on the show about finding your financial why. And that is exactly what we are talking about here in point No. 1. Why does this topic of money even matter to you? It sounds like such a simple question. But if you have thought about this in depth before, you know it is not that simple. This is really the “So what?” question. So before we get too deep into the x’s and o’s of whether it’s budgeting or paying off debt, loan repayment strategies, how to save for the future and think about asset allocation, nerding out about compound growth and real estate investing, all of these different things, this question is “So what?” Why does this even matter? When we talk about financial freedom, why does financial freedom matter? What does this mean to you? What is the ultimate goal of achieving this path?
So to give you an idea of a few things that you may have heard myself, Tim Baker, Tim Church or other guests on the show talk about when it comes to finding your financial why or really answering this question of “So what?,” it’s things that we have heard before like to have flexibility over how you’re spending time or even how you’re spending your money, to be in a position of control, to be in a position of choice, to be able to achieve goals around giving, or to be able to radically give, to put yourself in a position to leave a legacy, to travel and see the world without worry or stress or regret. Maybe it’s to start a business or a movement or a foundation or a charity. So these are some ideas of the bigger the vision in terms of the “So what?” question that we talk so often about on the show. So yeah, we can do a nest egg calculation and figure out how much you need to get to the point of retirement or we can talk about how to aggressively pay off $150,000 or $200,000 of student loan debt. We can talk about how to set up a budget and exactly what a zero-based budget looks like. But what is the ultimate goal of doing this? And that is exactly what we’re talking about here in point No. 1 of getting clear on the “So what?”
So my question here for you today as we roll the calendar into 2020 is what is your financial why? What is your “So what?” And how do you get to the point of defining this if you haven’t yet done this? And so to help you get to that point, I’d recommend if you haven’t already listened to episodes 032 and 033, Tim Baker talks with Jess and I about this concept of finding your financial why. So again, that’s episodes 032 and 033 of which we’ll link to in the show notes. I would also recommend — again, we’ll link in the show notes — there are three life planning questions that we’ve referenced before on this show. These are really big questions, big philosophical questions that are designed to help you answer this question of this “So what?,” finding your financial why. So we’ll link to those questions, the article about those questions, that you can spend some time answering those.
And so my request for you here today, as we enter this new year, which is an opportunity to really set a new path forward, is to put your “So what?” or put your why on paper, say it out loud, and share it with those closest to you. And then revisit this often. So again, I know it’s so easy to want to jump into the specifics of what’s in front of you right now, whether that’s the budget, whether that’s making that next payment, whatever it would be. But really taking a few moments to take a step back if you have not done this before, and to put down on paper your “So what?,” your why, say it out loud, share it with those closest to you, and revisit that often. So that’s No. 1 here, getting clear on the “So what?”
No. 2, build or modify the road map to achieve your goals. Build or modify the road map to achieve your goals. So once you get clear on the purpose, the “So what?” or the why, it’s time to put a monthly plan in place that will simply be the execution plan to see that your goals and vision become a reality. And that’s essentially the budget, the spending plan, and that’s how I like to think of the budget. It’s not necessarily overly complicated, overwhelming, restrictive, do I have to? type of activity, but rather it’s the execution plan of your goals. And we all know how months and at times, years, can fly by. I’m certainly feeling that lately with four young children. And without a monthly road map, without a monthly plan, without a monthly budget, it’s easy to find yourself in a position where your financial plan is happening to you rather than you dictating and directing what your plan is. You know, and credit here to Tim Baker. He does such a great job of this when he’s doing financial planning with clients — and I know I can speak to this firsthand with the planning he has done with Jess and I — one of the very first activities we did is that “So what?,” that why activity and really identifying what’s most important to us. And if we fast forward five or 10 years, you know, what should be happening that we would say, “You know what, things are going well, things are a success when it comes to making sure that we’re spending our money in the places that matter the most to us.” And then we really get into the spending plan and the budget. But he often then comes back to say, “OK, here’s where you’re spending the money. Here’s the budget. But here was the ‘So what?,’ the why we talked about. And does this picture, does this vision, align?” And often what we see is that again, it’s easy that time goes by quickly, it’s easy to get caught up in the month-to-month and sure enough, soon we find ourself in a different direction where the spending plan isn’t necessarily aligned with the vision and the goals. And I think that’s really one of the many values of having a coach in your corner to keep you on track.
So for those of you looking to either start, restart, reinvigorate, refresh your budget, I would encourage you to check out a few different resources: Episode 028 of this podcast, we talked about a budget, just actually I think two years ago. It was called “New Year, New Budget.” We also have a great article that walks you step-by-step, including a budget template that you can download. And that article is “Five Steps to Creating Your Best Budget.” We’ll link to that in the show notes. And then as a next step, as a follow-up once you get that budget template in place, in Episode 057, we talked extensively about how you automate your financial plan. So once you have that plan set, then how do you make sure that is happening each and every month and ultimately getting your own self out of the way so you can ensure success with that plan you set.
So you know, some resources here, obviously we’re highlighting one in our giveaway, and that’s the You Need a Budget software, relatively inexpensive. So whether it’s You Need a Budget, whether it’s another paid budgeting service like Envelopes, there’s certainly several others that are out there or maybe it’s a free tool like Mint.com, maybe it’s an old school spreadsheet that you do this manually, whatever the resource would be, it’s about finding a system that works for you. And so I would encourage you to check out our budget template, YourFinancialPharmacist.com/budget, you can download for free a zero-based budgeting template. And then that will help you get started. And then you can automate that into whatever tool works best for you. I would also point out — and credit here goes to Tim Church — we recently released a great tool that is essentially a financial checkup, financial assessment to see how you’re doing overall with your personal financial plan. So if you go to YourFinancialPharmacist.com, you’ll see that there on the main page. You can go through a series of some quick questions. Tim Church has done a great job of making that easy, quick, he’s put some humor in there. And then essentially, that will help you identify what are the areas that need the most attention when it comes to your financial plan. So if you’re trying to think about does my budget really reflect the areas that I need to be thinking about that may need the most attention, that tool will really help get you there. So again, if you go to YourFinancialPharmacist.com, you’ll see there that we have a tool — and we’ll link to it in the show notes as well — that will help you essentially do your financial fitness test is what we’re referring to.
OK, so that’s No. 2. And that is No. 2, build or modify the road map to achieve your goals.
No. 3 is get a side hustle off the ground. And again, that’s a book here that we’re highlighting as a resource and a giveaway. So yes, yes, the side hustle is by far one of the trendiest movements of the last decade or so and certainly something that we’ve been talking about extensively over the past couple years. So if you’ve been a part of our community for awhile, whether it’s on the podcast, in the blogs, in the Facebook group, you’ve probably heard us talk about side hustles and you know that we have a love for side hustles. And we think that for many, side hustles are a way to not only bring in additional income so that you can accelerate your financial goals and achieving those goals but also allows you to have a creative expression and allows you to work on something that is a passion of yours beyond the traditional 9-5 type of work. And so I think for many, I know this is true for myself, this can really satisfy the entrepreneurial itch that you might have but also can help you achieve your financial goals even faster. And we’ve got some great stories, people in this community that we’ve featured on the podcast, that people have started part-time side hustles and ultimately have turned those into full-time gigs, people that are continuing to do part-time gigs while they’re working full-time and is just something that they really love, but they’ve used it as a way to generate additional income. So I’d love to see when pharmacists are able to leverage the expertise and passion they have in their field and fill the needs that they’re seeing and their patience with the creation of a side hustle as well.
So a couple resources I would mention here. Episode 063 of the podcast — again, we’ll link to these in the show notes — we did an introduction to the side hustle series. Again, Tim Church did this, has done a great job with this. Episode 126, recently published, Brittany Hoffman-Eubanks is a great example. That episode is called “Going Beyond Six Figures Through Medical Writing,” has done a great job of really starting and scaling a side hustle business. And then recently, Eric Christianson came on the show, creator of Med Ed 101, in Episode 131 to talk about the secrets to building a successful side hustle. I would also obviously point you to the resource we have highlighted in our giveaway, “100 Side Hustles: Unexpected Ideas for Making Extra Money Without Quitting Your Day Job,” and that’s by Chris Guillebeau.
So my call to action here for you, my hopefully motivation to get you going in this area if this is something that you’ve thought about. For those that have already have a side hustle in place, you know, have you validated the idea and the business need? And if so, what’s the game plan to grow it? So maybe some of you have started something and for whatever reason, it stayed status quo and you feel like it’s been a good idea but you’re in somewhat of an autopilot mode. Have you validated the idea and the need for that business or that side hustle? If not, what’s the game plan to validate that? How could you do that? And if you have done that, what’s keeping you back from growing that? And what’s the game plan to really grow and scale that? Now, for those that have an idea but have not started the side hustle, what is holding you back? That’s really the question I want you to reflect upon. Have you identified whatever that barrier may be? And what will it take to knock down that barrier? Maybe it’s even multiple barriers that are in place. And who is going to keep you accountable to moving forward? So I think I felt this when I started Your Financial Pharmacist back in 2015. I know at first when you have an idea, you tend to want to keep it quiet and you’re not sure if it’s going to work and you’re not sure what other people will think. But I think there’s real value in talking it out loud with people that you trust and respect their perspective that not only can help you think through the idea but also can help you keep you accountable moving forward to get that off the ground, encourage you, and even to challenge you in a positive way. And I think that ultimately will make your idea and your side hustle or business even better.
Now, for those that maybe don’t even have an idea or maybe are thinking through this at a very early state, you know, my challenge to you would be is what’s the game plan to learn more? What’s the next step you can take to be able to be one step closer in this first part of 2020 to getting something off the ground. So you know, what are you listening to and reading to that can help stimulate more ideas? Who will you reach out to this year that has done this well to pick their brain and learn more? And so I think with side hustles, again, we featured several stories already on the show and we have more planned for 2020. I think it’s helpful to hear others’ stories, even it’s not directly related to whatever idea or interest you may have yourself. So if you’re just in the early stages of this, the challenge really is what are you listening to, what are you reading, what can you be reading or listening to? And who will you reach out to that you can pick their brain and get some additional insights and information? So that’s No. 3, hopefully get a side hustle off the ground or take some steps to be in that direction.
No. 4 is set one stretch goal for 2020. Now, you’ve likely heard of this concept of a stretch goal before. But if not, the idea is setting a goal that seems perhaps out of reach, maybe too audacious, too unrealistic, despite it being something that if you were to achieve, you would say, “Heck yes, that was awesome.” So the idea is that setting a stretch goal allows you to begin to think beyond what you believe is possible and really starts to help you visualize what it would take to knock down those self-limiting beliefs that often hold us back from our true potential. And of course, the power of setting a goal and visualizing a goal then becomes the increased likelihood of achieving that goal. And for those of you that have set goals and visualized goals, you know exactly what I’m talking about. You might them on paper, and you look at them at first, and you say, “That’s bold. I’m not sure how I’m going to get there. And then you start thinking about them, more and more you visualize them, you relook at them, maybe it’s daily or weekly. And all of a sudden, you’re beginning to just train your mind to say, this went from a “I hope” to “How will I get this goal achieved?”
So now, we obviously know that there’s a time and place for setting realistic goals. After all, if we set a bunch of goals that we didn’t achieve, we would likely get pretty frustrated pretty fast. We’d get defeated, and we might move on from this whole goal-setting thing. So here we are talking about one additional bold, audacious goal in addition to the other goals that you have planned for 2020. So of course we want those realistic goals, you know, those goals that we look at our budget, we look at our numbers, we look at our direction of our net worth and our plan and say, “OK. We think we’re going to be able to achieve those.” But here, we’re talking about one additional bold, audacious goal. So maybe it’s something like paying off an extra $10,000 on your debt this year beyond what you think is possible when you look at the numbers. Maybe it’s buying your first real estate investment property, despite not knowing a whole lot about what’s involved and where the cash will come from. Perhaps it’s maxing out your 401k or 403b contributions in 2020, $19,500, although you thought you’d be only able to contribute up to whatever your employer match provides. Maybe it’s giving 10% or 20% or 30% of your income to something that you care about, despite looking at the current numbers and saying, “How am I going to do that?” Or perhaps it’s taking a bold step to start your own business, despite your fears of, you know, what if this fails? Or what will others think? Or I don’t consider myself to be a business-savvy person, so why even bother?
So again, I think there’s lots of resources out there that can help in this direction. And one that I would point to that really has had a profound impact in my life is the book “Miracle Morning” by Hal Alrod. And whether you’re a morning person or not, this idea of establishing a daily routine that includes things like setting goals and visualizing those goals, that includes things like reflecting on your day and gratitude and having a place for silence or meditation or prayer, having a routine and a plan in place, especially at a time when you have potentially a busy professional and personal life is incredibly important when it comes to this topic of setting big goals and achieving those goals. And I would recommend that resource, it’s a quick read, it’s a great system you can implement, “Miracle Morning” by Hal Alrod.
So my challenge to you here is to set one big, audacious goal for 2020. So for Jess and I, our big goal for 2020 is to buy four more rental properties this year. Now, I don’t know exactly how we’re going to get there. We were able to achieve our initial goal in 2019 of getting one property, thanks to the help of many others that were able to wrap around their expertise and really provide us with their time and their wisdom and help us get there. We wouldn’t have gotten there alone. So four is a big stretch goal. I really don’t know exactly how we’re going to get there, but we need to be thinking about it. We know this is a goal for our family for a variety of reasons. And so we initially talked about two, and we decided the stretch goal for 2020 is going to be four. So we’ll see where it goes, and that’s the big goal that we have for 2020. So No. 4 again here, we’re talking about setting one big stretch goal for 2020.
Now No. 5 is get a coach. And I think it’s fitting here that we have this as No. 5 because in order to do all the things that we’ve talked about, these are big things we’re talking about for 2020 when we talk about Nos. 1-5, getting clear on your “So what?” or your why; building or modifying your monthly plan to get there, obviously that’s the budget piece we talked about; getting a side hustle off the ground; and setting a big, audacious goal for 2020. We can see here in No. 5 why a coach could be so valuable. And what we really see when it comes to coaching as it relates to personal finance is that the evidence is getting more and more clear that a financial planner, a financial advisor, a financial coach, their value really is not to help you choose the right investments or to get the best returns because ultimately, we live in a world here in 2020 where you can pretty much learn anything that you want. And what the evidence is really showing, specific even to investing, is that the more passive you are in that process, typically the better the returns that you will have. So a financial planner, in my opinion — and we offer financial planning, so this obviously is front and center for us — it’s not about hiring a financial planner like us to be able to say, “OK, we’re going to outperform the market,” or “We’re going to help you choose the best investments that are going to beat another financial planner.” Now, we obviously want to have success in that area, and we’re going to help you fine-tune your investments, but that’s just one part of the financial plan. And when you think about this bigger picture, the why, the “So what?,” the budget, all the goals that are swirling around, a financial planner and the value of a financial planner is really having an accountability partner and a coach in the process that can help you prioritize and achieve all of these different goals that are out there.
And I can speak firsthand that the power of this and working with Tim, as Jess and I have worked with him over the past couple years. Now, this also reminds me of Episode 124, where we talked with Dr. Daniel Crosby, the author of “The Behavioral Investor,” somebody who studies behavioral psychology for a living. And really what I took away from his book and his interview is that at the end of the day, the two most important things that you can do when it comes to your financial plan is to automate your financial plan, which we talk about extensively on Episode 057, and to hire a coach to help ensure that No. 1 barrier, which is often yourself, isn’t getting in the way of having success with your financial plan. Automation and a coach. And that has exactly been my experience as I reflect back on the past several years. Automating our financial plan and having a coach has helped us to achieve our financial goals.
Other episodes that I would highlight here that you could get additional information, episodes 015, 016, and 017, Tim Baker and I did an entire series on financial planning and the different types of planners that are out there, questions to ask financial planners, how they get paid. In Episode 054, we talked about the importance of fee-only and fiduciary and why that matters. And in Episode 055, we talked about why you should care how a financial plan charges. We also have a great resource if this is something you’ve been thinking about, here we are at the turn of the new year, not a better time to make this decision, to make this a priority in 2020. We have a guide we have created, which is nuts and bolts to hiring a financial planner. And you can get more information and download that guide for free at YourFinancialPharmacist.com/nutsandbolts. And if you are somebody listening today that is ready to take this step or ready to learn more to say, is this the right fit for me? Please head on over to YFPPlanning.com, again, that’s YFPPlanning.com, and you can schedule a free discovery call with Tim Baker where you can talk out loud what our services look like, talk more about your specific financial plan, and determine whether or not it’s a good fit for you going forward. And again, that’s a free discovery call. And you can get that going at YFPPlanning.com.
So before we wrap up today’s episode, I want to remind you again about the giveaway that we’re doing for this month. We’re giving away five winners each a one-year YNAB subscription, a copy of “Your Best Year Ever” by Michael Hyatt, and a copy of “100 Side Hustles” by Chris Guillebeau. You can go to YourFinancialPharmacist.com/giveaway to enter that today.
So here we are in 2020. We’ve got a fresh start ahead for this new year. And I hope you will consider these five things that we talked about as a way to have a successful 2020. And of course here, with these five or others that you think about, it’s all about being intentional with your financial plan, all about dictating your financial plan rather than letting that financial situation happen to you. And so I think it’s important to look back on 2019, to look at the trends, to look at the successes, maybe look at the challenges or failures as well. But looking back, while that is important, I don’t think we want to dwell too much on 2019. We need to look ahead to 2020 and say, “What did we learn? What went well? What can we replicate? What can we do a little bit differently? And what’s the game plan going forward for this year so that at the end of 2020, we will look back and be able to say, ‘Job well done?’”
So I hope you have a great rest of your week. Thank you so much for joining me on this week’s episode of the Your Financial Pharmacist podcast. And as always, if you like what you heard on this week’s episode and you have not done so already, please take some time to leave us a rating and review in iTunes. We’d greatly appreciate that as that will help others find our show. Have a great rest of your week.
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