Zoe McKey - The 1-Page Budgeting Plan: Become Debt Free, Accumulate Savings, Build Wealth Investing, and Live Life on Your Terms

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The kit shares 10 key practices to help you to:

• discover your true self,
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• lead a life of gratitude and purpose.

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Imagine having an awesome GPS. It finds you the best routes every time, calculates every aspect of your trip, and gives you astonishingly accurate data on your ETA, obstacles, checkpoints, policeeverything. But you dont know the destination you want to go to. You can have the best GPS, but without a clear destination in mind, it is useless. On the other hand, you can have the most mind-blowing, beautiful destination in mind, but if you dont have the GPSor heck, at least a plain paper mapyou wont know how to get to the place of your dreams. A good GPS and a well-defined, intriguing destination are both needed to have the trip of your life. Similarly, you need a good budgeting method and clearly defined financial goals to reach financial freedom.

Do you have audacious plans in your mind? Wild dreams? Fifty countries to visit? Or maybe you dream of having a calm and cozy home where a lack of money is never a problem? I hear you. Its so heartwarming to daydream about palm trees, cozy mountain cottages, a full fridge I wonder when I will get there? We ask this question and then return to the grind. Weeks are turning into months, months into years. We dont understand why our dreams are still unfulfilled. We work so hard! Life is unfair! Why?

Why? Thats a great question to ask.

Why is it that we run low on cash each month? Why is it that, although we work 8-10 hours a day, we seem to be going nowhere? Why do we lack direction?

If I asked you, Do you know what your financial goals are? could you give me a quick, no-brainer answer? The majority of people cant. If I asked you, Do you know where your money goes each month? could you tell me? Most people couldnt. Do you have some kind of system in which you manage and track your income and expenses? You guessed it right, most people dont know. Okay, so you dont have a destination and you dont have a GPS either, and youre surprised youre not going anywhere? said my financial mentor, shaking his head in disapproval. Thats when my financial journey started changing for good.

I was 25 and, I must say, extremely lucky to have been mocked about my financial illiteracy so early on. To be fair, I had a vague money-tracking system. I tracked all my expenses and income in a little pink book. I wasnt prioritizing or making smart decisions, rather just making sure to not run low on cash before the month ended. Whenever I saw that I was licking the bottom of my money tank, I pulled the hand brake and I lived on cheap salami and bread until the next months wages came in. Sometimes this happened 10 days beforehand.

Failing to plan is planning to fail.

My financial mentor, lets call him Midas, had a lot of knowledge about money. He could talk for hours about the importance of having clear financial goals; he had deep knowledge about where the money is coming from and where it goes, or as he put it, having a coordinated and comprehensive system for financial decision-making. To put it simply, look at where you are now, plan for where you want to be in the future, and considering these two data points, create a long-term financial plan for yourself. He told me about savings accounts, retirement funds, investment accounts, ETFs WTF?

I had no clue. And I am not the only one. According to the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors, almost 60% of US adults dont have any financial plan. NAPFA also shows that 39% of US adults dont have any other type of savings than pensions. 50% of Americans with children dont have a will, and two out of five Americans would give Cs, Ds, or Fs to their level of financial awareness. And ladies, I have some bad news for us. When it comes to financial savvy, we have some catching up to do. A recent survey by Country Financial found that 23.6% of women never ask for financial advice compared to just 15.2% of men. And when women do ask for advice, it is mostly for retirement planning. But still, only 37% of women asked about retirement savings compared to 45% of men.

Its no unknown fact that women live longer than men. In fact, we live on average five years longer than men! So shouldnt we be asking a little bit more about retirement financial planning since well be living longer? I think so! But still, women are afraid to ask.

These are scary numbers, especially because the United States is one of the worlds most developed and educated countries. Imagine the percentages in countries where education is less accessible and where its even harder to make ends meet.

Some people are repelled by learning about the dirty money. To some, money is the direct derivation of evil. Money is neither good nor evilin fact, money on some level is an illusion. Its a shape-shifter, either on paper or in a combination of zeros and ones in a computer system. That, and the emotions we attribute to it.