Dawn G. Starks - Simplify Your Financial Life: 104 Easy Tips for Creating the Abundant Future You Desire

Praise for Dawn Starks
and

Simplify Your

FINANCIAL LIFE

In Simplify Your Financial Life, Dawn Starks aligns the idea of leading a simpler, more minimalist life with the goal of tackling your financial life in easy-to-digest tips that anyone can understand and put into place. She makes simplifying your financial life surprisingly entertaining.

JOSHUA BECKER, Founder of Becoming Minimalist and author of The Minimalist Home

Simplify Your Financial Life is a powerful book full of valuable lessons and tactical next steps that you can quickly integrate into your own life to live more with less. Dawns lived it, and it shows in her clear, concise, high-value tipseven implementing just a few can have a radical impact on your life.

GRANT SABATIER, Creator of Millennial Money and author of Financial Freedom

Dawn has taken her years of expert experience and packaged her wisdom into bite-size tips that will improve your financial life. Her down-to-earth tone and practical strategies show you how to take control of your budget, build wealth, and streamline your finances.

FARNOOSH TORABI, Financial expert and host of the So Money podcast

The information contained in this book is meant to be educational in nature and is not meant to provide tax, legal, or investment advice to individuals. Laws change frequently and everyones situation is unique. The information has been obtained from sources considered to be reliable, but we do not guarantee that the foregoing material is accurate or complete. Any information is not a complete summary or statement of all available data necessary for making an investment decision and does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Past performance may not be indicative of future results. Any opinions stated are those of the author and not necessarily those of Raymond James. You should consult with a qualified professional prior to making any tax, legal, or investment decision.

Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards Inc. (CFP Board) owns the certification marks CFP, CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER, CFP (with plaque design), and CFP (with flame design) in the U.S., which it authorizes use of by individuals who successfully complete CFP Boards initial and ongoing certification requirements.

Published by River Grove Books

Austin, TX

www.rivergrovebooks.com

Copyright 2020 Dawn G. Starks

All rights reserved.

Thank you for purchasing an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright law. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the copyright holder.

Distributed by River Grove Books

Design and composition by Greenleaf Book Group

Cover design by Greenleaf Book Group

Cover Images: iStockphoto.com/Andrey_KZ and iStockphoto.com/petekarici

Publishers Cataloging-in-Publication data is available.

Print ISBN: 978-1-63299-283-3

eBook ISBN: 978-1-63299-284-0

First Edition

For my mother, who once told me she had several books inside her that needed to be written. Little did she know that her tossed-off comment would be the catalyst that I, too, could write a book. Your turn, Mom.

T his book has been in my heart for more than twenty years. Ever since I read Elaine St. James book Simplify Your Life in 1996, I have been on a journey to simplify my life in every way possible. Perhaps I am a slow learner, but this has not been an easy journey. I am a highly ambitious, Type A hurricane of a person, so slowing down to simplify is a difficult work in progress. But my interest in minimalism and simple living has persisted.

The other big event for me in 1996 was starting my career as a financial planner. Right from the beginning, what I learned about simple living and minimalism informed my work with my financial planning clients. My goal was, and continues to be, to make my clients financial lives as simple and stress-free as possible.

Ambitious, busy people can really accomplish a lot in their lives, but we also tend to be major procrastinators. In the time since I first decided to write a book about simplifying your financial life, technology has changed significantly. But most of the concepts I have written about here are nearly identical to what I would have written about twenty years ago if I had gotten my act together. Some of the applications of the ideas may have changed, but the ideas themselves are no different.

It was lovely to finally cross write the damn book off my yellowed, tattered to-do list, to be sure. But as I finally got started on this book, I realized that all this simplifying work is ongoinga cyclical work in progress. That realization, coupled with my love of teaching and my desire to bring basic, no-nonsense financial education to everyday people, inspired me to start a whole new online business called SimpleMoney. (I did mention I am a Type A, right?)

SimpleMoney started as a blog and a podcast, and over time I plan to add coursework in the fundamentals of financial planning and simplifying your finances. There will also be other books, I feel sure.

For now, there is this book. This is a personal finance book like no other. It is not meant to be a comprehensive review of all areas of personal finance. It is meant to help you develop a new way of thinking about your money. Handling your money doesnt have to be hard. While there are complex things you can do with your money if you choose, being successful with your money can be very, very simple.

My aim with Simplify Your Financial Life is to offer you a new mindset about money, as well as practical tips to get your financial life under control. I want to eliminate the time you spend worrying about your finances, so you have more white space in your life to use as you wish.

The book is divided into twelve sections. We begin with some basics to set the tone and lay a solid foundation and then dive into building a better mindset about money. Activities, such as establishing a dedicated space to do your routine financial work, get you motivated and direct your focus. Changing your mindset around money is a tougher challenge. We spend years being fed ideas about our abilities and about how money works, so we should expect that changing those long-held beliefs will take time. Lets start now!

Next, we tackle organization. Being organized and focused is key to accelerating your financial success. Along with organization comes system building. The most effective way to simplify our financial lives is to build easy-to-remem-ber, easy-to-implement systems. Well discuss several strategies that do just that.

After we get moving on systems and organization, the book shifts to more topic-specific tips. Budgeting, spending, and getting out of debt feature prominently, but saving and investing are also covered. If you have children or grandchildren, you will enjoy the section about simplifying money for your kids. Starting kids off with a healthy relationship with money management is critical.

We wrap up with specific strategies for protecting your family, retirement planning, and college planning. The last section features bigger moves. These strategies will help those of you who want to make faster, more dramatic changes to your financial situation.

You can read the book straight through, if youd like, but you can also pick and choose the subjects and chapters that appeal to you the most. If you want to implement the practices outlined here, you could choose to do one or two projects per week. There are 104 projects, so at a pace of two per week, you can transform your financial life over the course of one year. Or you could just choose the projects you need most and come back when you are ready for the rest.