[00:00:00] Episode six. Welcome to the Aligned and Thriving podcast, designed for ambitious female entrepreneurs just like you, where we align systems, strategies, and self for sustainable success. Hello, my name's Jada Dego, your host, and I cannot wait to share this episode with you. Let's talk money and specifically.
Your money goals and whether you are in fact borrowing somebody else's goal or whether your money goals are truly your own. What do I mean by this? Now? It's kind of easy to fall into the idea of like, I just wanna create a million dollar business or to go after specific monetary amounts that. Maybe other people are saying that they have and you're [00:01:00] looking at their lifestyle and their business and thinking that is what I want.
Or just kind of rounded numbers like that million, it's often talked about, I wanna create a million dollar business, uh, you know, I wanna be doing million dollar years, or big ones are $10,000 month. Or, you know, I just wanna hit that a hundred thousand dollars or whatever it might be for you. But what I'd like to do today is go into a really tangible exercise that is going to help you know what your current, and this can change over time.
Your current real money goal is, and this is important because we then need to really attach the value, uh, because. Yes, money is a powerful motivator, but to me and the people that I speak to, it's really about what the money can do. That is more of a [00:02:00] motivator than the amount itself. And I know for me, for a long time, I was following kind of goals that I thought.
Kind of matched a particular thing until I actually sat down and did this exercise that I'm about to share with you. And it clarified very clearly my actual money goal, which was a match for everything that I could imagine at the time. And so it's worth doing this, you know. Semi-regularly. Doesn't even have to be annually.
It could be annually. If you've already kind of moved forward and towards your money goal or hit your money goal, you'll wanna sit down and do it again. It's always from the point of where you are at, which of course, as you increase your capacity for earning more as you reach new money goals as you experience.
More of what's out there then that may grow. Because [00:03:00] oftentimes there are, or always really, there are things that we can't even imagine because they're just not part of our world. They can't, they're not even part of our imagining. So it's really about going into currently everything that you can imagine spending money on and really digging into the detail.
Of how much that is. And so I would recommend even creating a spreadsheet. And I am going to pass on the credit for this because I actually got this idea and this exercise and used for the first time when I learned about this exercise, uh, a tracker and spreadsheet from my mentor at the time, uh, which was Rachel and Michael from girl Director.
So I always like to give credit where it is due. So I got this exercise from them, and it was so clarifying. The exercise is to go [00:04:00] into full, full detail around every single area in your life that you can possibly think of and imagine, and what you would want to be doing, and what you would be wanting to spend money on in each of those areas to the fullest.
So if you can imagine your absolute ideal life and already living that and all of the expenses that that life would have, so it's way beyond potentially maybe anything you've experienced. Now, it's all of your wildest imaginings at this point, the absolute ideal life that you want to be living. Now, if you are not sure what that is.
There's an exercise to do before this money one, which is to really think about that, maybe close your eyes and do a future self or future life meditation, or take some time with your journal and close your [00:05:00] eyes and imagine living your absolute ideal life and what that really means and includes for you.
Specifically beyond the basic costs, for example, what kinds of, what kinds of things really go into the detail? Are you doing day to day, and what kind of lifestyle do you have? You need to first have a clear idea of that lifestyle and all of the things that you can possibly imagine that you would like.
In your life. Once we have that clear, we can get into this money exercise. And so what we really need to do on a spreadsheet is to break down absolutely everything that you can think of and imagine. That you would be spending money on. So beyond the basics, like yes, you wanna do a bit of a budget on what you might be spending on food and rent or mortgage and all of the basics.
So we wanna put all of the basics in there for sure. You know, school fees or kids' [00:06:00] activities, hobbies, all of the normal ones, and list out in full detail, which is gonna be a pretty standard, normal kind of budgeting exercise. So all of the normal. Day to day living expenses for you and your family. All of the normal activities that happen throughout the year and that kind of thing, but not just the ones now, but the ones and in a way that you would ideally like to be living.
So this might mean having a look around at more of your ideal home and working out what the mortgage repayments are on that that might be looking around and. You know, adding in all of the other hobby activities and things like that, that you'd like to be doing, or you'd love for your kids to be doing, or they've been asking you about, it means looking around at, you know, do you want to be having investment properties?
Do you wanna be investing in different ways so that you're building that passive wealth over [00:07:00] time? I hope you do. Uh, do you want to be traveling overseas more? Do you want to be traveling? Nationally or locally more often with yourself or with friends or for business or with your family. Do you want to be looking after a family member so that you can support them financially?
What? What is everything that you would ideally want to be able to afford if you were living your ideal life and money was no object. And so this is beyond a normal, I guess, budget. It is really listing out all of those things to the fullest. Do you want to be able to really comfortably eat out a number of times a week?
Do you wanna have a, a personal chef, as I mentioned before, like what is the lifestyle and then what are all of the costs that you can possibly think of that go along with that lifestyle in your wildest [00:08:00] dreams? And really listing out all of those things to the best of your ability. Like take some time with this.
Figure out how much of a budget you want for for travel in your ideal life. Figure out how much you need to be spending on all of those different things and go into as much detail as possible. Now, you might like to do this like on a weekly basis, and then add it up. You might wanna work it out as a monthly thing.
However works best for you. Some of it might be kind of annual amounts that you might like to budget towards, uh, things like travel or that kind of thing, but in the end, you then want to add it all up and make it into an annual amount. Once you've put absolutely everything there, it might be something that you want to do and then kind of come back to and keep adding things and think about, and you might have different ideas popping into your mind about more and more that you'd actually like to be doing that you forgot to add into the list.
We wanna add as much as possible, [00:09:00] then you wanna add it all together and make sure it is an annual amount, and then this gives you to the best of your knowledge at the moment. An actual budget for your ideal life. So a bit of a different kind of a budget, but it gives lots of clarity around the actual cost of.
Your ideal life, everything that you can imagine at this point, which again, that might change or likely will change as you experience more? You know, for me it was looking at putting things like being able to support my mom who doesn't have her own place. I would so love to be able to buy her a property and so that she could comfortably live there, one that suits her, uh, and be able to look after her in that way.
For me, a big one was also being able to give back to charities and communities and be able to give freely with my money to have more than enough for me and my family so that I was able to do [00:10:00] good with my money and give it in ways that can do good in the world. So that was a big part of things for me as well, beyond just the lifestyle, but ways that, that I could give back to the community as well.
And I'm sure there is much more I'll be able to do when, you know, each time we kind of move to that new level, uh, and create more awareness for ourselves. So when I say everything, I mean everything. How much you'd like to be giving away, what charities you'd like to be supporting, other family members you might like to be supporting, all of that kind of thing.
Because when we have plenty. We can be our full, I find we can be our full selves in expressing, uh, expressing ourselves, and when we are generous, kind, empathetic human beings. Which I'm sure you are, that we are. This is why we need more women creating wealth because we are going to do more good in [00:11:00] this world with our money.
So include all of those things, even the money you want to be able to give absolutely everything. Once we've done all of that, we've got our annual amount, we've got kind of our first draft budget for the cost of our ideal life. So now we have something to work with, something to aim for. You might need to, and you really will need to figure out what kind of tax you'd need to be paying.
So when I came up with the amount, I'm like, oh, cool, I need to earn this much. And then I went, hang on a minute. No, I'd have to earn how much, let me look up the tax so I can figure out after tax, you know, arriving at that amount after tax. And this would be my personal income. Let's imagine my husband wasn't earning anything, my personal income, not the business income to be able to cover this ideal life.
Adding on the tax on top of that meant that I could work out, okay, how much do I [00:12:00] ideally need to be earning personally? And then therefore, you can start to work out how much does your business need to be bringing in, in revenue to be paying you that amount. And then we can start to get much more clarity and much more precise on what our true money goals are for our business and for ourselves.
'cause then we can work out what are the costs of the business. Of course we can do a similar thing with your business. Like if your business was running in its ideal way, how many staff would you need, what positions, all that kind of thing. We can go further. Up with that for your business. But this, this episode, I just really wanted to talk about getting much more clear on your personal money goals so that that can feed into having a much clearer business money goal as well.
So hopefully that has helped, rather than just kind of plucking a number out [00:13:00] of thin air, like a hundred thousand, 250,000, a million, whatever it is, we need to be clear because now you can attach. An emotional feeling to what that money means for you, because now you have a list of all the things that that money.
Will create and provide for you and for your loved ones and those you want to give to. You have all of the things that mean so much to you. You can see the correlation between the monetary amount and the ideal life that you desire. And this is so important because that's when we can get emotionally attached to the number.
It's not a random number you plucked. It's a very meaningful number. You know exactly what it means. You know exactly what it can do for you and your family, your loved ones, and the ones you wanna support. So now you [00:14:00] can really emotionally attach to that and go after it. Once you've done this, if you need ever to kind of have a bit of a pick me up on feeling motivated around things in your business or going after that next level of income, or even on that daily basis, because as our own boss, we don't have anybody that we have to show up for.
We have to show up for our clients and our customers and our team if you have one. Uh, but we don't have someone that is going to be, you know, on our back if we are not meeting the goals that we're setting. We have to do that for ourselves. And so this can be a really powerful motivator as well to knuckle down on the most important things in your business and do the needle moving things, do the big scary things, do the things that are going to move you towards.
Most strongly and hopefully most quickly, that money goal. So a great way to really tap into that [00:15:00] emotional feeling and connection is to write down again, all of those things that when you have more than enough money, plenty of money. That what that would allow for you. Everything you can think of. Maybe you go back to your list that you wrote of your ideal life and all the things that you're doing and that you have and who you're helping and the, you know, investments that you have and your whole lifestyle.
When you have that really clearly, you can do things like ride it out every day. Or read it every day, or you can record it and listen back to it each day. You can put those things into a vision board that you can look at on a regular basis so that you are tying that, I guess, chasing of those income goals to those emotions of living and having and doing and being and supporting and giving all of the things that you truly desire.
So this really helps us to have [00:16:00] clarity around. Your personal money goal, that means something for you, and it helps as a really powerful motivator. When you then attach that to the things that that creates, the places it takes you, the people it supports, the lifestyle, all of those things. It's so important that we do have a goal, that we're not just kind of meandering forward.
A goal gives us a destination, and of course, we have to enjoy that journey. But it's so important to have that goal so that we are in action moving towards it at all times. It creates that momentum, it creates that action. So I hope that this has been supportive. Maybe it's a new way of looking at things, and most of all, I hope that you will go away and do this exercise because it's incredibly powerful to have that clarity on your personal money goal and attach all of those emotions [00:17:00] to it.
So the three steps, let's see if it's three. Let's make sure, make sure I've got that right. Number one, if you're not sure what your ideal life looks like, you need to do that first because you need to know what things you wanna include, uh, and what budget you need to have for that. So if you don't know that yet, doing an exercise around that is important.
And including absolutely everything you can imagine, not holding back. The second part is then attaching a budget to all of those things. Absolutely everything you can imagine. Having doing, being giving in your ideal life, and then getting that figure, that whole annual figure, that's how much you need to be earning after tax.
So work out what it is with tax on top of it, and then you might like to go that step further where you're then working out what your business needs to be earning to be able to pay you that amount. And then number three, really connecting on a regular basis, daily, [00:18:00] weekly, on a regular basis. To emotionally connect yourself to that money goal and everything that it actually creates for you, for your life, for your loved ones, for the impact that you can make into your community and beyond.
I would absolutely love to hear from you. Is this a new exercise? Have you done something like this before? And I'd so love to hear from you when you do this exercise and how much clarity it brings to you, and if that has been really helpful. As always, I would love to connect. I love having chats, so please reach out via the DMS and let me know.
Has this been helpful? Are you gonna go and action it for some accountability? I'd love to know. Thanks so much for joining me on this episode, and I look forward to sharing more with you next week.
