RPF0681-How_To_Set_Financial_Goals_Part_1
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00:03:26.960 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,
00:03:30.640 | skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now while
00:03:34.960 | building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less. And today, my friend,
00:03:40.240 | we kick off a series that I am just flat out stinking excited about because we are coming up
00:03:46.800 | on a new year. Today is December 2, 2019. 2019 is almost over. 2020 is almost here. And I love the
00:03:56.080 | turning of the years. I love the turning of the seasons. There's just so much meaning and impact
00:04:01.120 | for me when you roll over another milestone. And this one is especially exciting because it's the
00:04:06.880 | turn of a decade. And since my entire show, I lead every day with saying how do we get,
00:04:12.640 | how to build a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less. This is the decade, my friend.
00:04:17.360 | This is the decade. And I want to be, I want you to be looking back when we're sitting down
00:04:23.280 | together talking, maybe we'll still be talking on a microphone, who knows, maybe it'll be
00:04:27.520 | a virtual reality hologram in your eyeballs with special contact lenses that you wear,
00:04:32.640 | eye contact that you wear around. And that's how I'm talking to you. However, we're communicating,
00:04:37.760 | when we're communicating a decade from now on December 1, 2029, and we're reflecting back over
00:04:43.120 | this past decade, I want you to look back and say, that was the decade in which I lived with passion.
00:04:51.920 | That was the decade in which I soaked up all of the richness and the beauty that life has to offer
00:04:57.040 | me. That was the decade where simultaneously I achieved financial freedom and I'm living a
00:05:04.720 | lifestyle of complete and total abundance. That's my goal for you. And I am dedicated to being here,
00:05:11.840 | to working with you, to doing my very best to share anything that I can with you toward that
00:05:19.120 | end. And so in celebration of that theme, as we kick off December here, we're going to be talking
00:05:23.760 | about a lot related to that. And I want to start today by talking about goal setting. I want to
00:05:30.320 | talk about financial goal setting, how to set financial goals. And today we're going to deal
00:05:36.400 | with this in kind of a fuzzy way, meaning I'm not going to get into the specific numbers or things
00:05:41.440 | like that. I want to give you a big picture idea, just imprint a couple of important concepts on
00:05:47.840 | your brain to help you as we go forward in this series. But you've got to start to think
00:05:55.760 | about goals. Now, many of us have set goals and failed. Guess what that makes you? Human.
00:06:04.640 | Because all of us have been there. There's nothing all that unique about setting goals and failing.
00:06:10.800 | We've all done that. That's part of the process. But some people quit and I don't want you to quit.
00:06:16.240 | And so I just want to hopefully encourage you for a couple of minutes about the importance of goals,
00:06:20.880 | and most importantly, about the importance of financial goals. Financial goals are a little
00:06:25.360 | bit weird because a lot of people feel a little strange setting financial goals. Some people don't
00:06:30.480 | even set financial goals because they'd never thought that they could. But some people feel
00:06:34.880 | strange setting financial goals. Maybe they thought, "Well, money is not that important to me.
00:06:40.560 | After all, there's more important things than money." Well, yeah, there are. The problem is
00:06:45.120 | that almost all of the important things require money. Money is at the root of almost any other
00:06:50.560 | goal. You name me the goal. I challenge you. You name me the goal that you have that doesn't
00:06:57.840 | involve money in some way. The only one I came up with was a number of years ago, I set a goal to
00:07:03.600 | build more intimacy in my relationship with my wife. And I started tracking how many times I
00:07:08.240 | hugged her every day. And I would keep a little checklist of, "Okay, hug my wife, hug my wife,
00:07:11.920 | hug my wife." Okay, it didn't cost me any money to hug my wife. But I tell you what, as soon as I
00:07:16.400 | went beyond just hugging my wife and went to date night, all of a sudden, money came into the
00:07:22.480 | picture. Am I really going to spend that much money on a restaurant? Or am I really going to
00:07:26.160 | hire a babysitter? Am I really going to buy a fancy steak and cook at a home for her? What am
00:07:30.320 | I going to do? All of a sudden, money's there, even in the simplest things. And it doesn't even
00:07:34.400 | have to be a lot of money. My wife and I have great dates all the time where we spend almost
00:07:38.720 | nothing. She's cheap. It's great. I love it. It's a wonderful thing about her. But still,
00:07:44.640 | money's involved. And money's involved in almost everything, especially when you start to think
00:07:49.600 | about living a rich life and you start to think about developing those peak experiences.
00:07:53.600 | One of the things, I was going to share this later, but one of the things I'm excited to start,
00:07:59.200 | I was in a bookstore, I was in the United States a couple weeks ago. And I was in a bookstore,
00:08:03.360 | it was Barnes and Noble. And I picked up that little thing that they sell there, the five-year
00:08:09.120 | journal. It was absurdly expensive. But I like to buy. I'm not frugal and everything. Sometimes I
00:08:16.480 | buy expensive journals. I used to hear Jim Rohn talk about why he would buy expensive journals.
00:08:21.600 | And he would buy this fancy leather-bound journal to keep his notes. And he's like,
00:08:25.040 | "I want my ideas to be worth something. And so I don't want to have dollar store
00:08:32.400 | ideas. I want to have good ideas." And I found that to be the same for me. So I've spent money
00:08:36.320 | over the years on nice leather binders and leather journals and things like that. And I picked up
00:08:41.920 | this five-year journal. And it's kind of cool because every page has a different date. And it
00:08:49.200 | starts at January 1, but then it has five years worth of entries above each other. It's very short,
00:08:56.800 | about four or five lines for each one. But as you fill it in, you can reflect back on the previous
00:09:04.480 | year. So you go through and of course, in 2020, if you start it, then you just have that year.
00:09:10.720 | But then in 2021, when you're filling in January 1, 2021, you can see exactly what you were doing
00:09:17.120 | on January 1, 2020, because there's your journal entry. And then the years build up. And you don't
00:09:23.440 | have room for more than two or three sentences in the little journal. But I thought, "You know what?
00:09:27.760 | I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this over the next five years. And I'm going to make sure
00:09:32.080 | that this next five years from 2020 to 2025, I'm going to make sure that these are the best five
00:09:38.640 | years of my life. I'm in an exciting phase of life. I've got so many exciting things going on.
00:09:44.880 | And I'm going to make sure that I have exciting things to put down in my journal. I'm going to
00:09:49.600 | make sure that I capture these memories. And that when I look back every single day on these past
00:09:54.880 | few years, that I've got good stuff to appreciate, good memories to go through in the TV of my mind."
00:10:01.120 | So I picked up and paid the $16 or whatever for this little notebook that cost the guy $1.50 to
00:10:07.120 | print, which by the way, kudos on them. What a great business. But I picked it up. And I'm going
00:10:12.480 | to put millions of dollars worth of experiences in that. And I've lost my train of thought.
00:10:21.200 | When thinking about building rich experiences, the point, it costs money to do that, to do some of
00:10:34.960 | the things. And I have no intention whatsoever of writing down those journal entries and, "Okay,
00:10:43.520 | Tuesday, December, January 3, whatever winds up being in January, sat at home, drank water,
00:10:53.680 | ate steak and did nothing, but saved money. Wednesday, sat at home, watched TV, did nothing.
00:11:04.160 | Thursday, walked around the block for free, did nothing." Now, I don't, again, I'm not saying you
00:11:09.440 | have to spend money to live well. I've done lots of things for free and that's not the requirement.
00:11:17.120 | But a lot of times, some of the things that at least I want to do cost money. And so when you
00:11:23.600 | have big goals, they cost money. I want to take, I've been able to take my children to dozens of
00:11:29.760 | states so far, but I want to take my children to all of the states. I want my children to be in
00:11:33.920 | all 50 states by the time they are out of my household. I haven't made the commitment to,
00:11:41.040 | for sure, that I want to go to every country in the world, but at least I want to make sure that
00:11:45.440 | I've been to lots, but at least I want to make sure my children have been to dozens and dozens
00:11:50.400 | of countries all around the world. And I mean, that's just scratching the surface of, I like
00:11:56.400 | travel, but that's just scratching the surface of the travel goals. And when I think about the
00:12:01.200 | kinds of lessons I want them to learn, and I think about the kinds of ideas I want them to be exposed
00:12:05.440 | to, and I think about the kinds of experiences I want us to have together as a family, I want to
00:12:09.760 | make sure that there is some really tough, really cheap experiences in there. I want them to sleep
00:12:15.600 | on a stony ground, bitten by mosquitoes under a, with a non-functional mosquito net in the jungles
00:12:24.320 | of El Salvador. But I also want to stay at a five-star hotel, you know, at the tip of, I want
00:12:32.640 | to stay at the beautiful five-star lodge in Whistler, and us to have an epic week together
00:12:38.320 | at snow skiing. And I'm going on my list, but you make up your own. Every goal involves money
00:12:45.600 | in some way or the other. And so, it's important with any goal to count the cost, and especially
00:12:51.760 | with monetary goals, it's important to make sure that you have the goals set that you need to
00:12:57.040 | achieve in order to build and live the kind of life that you want to live. If you have a goal,
00:13:03.920 | that goal is going to have a price tag associated with it. And you're probably going to have
00:13:08.800 | multiple goals that have multiple price tags. And this is one of the major problems with financial
00:13:14.800 | independence, because the price tag of financial independence is very, very high. And it's easy
00:13:22.320 | to get obsessed about this idea of, I'm going to be financially independent as soon as possible.
00:13:26.080 | But I have other goals that also have high price tags that involve spending money.
00:13:30.880 | And so, it's totally possible to do all these things. We may not be able to do them all at
00:13:36.160 | the same time, but it's totally possible to do all these things if we understand the prices.
00:13:41.280 | Let's get to it. I got three major points I want to leave you with in today's show. And we'll expand
00:13:46.080 | on these in the future and give more granularity to it. But I just want to make three major points.
00:13:52.000 | Major point number one, you get one crack at this thing called temporal life. One crack at it.
00:14:09.440 | There's only a handful of people that are going to come to your funeral.
00:14:12.240 | There's only a handful of people that are going to remember you a few years after you're dead.
00:14:18.320 | Don't you think it's worth it to get everything you can out of this life experience?
00:14:26.400 | I believe that you deserve to have everything that you want.
00:14:37.600 | Now, you're going to have to pay the price for it.
00:14:39.280 | But you deserve to achieve your dreams if you're willing to put in the work for them.
00:14:44.720 | But in order to achieve your dreams, you've got to start by having them.
00:14:53.200 | And the basic set, the basic step of goal setting is the ability to dream. The ability to dream
00:15:04.560 | creatively. The ability to understand what you're going for. Now, if this comes easily to you
00:15:14.000 | and you think, "Well, duh, Joshua, doesn't everyone do that?" Let me tell you, no. Most people don't.
00:15:23.680 | I don't know what the percentage is, but I've often been shocked at how few people
00:15:30.720 | have a clear understanding of what their dreams are.
00:15:35.600 | And I think the first and most important thing that you can do when it comes to goal setting is
00:15:40.000 | start by dreaming. Don't be scared to dream.
00:15:43.840 | Just because you have a dream doesn't mean you have to follow through and do the work to achieve it.
00:15:53.200 | But having a dream is going to be that basic step of setting out a system of goals.
00:16:02.480 | So, one of the best and most important things that you can do
00:16:09.600 | is to cultivate the habit of dreaming about your future.
00:16:18.800 | Prioritize this. Don't be scared of it. Prioritize it.
00:16:23.200 | And then make the time for it. Make the time to think.
00:16:29.120 | Make the time to notice the things that you think about.
00:16:34.640 | It's never been easier to capture the output of your head.
00:16:43.840 | Just go back a few thousand years. Very few people had writing utensils. Very few people had
00:16:51.360 | papyrus or parchment or whatever and had the skills to write. And so if you're going to capture
00:16:56.160 | the things that are coming out of your head, there was not really any way to do that. There'd been an
00:16:59.920 | oral culture of many people. And so you had to just talk about things, which was good.
00:17:04.240 | But today, you can capture everything that comes out of your head. And now today, you've got a
00:17:08.400 | voice recorder right on your hip. You've got a video camera right on your hip. And you've got
00:17:13.440 | a laptop right on your hip. You've got multiple ways of taking notes right in your hand.
00:17:19.200 | So capture some of the things that you think about.
00:17:22.640 | One of the little tips I would give you, the way that I have my phone set up, is have a shortcut.
00:17:30.880 | At least in iOS, they have easy shortcuts. And you can add a shortcut right to the bottom of
00:17:35.040 | your home screen that will go immediately to a new note. And you can add a shortcut to your
00:17:39.520 | phone. And since, of course, we're all connected to our phones 24/7 and never outside of arm's reach,
00:17:46.960 | that's a really convenient thing to do, is have that there. So anytime I have an idea about a
00:17:51.920 | note, an idea, a dream, a goal, no matter how small or how big, I make sure to capture it.
00:17:58.320 | Usually with swipe up, boom, new note. Or swipe up, boom, new voice recording. Capture that thought.
00:18:09.280 | Because when you come up with a cool idea, it's important to notice it. And then in time,
00:18:14.960 | you can dwell on it. You can flesh it out. You can decide if you want to discard it or if it's
00:18:18.400 | something that you want to pursue later or don't want to pursue at all. But if you don't start by
00:18:23.280 | actually dreaming and understanding what you want, you won't be able to make effective plans.
00:18:34.080 | And since now it's so easy to capture copious amounts of data, go ahead and anything you see
00:18:40.560 | in your head, capture any texture to the goal. Capture any texture to the dream.
00:18:46.000 | I have a dream of visiting all 50 states in the United States. And I think it would be really fun
00:18:55.840 | to do that in an RV. Or I think it would be really fun to do it on horseback. Or I think it'd be
00:19:02.880 | really fun to fly my airplane from grass strip to grass strip. Or I think it'd be really fun to take
00:19:11.120 | my children to all of the 50 state capitals. That's mine. Introduce them to governors and take
00:19:16.000 | them to all the battlefields, et cetera. Whatever. Write it down and give it texture. And then figure
00:19:23.600 | out some way to organize those things so you have lists of them.
00:19:32.240 | And then what you do is when you're feeling unmotivated or you're feeling depressed,
00:19:37.200 | go to your goals. I find myself frequently feeling unmotivated, frequently feeling depressed. And I
00:19:46.000 | find it almost impossible to go and work on my goals and read my goals and listen to my goals
00:19:52.960 | and think about my goals and still stay unmotivated and depressed. Which brings me to the next
00:19:58.640 | important point. The reason why I find goals stimulating and enlivening is they're my goals.
00:20:11.120 | They're not your goals. They're my goals. So make sure that when you're dreaming,
00:20:16.640 | you set out your dreams. Make sure when you're setting goals, you set out your goals. Your
00:20:22.640 | actual goals. Not my goals. Your actual goals. Make them specific to you and make them specific
00:20:31.680 | to your phase of life. There's a difference between dreams, goals. Maybe we'll cover it
00:20:40.640 | another time. Maybe we won't. I don't know. But if you're going to achieve a goal, a goal is
00:20:44.240 | something specific. If you're going to achieve a goal, you've got to be able to believe that you
00:20:48.880 | can. Which means it's going to have to be something that you can, that's close enough to you that you
00:20:54.160 | can believe that you can get there. Now, if you don't believe that you can accomplish a goal,
00:20:58.640 | it's fine. Just keep it as a dream until you can get to a point where you can see how you can
00:21:02.800 | believe it. Because what'll happen is as your skill of goal setting and your skill as a goal
00:21:07.920 | achiever grows, you'll be able to achieve bigger and bigger and bigger goals and your belief grows
00:21:11.680 | bigger and bigger and bigger. But that takes time. Don't want to scare you if you're just getting
00:21:15.520 | started. But your goals have to be your specific goals. So when it comes to things like financial
00:21:20.400 | goals, make sure they're your goals. Someone else's financial goal may be to make a million
00:21:27.680 | dollars this year. Your financial goal might be to save a thousand dollars or vice versa.
00:21:35.200 | But if it's your goal, feel proud about the fact that it's your goal and make sure that
00:21:40.800 | you set out a plan to achieve the goal that you actually want. Now, let's say
00:21:47.920 | that you've got a big picture, a big idea for a big goal, but you're not sure if you can believe it.
00:21:58.480 | Well, nurture it. Capture it. Just maybe hold off on necessarily writing it down every day,
00:22:07.120 | but start looking to see if the thing that you're dreaming of has been accomplished by others
00:22:11.680 | and build your belief by studying the stories of other people like you who've achieved the
00:22:17.760 | kind of things that you would like to achieve. We live in a golden age of stories. It's never
00:22:26.960 | been easier to listen to incredible stories from fascinating people than it is today.
00:22:33.440 | If you were to go back a century and you were to be plunked down in, well, it's one thing if
00:22:40.880 | you were to be plunked down in London, England or New York City, New York, or versus, you know,
00:22:46.160 | little tiny town somewhere. But the stories you would have had access to would have been very
00:22:51.600 | limited. You would have had some stories by within your circle of acquaintance. You would have been
00:22:58.640 | able to have some stories at your local library. But the kind of people who would write and publish
00:23:04.000 | a book were very few and far between. But today, there are stories about all kinds of incredible
00:23:09.600 | people through digital means. YouTube, filled with inspirational stories, filled with people
00:23:16.960 | who have gone from poverty to wealth, sickness to health, unfulfillment to life satisfaction.
00:23:26.240 | And when you start to surround yourself with those stories, you start to develop more belief.
00:23:30.880 | And you start to see the patterns of how other people have accomplished their goals.
00:23:35.280 | So, major point number one, as we start to get started on financial goal setting, dream. And
00:23:42.400 | don't be scared to dream. Write your dreams down. But make sure that your dreams and your goals
00:23:47.600 | are your actual goals. Because major point number two, you will have to pay the price
00:23:56.560 | for your goals in advance. That means that since the prices are often high,
00:24:04.880 | and the payment is often significant, if you're going to go through that work,
00:24:11.040 | you better make sure that you actually care about the outcome. I love the story. Brian Tracy tells
00:24:19.280 | it in his books on and writing on goals. He talks about the famous oil billionaire H.L. Hunt,
00:24:25.280 | who went bankrupt raising cotton in Arkansas and then went on to build a fortune of several
00:24:30.480 | billion dollars and become one of the world's richest man. Supposedly, he was asked once for
00:24:35.200 | his formula for success. And he said that in America, you only, and I would insert in America
00:24:40.320 | and most of the countries that this listening audience comes from, you only need two things
00:24:46.720 | to be successful. First, you need to decide exactly what it is you want. So, we've talked
00:24:53.760 | about decide exactly what it is you want. Most people never do that. Second, determine the price
00:25:02.240 | you're going to have to pay to get it and then resolve to pay that price. Decide exactly what
00:25:11.920 | it is you want, then determine the price you're going to have to pay to get it and then resolve
00:25:17.600 | to pay that price. See, most people have some idea of what they want.
00:25:27.840 | But very few people sit down and figure out what it will take for them to accomplish
00:25:33.040 | what they want and to decide whether they're willing to pay the price.
00:25:37.600 | When you do that, and if you really are clear, "Hey, I want this," and you figure out that price
00:25:46.880 | and you set the plan out, just like with financial planning where it's so simple,
00:25:51.360 | "I want to be financially independent." What does that mean to you? "This is how much money I want.
00:25:54.960 | All right, let's start running some numbers. Where are you? What do you got to work with?
00:26:00.000 | What rate of return can we get? And we can figure out what's going to be required."
00:26:03.680 | That's what's so wonderful about money is it's so tangible. And if you want to retire on $5,000
00:26:12.080 | a month, the price tag is X. If you want to retire on $10,000 a month, the price tag is X times 2.
00:26:18.720 | You want $20,000 a month, price tag is X times 4. Are you willing to pay that price?
00:26:25.760 | In order for you to achieve a goal, you're going to have to pay the price in full.
00:26:34.480 | Nobody stands on the Olympic podium who didn't pay the price for that victory.
00:26:42.720 | Nobody stands at the door of retirement who didn't pay the price to be in that situation.
00:26:49.920 | You're going to have to pay the price in full. You have to sow before you reap.
00:26:56.080 | And that price may have to be paid over decades.
00:26:59.920 | So, it better be something that you care about enough to pay the price,
00:27:10.880 | because you got to pay the price in full and you have to pay the full price in advance.
00:27:16.560 | You will have to do all of the things in advance to accomplish the goal.
00:27:25.840 | I'll just give you an example from my own goals. I personally have a goal set to have a six-pack,
00:27:36.000 | a stomach that is flat enough and a low enough body fat percentage that I can see
00:27:40.160 | visible abdominal muscles. I have never in my life had a six-pack, not a once.
00:27:46.640 | I've always been overweight, talked recently about that. And for the vast majority of,
00:27:52.560 | well, I don't know if the vast, I would say majority of men probably have this same aspiration.
00:27:58.160 | For men, having visible abdominal muscles is basically the mark of, "Okay, fine, I made it,
00:28:05.440 | I'm fit," et cetera. For some people, it comes easier. For some people, it comes less easy.
00:28:10.800 | I'm one who it doesn't come easy. But let's say that you hear, "Okay, Joshua, you've got that
00:28:18.240 | goal." And what if I tell you, "Well, I've got this goal set and I'm going to be successful,
00:28:23.360 | but I'm not willing to do anything for it." "Well, Joshua, there might be people out there
00:28:29.440 | who have that, but that's not you. You're fat. You don't have a six-pack. It's going to take you
00:28:36.160 | some work." Now, on the other hand, if you've got a plan, you say, "Okay, here's how you do it.
00:28:42.880 | Here's the cost. Here's the price." When I have fully paid the price of eating in a certain way
00:28:49.920 | for a certain length of time, of exercising in a certain way for a certain length of time,
00:28:58.240 | and when those things are achieved, when I've done enough of that for long enough,
00:29:02.720 | then the results will be there. And it's exactly the same way with any goal.
00:29:06.320 | Sometimes it takes a month. Sometimes it takes years. But when you have fully paid the price,
00:29:15.040 | then the success will be there. It's right there. But you've got to pay the price first.
00:29:20.960 | There was a quote I read the other day, and I thought it was really inspirational. A guy on
00:29:28.000 | one of the... The guy on Twitter that I follow, he's a fitness coach. And he said, he wrote this.
00:29:37.120 | He said, "Doing something really tough for a short amount of time is easier than doing something
00:29:41.680 | moderately tough for a very long time, which is why six-packs are so elusive. It's not that hard,
00:29:52.000 | calorie deficit plus training, that's it. But you have to do it for a long time." And then he goes
00:29:59.520 | on, "For reference, I was 300 pounds in 2010. I started dieting and training, got my six-pack in
00:30:05.360 | 2013. Three years, that's how long it took. But I wanted it so badly I could taste it,
00:30:11.840 | and I refused to stop. You'll have to do that too, most likely." Now, it's kind of silly,
00:30:18.320 | kind of dumb, feels dumb to talk for me sometimes, talk about purely vanity goals. There's no
00:30:22.640 | functional benefit of a six-pack, at least that I'm aware of. But the thing to me, one of the
00:30:31.120 | reasons why it's important to me is because when I achieve that goal, it will represent a complete
00:30:36.960 | transformation of my personal habits. I won't say character, although it's probably character,
00:30:43.360 | character and personal habits. It'll be an absolute life change. And that's what I want,
00:30:49.760 | is life change. Now, let's bring it back to wealth, something more at hand. The same exact
00:30:54.880 | thing comes in with wealth. If you want to be financially independent, you will be financially
00:31:00.560 | independent when you have paid the full price of financial independence. That's going to require
00:31:06.160 | you to work and earn more money. It's going to require you to spend less. It's going to require
00:31:14.400 | you to invest wisely. And it's going to require you to do those things for long enough for you to
00:31:22.160 | achieve financial independence. It's not a short-term thing. But when you have paid the full
00:31:35.040 | price for financial independence, you'll be there, guaranteed. So, think through and decide exactly
00:31:47.520 | what it is you want. Then determine the price you're going to have to pay to get it and resolve
00:31:53.520 | to pay that price. Step number three, or major point number three, the clearer the goal,
00:32:03.120 | the easier the plan. For me, this has been a personal epiphany that I've come to over the years.
00:32:15.440 | As I've done a lot of financial planning over the years, I've come to see very clearly
00:32:21.040 | that the clearer the goal, the easier the plan. And basically, when I do personal coaching and
00:32:28.560 | personal consulting, almost, I don't know what percentage to say, maybe half the time, it just
00:32:34.000 | seems like I'm always going back to, "Well, what do you want?" Because if you can define clearly
00:32:39.200 | what you want, then the plans are fairly obvious. Let's give a financial independence example.
00:32:48.160 | If you want, if your measure of financial independence is, "I want to have $1,500 a
00:32:55.280 | month of income coming in so that I can live a quiet and extremely frugal life in this particular
00:33:02.640 | town." And you're gainfully employed, making $75,000 a year, the plan is obvious. Your plan
00:33:09.680 | is extreme frugality. Save, invest the money, mutual funds will get you there, you'll be there
00:33:15.040 | fairly quickly. It's obvious that that kind of financial independence plan is the best solution
00:33:21.520 | for you. On the flip side, if you say, "My goal is a much more luxurious and higher spending,
00:33:30.720 | higher consumption lifestyle. I want $300,000, $400,000 a year of spendable cash flow.
00:33:39.520 | And I don't have a big income right now." The plan is obvious. If you really want that goal,
00:33:47.600 | your only solution is to build and probably sell a business or to build a tremendous new career.
00:33:53.280 | But frankly, not even that's going to get you there. You need to build a very large business
00:33:57.440 | that'll either be very profitable and you live off the profits or you sell it and live off of
00:34:02.160 | those profits. Now, that's painting with a very broad brush, but those are two both very doable
00:34:10.320 | financial independence plans. Both of them will work. But it all comes down to how clear is the
00:34:16.800 | goal. And in every single category, when the goal is clear, the plans are easy. They're self-evident,
00:34:26.080 | they're obvious. You don't even need someone from an outside perspective coming along and saying,
00:34:30.560 | "You should do this." They're obvious to you. So most of the time, the problem is not in lack of
00:34:36.800 | technical knowledge or lack of knowledge of how to achieve it. Most of the time, the problem is
00:34:41.680 | lack of clarity around the goal. And the great thing about this goal setting is this. The process
00:34:48.960 | of goal setting costs you nothing but time. I do this thing on Instagram where I share many
00:34:55.280 | mornings. I share a picture of my goal setting. I write my goals out every day, every day. Pen,
00:34:59.840 | piece of paper, blank sheet of paper, top of the page, today, December 2, 2019, Joshua's goals.
00:35:07.280 | Sometimes I just write a couple quick task marks, a couple words each. Sometimes I write paragraphs
00:35:12.320 | and paragraphs. Sometimes I write pages about one single goal, but I write them out consistently
00:35:17.680 | because that process clarifies all of the steps needed necessary.
00:35:22.080 | And then even if you don't quite know how to achieve something, it'll all fall in place.
00:35:28.960 | So spend as much time as needed to get clear on what you want.
00:35:45.200 | That's all I want to say in today's show. Three major points. Number one,
00:35:48.480 | dream. Don't be scared to dream. Make sure that since you're going to have to put in a lot of
00:35:56.320 | work to achieve the things that you want, make sure you actually want it. Make sure you're pursuing
00:36:00.720 | your goals, your dreams, your actual goals and dreams, not the goals and dreams that someone
00:36:04.800 | else has said to you, not the goals and dreams that society has given to you. Quick diversion.
00:36:12.000 | When I was an active financial planner, I used to go through this stated fact-finding perspective,
00:36:17.280 | this fact-finding process, ask the same questions every time. I didn't like asking people,
00:36:22.160 | do you want to retire someday or when do you want to retire? So I would always ask this.
00:36:25.440 | I would say, is there a point in time that you'd like to be in a position to not to have to work
00:36:31.680 | if you didn't want to? And the answer would always be yes. And of course, I would always say when?
00:36:37.920 | Well, about 15% of the time, the answer was today. When? But about 70% of the time,
00:36:45.120 | 60, 70, that huge majority of the time, the answer was, I don't know, 65.
00:36:51.040 | 65. And to this day, that drives me nuts. Because the only reason why all of my clients would say
00:37:01.680 | 65 was because 65 was at that time the normal retirement age for social security income.
00:37:08.640 | But what on earth does 65 matter to you? Why 65 and not 63? Why 65 and not 67?
00:37:21.120 | Is there not anything in there that would matter to you?
00:37:27.120 | Why 65? The reality is most people didn't have a clue when they wanted to retire
00:37:33.520 | because there was no meaning at all whatsoever to 65. And as I watched and observed,
00:37:40.320 | I would see that most people wouldn't successfully retire because 65 didn't mean anything to them.
00:37:47.040 | Maybe their company forced them out. Okay, I got social security, I'll go ahead and take it.
00:37:51.040 | But unless 65 means something to you, don't retire at 65.
00:37:54.800 | Now, if it means something to you for some other reason, maybe a certain age of your children,
00:38:02.080 | or a certain thing you want to accomplish in a certain calendar year, or a certain
00:38:05.520 | milestone that it represents, fine.
00:38:08.720 | But make sure that your retirement goal is your actual retirement goal.
00:38:18.480 | Don't just get involved in the FIRE movement because all the cool kids are doing it.
00:38:23.040 | If you don't want to retire, don't get involved in the FIRE movement.
00:38:29.840 | That's enough for now. Major point number one, dream. Don't be scared to dream. Make sure they're
00:38:37.120 | your goals. Major point number two, decide what you want, find out what the price tag is, and
00:38:44.160 | resolve to pay that price. You're going to have to pay the price in advance. So you got to know what
00:38:50.320 | it is so that you can know the price you're going to pay. You're going to have to pay the price in
00:38:56.800 | full before that goal is there. So make sure that it's something that you care about, that you're
00:39:02.400 | willing to pay the price. Number three, the clearer the goal, the easier the plan. If you're struggling
00:39:08.400 | with what your financial goals are, how to set financial goals, don't worry too much about the
00:39:13.680 | details. Don't worry too much about is it rental houses or is it an MLM or is it Bitcoin or whatever.
00:39:20.000 | Get clear on the goal. And when you're clear on the goals, the plans fall in place.
00:39:26.800 | Friends, we are at the dawn of a new decade. The dawn of a new decade. And a decade is all the
00:39:37.520 | time you need to accomplish everything you can dream and put on your list.
00:39:42.400 | No, I don't believe that. A decade is all the time you need to accomplish many, if not most of the
00:39:50.800 | things that you need, that you want to put on your list. Can't do all of them in a decade.
00:39:57.360 | And I encourage, I think one of the things that's so needed once you start to become a skillful
00:40:04.080 | goal setter is to have long-term goals and short-term goals, very long-term goals. I have
00:40:12.160 | on my goals an age that I want to live to. And I visualize every day an age that I want to live to.
00:40:19.840 | I have a goal for my grandchildren's grandchildren. And the legacy that I want to leave for my
00:40:25.520 | grandchildren's grandchildren. Those things are long-term. I can't accomplish them in a decade.
00:40:31.920 | But then there's short-term stuff too. But for the vast majority of the normal things that we set,
00:40:36.560 | a decade is long enough. A year is too short, but a decade is long enough. And if you just get
00:40:44.800 | directionally moving in the direction of your goals, the path will have a tendency to take
00:40:50.480 | care of itself. So my challenge to you, get a pen, piece of paper. If you don't have a pen and
00:41:03.760 | a piece of paper, put your phone on airplane mode and do not disturb. Open a blank note.
00:41:10.160 | Start dreaming about where you want to be in 2030. Capture those dreams. Play with them.
00:41:19.920 | Go over them in your head, twist them around, flip them upside down. Look left, look right.
00:41:24.000 | Get them clear in your head. And we'll start to talk about how they can actually be accomplished.
00:41:31.440 | Thank you for listening. Cyber 50 until midnight tonight. Save you 50% on all my courses
00:41:39.600 | at radicalpersonalfinance.com/store or email me joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com for consulting.
00:41:47.280 | Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. I hope I helped you with some ideas
00:41:50.320 | and some encouragement, inspiration to help you achieve your goals faster, living a rich and
00:41:53.840 | meaningful life now while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less. As we go,
00:41:57.840 | three things. Number one, I teach a number of premium courses found at radicalpersonalfinance.com/store
00:42:04.720 | courses that I have designed and written to help you solve some specific problems. Go and check
00:42:09.120 | those out at radicalpersonalfinance.com/store. Those courses contain ideas and strategies
00:42:15.280 | not otherwise released here in the free podcast. And you can find those at radicalpersonalfinance.com/store.
00:42:20.000 | Number two, I offer a limited amount of private consulting and coaching work. If you'd like
00:42:26.640 | details on how to talk to me privately regarding the details of your specific situation, email me
00:42:31.280 | joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com and you will be able to get in touch. I'll share all those details.
00:42:35.920 | Joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com. Number three, catch up with me around the web, Facebook and
00:42:40.960 | YouTube. I'm at radicalpersonalfinance.com. Twitter and Instagram @JoshuaSheets. Follow me on those
00:42:47.200 | platforms if you are active there for some additional content not found here in the podcast.
00:42:52.000 | Thank you so much.
00:42:53.280 | Big Boyz Comedy Kings is coming to Yamavai Resort and Casino Saturday, December 9th with D.L. Hughley.
00:42:58.960 | That sweater so tight it look like a snot between the legs.
00:43:01.520 | Cedric the Entertainer.
00:43:02.720 | Once we stop running, I'll find out what it was we was running about.
00:43:06.320 | And Paul Rodriguez.
00:43:07.600 | What is it about old Mexican men? They could be missing a leg, they still want to get into a fight.
00:43:11.680 | Hosted by my man Eric Blake in a special performance by Mario.
00:43:15.120 | Big Boyz Comedy Kings, December 9th at Yamavai Resort and Casino. Tickets can be purchased at
00:43:19.920 | AXS.com, this is a 21 and over event.