#19 5 Steps to Create Goals You Will Actually Achieve in 2020!

12/30/19 • 26 min

Making SMART goals is the best way to actually achieve your goals in the New Year. It's not enough to make New Year resolutions and then never acting on them. These 5 simple steps will set you up for success for the entire year, not just January.

Resources mentioned:
FREE $250 in 5 Days Saving Challenge
12 Monthly Saving Challenges

Full Transcript:
Welcome to the money mindset podcast where you will find the inspiration and motivation you need to manage your money better so you can stress less and live the life you want. Hey guys, it's Ashley with budgets fade easy and of course the money mindset podcast. Today I want to talk about how you can crush your [inaudible], your goals
in 2020 so we got some big things that I really want you to accomplish this next year and it takes planning now. And so to get ready to really crush your goals next year, we're going to talk about five simple steps to get you there. And we are also going to do a free savings challenge in my free Facebook group. You can go to budgets made easy.com/saving-challenge and of course I'll link to it in the show notes, but the free challenge savings challenge starts on January 10th and it will be to save $250 in just five days. So it'll help you get started on your, um, $1,000 small emergency fund so that you can get started on paying off your debt. So you've got to save money first and then start paying off debt. So January is all about getting that thousand dollars saved in this challenge. We'll get you a quarter of the way there and we'll give you the tools and tips and tricks to get you the rest of the way there.
But I really want you to focus and hone in on getting that savings goal done in just five days, $250 in five days and tons of little tips and tricks to get you there. So it's free to sign up. Go to budget's made easy.com/saving-challenge and it will get you there. And then you can also, whenever you sign up for that, you will get a special one time offer and it's only valid for 20 minutes to get a special discount on the monthly savings challenges as well. So go ahead and check that out. There's a different savings challenge for every month. Different things to do to kinda change it up, make it fun and interesting throughout the year. But remember, I want you to save this thousand dollars as quickly as possible. I don't want you to take the whole year to save up your thousand dollars, but each month has different challenges to just kind of make it fun, build new habits so that you can really reach your goals next year.
So, you know, it's the time of the year that we are beginning to think about next year and our new year's resolutions. And then around March, April we start to lose steam and we just stop focusing on our goals. If we, even honestly, if we even made it to April, you know, March is about the time that people start to lose traction on their new year's resolution. So I don't you to make a new year's resolution that you can't keep. Like I want you to be very intentional about why you want to reach this goal and how to get there. So you know, in order to start paying off debt and saving money, you will stress less. You'll be able to save more and you'll be able to really gain confidence and hope in your financial situation. Because that's the big thing that I want you to accomplish is just have hope.
And whenever you make your plan, that gives you hope, even if you haven't accomplished anything yet on your goals, just making the plan, you can see that it's possible and that you can do it. And that just really helps give you momentum. So there's five steps to reach your goals next year. And it's called smart goals. If you haven't heard of smart goals, they're my favorite. Uh, you know, you're their specific, I forget, I forget what all the acronyms are, but basically it's to make specific measurable, um, realistic, timely, and, um, I always forget what the a is, but you know, it's to be specific and make measurable and timely goals. That's the big thing and goals that you can actually do. So, you know, actually, you know, if you're 60 years old, you know, are you going to be able to run a marathon? Well, you can.
Um, but it's going to take a lot of practice and a lot of work and you may not physically be able to. So, you know, it needs to be a goal that you can actually do in the timeframe that you set. So I want you to be realistic about your goals. And in order to make your smart goals, it takes some planning out. So in deciding on some major benefits of your life, you know, for one, it helps you make progress and not stand still in life. It helps you be successful in life in many ways, not just in your finances. Like you can make smart goals for anything. Um, but you know, setting financial goal...

Resources mentioned:
FREE $250 in 5 Days Saving Challenge
12 Monthly Saving Challenges

Previous Episode

#18 How Chris Paid Off $52,000 in Just 7 Months!

Chris and his wife were able to pay off $52,000 in 7 months by getting on the same page and working together. It certainly wasn't easy in the beginning but they both made changes and reached their big goal!

Paid off $52k of debt in 2011. Started Money Peach in 2015. I’ve done over 120 episodes on the Money Peach Podcast. My focus is on creating budgets, saving money, and debt payoff.

Website: https://www.moneypeach.com

Email: [email protected]

Social Handles: Facebook @themoneypeach, Twitter: @TheMoneyPeach, IG: @thechrispeach

Resources mentioned:
The Debt Bundle
The One Thing by Gary Keller (affiliate link)

Special Guest: Chris Peach.

Next Episode

#20 How to Pay Off Debt While Still Eating Healthy

How John and Rosemary paid off $66,000 in 32 months while still eating healthy and not sacrificing nutrition to do it.

Rosemary and John, cofounders of Flourish Fundamentals are both Functional Nutritional Therapy Practitioners. They are helping the FIRE community optimize their health as much as they optimize their finances.

You can learn more about them on their website: flourishfundamentals.com
and sign up for their 30 day reset program here: https://www.flourishfundamentals.com/flourish-fundamentals-30-day-reset-calling-beta-testers/

Resources mentioned in this episode:
The Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin (affiliate link)

[Free Meal Planning Sheet](www.budgetsmadeeasy.com/mealplan)

Full Transript:
Hey, today we are talking to Rosemary and John about how they paid off their debt and how they are optimizing health and nutrition for the fire community. So welcome Rosemary and John, thank you for having us. Thank you, Ashley. Thanks for being here. And just to, before we jump in, can you guys kind of tell me about yourselves and kind of what you guys do? Yeah, absolutely. So, uh, I guess that you could call us the token, uh, nutrition people in the [inaudible] space. Um, we both sort of got into this financial independence step free community after we were getting out of debt and we had this background in nutrition and saw that a lot of the recommendations around reducing expenses involved like just eat rice and beans. And that was a little bit, yeah, no, no. So, um, we realized that there was really a need for people to talk about the importance of your own health and be able to teach people to empower them to be able to take care of their own health so that, um, they come, you know, they're more in a position of power when it comes to their own health and not just fingers crossed.
Hope you don't get sick. Yeah, yeah. Just not eating ramen noodles and all right. They definitely, there's a sweet spot where we wish we can talk about more later, where you can keep costs down pretty low without sacrificing health. So for example, before we started getting out of debt, when we examined our grocery budget, we were like anywhere from $1,000 a month to 1500 for two bucks. And then we cut that in half. And then we were able to do that and we thought, you know what, let's try to cut it in half again just to see if we can do it. And we did. Um, and I'd say now we sort of settled between 400 to $500, but it's still may sound like a lot to some people listening, but we can get into more about what that actually means. Yeah, that's really not bad.
I mean, for most people that I talk to, and it's true for myself, um, you know, with that was our biggest category was, um, of course it wasn't as healthy as you guys were at, you know, as fast food, convenience foods, things like that. But, and so that is definitely an area where people can improve, um, with managing their money as well as their health. So I'm so glad that, um, you guys are doing that and, you know, giving people other options besides just rice and beans. Yes. Yeah. And it doesn't have to be, you know, crazy expensive. We're not talking whole foods every week. There's other strategies to do it, like buying a whole cow or that sort of thing. So anyway, we'll get there, we'll get pasta, there'll be delicious and that's, yeah, exactly. Yeah. I would not compromise if this was not delicious food.
So before we jump into eating healthy and cutting costs on food, why don't we jump into like your debt pay off story? How much did you guys pay off and [inaudible] how fast did you do it? So we started with 66 in debt, um, a mix of credit cards and some family loans. By the way, there was a little bit for me, mass majority, I made much more or much less intelligent choices. Yeah. But we got that paid off in 32 months was that was the total and most of the time we were on just one salary. Right. Wow, that's pretty amazing. So were you guys, um, just tell me how this started. Were you guys on the same page or was it one of your guys's idea and then kinda had to drag the other one in? Yeah, I mean, I think we were, we, the way I was raised with sort of the Dave Ramsey, you know, never like credit cards were a bad word in our family.
So I never got into debt and never had a credit card. And John had come from sort of a different position. I was raised to believe that credit cards are an emergency fund and so sure enough I used them as such. Yeah. Yeah. I believe your dad had once said that he was doing Dave Ramsey before Dave Ramsey was doing. Dave Ramsey describes that. Yeah. So my family's always been really frugal. But Dave Ramsey actually sort of part o...