This month I again tried out a library book for my financial education. I decided to read The Smart Cookies' Guide to Making More Dough and Getting Out of Debt: How Five Young Women Got Smart, Formed a Money Group, and Took Control of Their Finances
That is quite the title! After reading Suze Orman's Women & Money: Owning the Power to Control Your Destiny
I was intrigued to read how 5 women in their 20's took control of their finances.The book begins with the authors telling their stories of where they were when they started their journey and where they ended up. The action plan was a bit of a rehash of Suze's book. I however found some gems within the covers. For example the authors recommend picturing your perfect day 5 years from now.
Where are you? What are you doing? What are you wearing? Who is with you?
I admit I rolled my eyes a bit when I read this part. Really? But then I decided to give it a try....
My perfect day in 2020:
I wake up in my bedroom with the windows open and a slight breeze stirring the curtains. I snuggle with my husband for a bit and discuss our plans for the day. After getting dressed in my farm clothes I head downstairs to get breakfast for our 6 children. Breakfast consists of eggs and other items that we have raised on our small homestead.
After breakfast we have our Bible study and then head out to do our farm chores for the morning. The children each have their own chores to do and get them finished fairly quickly. After we finish our chores we come inside to get cleaned up and put on our swim suits. While the children are getting changed I make a picnic lunch to bring with us.
We head out to the pond on our property to swim and relax under the old shade trees. We spend several hours together swimming and eating our lunch. When we are all worn out we come back home to get showers and then relax/nap for the afternoon.
When it is late afternoon we move on to doing our afternoon chores and making dinner. Once dinner is cleaned up and the children are in bed my husband and I sit on the porch swing and cuddle while watching the lightening bugs and talking about our plans for the future.
I am glad I gave the exercise a try....I really REALLY want that day! So how am I going to get there? What are we going to sacrifice today to get to this reality in the future? I am highly motivated to complete our goals when think about them in this context.
Another recommendation within the book was to make a visualization board of your perfect day. This is a poster, cork board, etc where you put pictures, quotes, etc that remind you of your perfect day and work to motivate you towards completing your goals. I spend a bit of time on google images and found several pictures that would work. I however did not want to do a wall mounted option since we are traveling this Spring/Summer. I decided to instead use a notebook where I have been keeping my financial Friday book notes.
The last recommendation for this particular section was to take the top three items from your perfect day and then figure out the price of these items. This was not so much fun as the thought of finding out how much a small farm costs was stressful. I did it however, worked up my totals needed in 5 yrs to hit our goals and then did the math. Guess what.....we can do it! Only if we stay motivated however and meet our monthly goal of $1,000 to savings each month. I am motivated however and think the visualization process will really help with this in the future.
I really liked this book and felt it helped me a great deal to become more motivated and focused on what I really want in the future. I would highly recommend giving this book a read today!
**I was in no way compensated for my review of this book. **
0 comments on "Financial Friday!"
Post a Comment