My Money Planning Process to Achieve Your Goals

Imagine ending the year not just with a bang, but with a clear blueprint for your finances. 

Sounds too good to be true? 

Not at all! I'm here to share actionable strategies that will change the way you think about and use your money. We've all been there – swiping the card, not sure where the cash flows. 

But here's the thing: being intentional with every dollar is like a power play in the game of wealth. 

So, let's slice through our expenses, pump up those savings, and light the path to not just surviving, but thriving in every aspect of our lives. This isn't just about numbers and accounts; it's about crafting a life rich with success, health, and meaningful relationships. 

We're going big today, my friends, and by the time we're done, you'll have a money plan that's not only bulletproof but also bursting with potential.

Don't let another year slip by without aligning your cash with your aspirations. Tune into the episode and walk away equipped to make those dollars dance to your tune. Let’s make this a journey of financial enlightenment we take on together!

IN TODAY’S EPISODE, I DISCUSS: 

• Intentional spending and creating a financial plan with vision and purpose
• The importance of saving, investing, and understanding your expense
• Year-end reflections and setting goals for health, wealth, and joy

RECOMMENDED EPISODES FOR YOU 
If you liked this episode, you'll love these ones:

• What to Do Today to Pay Less Tax and Keep More Money
• What to Do Now to Lower Taxes Before Year End
• Are You Really Living a Rich Life or a Bankrupt One?
• Cancer Was a Gift

TAKE THE FINANCIAL FREEDOM QUIZ:
Take this free quiz to see where you are on the path to financial freedom and what your next steps are to move you to a new financial destiny at http://www.YourFinancialFreedomQuiz.com 

OTHER RESOURCES:
7-Day Money Plan Workshop: https://www.TheMoneyPlanWorkshop.com
Affluent Entrepreneurs Private Facebook Group https://www.melabraham.com/group/

CONNECT WITH ME:
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TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@melhabraham

GET MY BOOK:
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Transcript

1:56

Hey, there. Welcome to this episode of The Affluent Entrepreneur Show. This one I'm actually going to dig into. What do I do at the end of each year when it comes to money? What are the things that I look at? What are the things that I value? How do I look at going into the next year? Here's what I know. And it's one of the questions I get asked by my elite clients. They will continually say, well, what do you do each year? What do you do at the end of the year to prepare for next year to set you up for financial success and wealth creation in the following year? How do you look at the past. Year and reflect on that? And so in this episode, I'm literally going to walk you through my process of how I look at the past year, how it was financially, the things. That I need to do, what do. I need to do before the end of the year, and how am I. Going to set myself up for the next year? All right, so here's what I want you to do. I want you to grab a pad of paper, your iPad, your computer, a pen, whatever it is, but I want you to start to take this down and create your own checklist on your. Money plan as you go into the. End of the year and into next year. And I want you to use this not only this year. I want you to use this every year, because this is the thing that sets us up for success. Here's the deal. Your financial freedom is not going to be coincidental. It is not going to be haphazard. It is going to be disciplined. It's going to be intentional, and it's going to be specific, and this is the path to get you there. All right, enjoy this episode of the affluent entrepreneur show. I'll see you in the episode. This is the affluent entrepreneur show for entrepreneurs that want to operate at a high level and achieve financial liberation. I'm your host, mel abraham, and I'll be sharing with you what it takes to create success beyond wealth so you can have a richer, more fulfilling lifestyle. In this show, you'll learn how business and money intersect so you can scale your business, scale your money, and scale your life while creating a deeper impact and living with complete freedom, because that's what it really means to be an affluent entrepreneur. All right, welcome to this episode of the affluent entrepreneur show. This one's going to be it's one I've never done before, but I do this process every year around this time. Where I'm where I'm looking at the. End of the year, I'm looking back on the past year, and I'm looking. Forward to the future. And part of this is really looking at the money plan. What is the money planning process that I go through or that I will take my clients through. And so you're going to get an inside look into where I am, what I do. But this is not just for you to sit back and be a spectator. This is for you to actually take notes, to create your own process, your own checklist. Take mine, get it in place. It is something that I have done for decades. It has served me well. It has served my clients well. It will serve you well. If you want to be on a. Different trajectory financially in the coming year and the years to come, start here. All right? Don't wait. Today's the day. Let's do this together. All right, so here's the deal. Let's jump in. Because it's interesting how what we do with money, a lot of times we get involved with money and we're looking at the numbers. Show me the numbers, show me the numbers, show me the numbers. Let's look at the accounts. What did our investments do? What kind of portfolio do I have? We'll get there. We'll get there. But this isn't where we start. We always start with life. The only reason we have the money. Is for the life we're trying to create. The only reason we have the money is to have the options we want in life. The only reason we have the money. Is so we can be generous and to give. The only reason we have the money is not for the money's sake. It's for the life's sake. And when we understand that, then any money plan, any money plan, process, any kind of dynamic has to take into consideration life first. Here's how I see it is that. Always, always we start with vision. I start with vision. Okay? In the affluence blueprint, the very first exercise that my students do is what is their lifestyle? Vision. What's their affluence vision? What we do at the end of the year, in the beginning of the year, whenever you want to do it. What I do to start is I pull out my affluence vision and I start to look at it. Because here's what we know. And I'm going to jump to the iPad for those of you that can see this. Is that why the vision is so. Important is this is the vision is. The mechanism that informs the plan. You cannot have a plan without a vision. It just doesn't happen. Because how do you put a plan in place if you don't have a. Vision for where you want to go? So what is your vision for your life? Because once we do that, the plan. Then will inform the strategy. Okay, what's the strategy? We need to make the plan a. Reality to have the vision come true. And then we can look at what are the tactics, these are the investments. And the stuff that we're doing. And then from the tactics, then we can look at the actions. Okay, but too often when we're doing. This, we think that we need to. Start with the actions or the tactics first. What do I invest in? What do I do? Where should I put my $10,000, my$5,000? What do I do? Those are down at the tactics level. That's down here at tactics and actions. But your tactics and actions are supposed to be in context of the strategy. The plan, and the vision. So we always start with the vision first. And so here's the thing that I. Want you to start to look at. Is what is your vision for your life? Now, I'm not talking about just a financial vision. If you've been through my programs or you've gone through it, you know that I look at things from a holistic standpoint. If you truly want to live a rich life, you truly want to live a rich life, then that rich life. Isn'T what's in the bank account. That rich life is in the way you experience it, the way you feel it, the way you journey through it. A couple of things I want you to start to think about is that when you talk about the vision, first off, you want to start asking yourself, where is that vision for me from a health standpoint? Okay, what do I need to do? I need to lose weight? What's the vision for you? Now? I look at mine, just so you know. Look, I've been on this cancer journey since 2019, and it was one to be vibrant, one, to be healthy, two, to be cancer free. And I can tell you that in a couple of weeks, about a month's time, I go back in for another scan. But I just went through a scan in September, completely clear. Three and a half years cancer free. After three surgeries, four tumors, and 57 treatments. So it's been a battle. So when it comes to my vision for health and looking back this year, I would rate myself probably about an eight, seven and a half to an eight. I wouldn't put myself at a ten. And the reason I'm saying seven, half to eight is because of a couple of things. One, my sleep hasn't been as regular as it should be. Okay? We're working on that. And my workouts have been interrupted more often than I would like. And so I need to be more consistent on my workouts going forward, and I need to get my sleep under control. I get to sleep fine staying asleep. Hold on the game. All right, but what's it for you? What does it look like for you? And so the very first thing is I start to look at health. I start to look at professional. Okay, so career, call it, where do. You want to be on your career? Are you in that space? Where do you want to be in a year, two years, five years, ten years? Having that vision is going to help you make the plan and do the process properly. And often we don't think about it. I look back on my career and. Many of you know, and if you. Don'T, you're going to hear about it. We just committed and we just confirmed. With a major publisher for my next book, which will be released in June of 2024. And so everything is focused on the book serving you, the show, getting the word out, and lighting the light, the. Path to financial freedom. That's what I believe. That is my calling in this chapter and season of my life. And that's why I'm doing what I'm doing. And so I look at my career and I think about back on this past year, and it's been really productive. It'S been a great year. There's some things that I could have done differently. There's some things that I've learned. There are some things that I did in my career transactionally that were lucrative. But lifewise, they were bankrupt. And what I mean by that is this is that they didn't bring me the joy and the fulfillment that I would have liked. And I knew that going in because. It'S areas where I can make good. Money, but it's not really where my joy is. And so something that you need to think about, because I look at the thing that I enjoy the most is. Speaking, doing this, serving, coaching my mentor. My elite, one on one clients, my master's group. Coaching, serving and helping people on this. Path to financial freedom. That's where I get all the joy. Getting on stages and doing that type of stuff. And I allowed some other things to creep in because financially they were lucrative, but they didn't bring the joy. And so the currency moving forward for me is going to be more around the joy and less around the financial. Now, you may be in a stage in your life where, say, I got to deal with the financial, I get it. But there's a point where we use. The money we create to buy the time back and the choice back in our life. That's the reason we do it and. Not allow things to creep in our life that stress us, that can take away from the fulfillment and what we feel in life. So career is one, relationships is another, okay? And these are relationships. These could be intimate relationships, they could be family relationships, they could be a lot of different things. I look back on my relationships. One, my wife and I are in probably one of the closest relationships that we've ever been. And it seems to get better and better each year. Look, we've had our ups and downs, 13 years of marriage. It happens, okay? Family wise, we are getting closer. My sister and I are much closer. My mother is ill. She was elderly with five years on dialysis, and so that's been stressful. Her health challenges are challenging. Her perspective on life, which is challenging. Us to try and keep positive and keep her positive. Those relationships and friendships become really important. And when we talk about richness in life, when I talk about it and the three gifts, one of the gifts is the treasures. The treasures are the people that you get to share life with. Who do you want to share life with? Are you spending time with the friends that mean a lot to you? Are you spending time doing the things with them to create the memories, to create the moments that matter? And if not, we got to look at it. So I look at that, and then. Obviously I'm going to look at money. And wealth and look your wealth. We'll talk more specifically about data and things like that in a moment. But you want to look at where are you from a wealth standpoint? Is it growing? Is your debt growing? Is your debt going down? Is your net worth going up? Is your income going up? All those things, we'll talk more specifically about that, but we want to track the numbers. Now, you may sit back and say, well, I don't know that I want to track numbers because it probably isn't pretty. Okay, I get it, but we're better. Off having it not pretty, but be aware than have it not pretty and be completely unaware of the train that might hit us. Look, 2022. It wasn't pretty for anyone. Market was down like crazy. So it all hurt. Now we're looking at and saying the market's up a bit. We can see where we're at. Do I have the real estate investments? Do I want to do that? Where do I want to be in the coming year? We'll talk about that. With respect to do I need to change investments? Do I need to change different perspectives because I'm going into a new phase of life. Maybe I'm becoming an empty nester, or maybe we're having children. Things shift and change, so our wealth changes. So I start to look at those, and those are probably the major elements. And then you can put faith and spirituality in here too. But the point is that if we don't have a vision for our life, then creating a financial plan isn't going to work because you're creating a plan. It's like mapping a trip where you. Don'T know where the trip is going. So you know where your starting point is, because the starting point is today. It's where you are, but you're trying. To plan for a future with a destination where you haven't defined the destination. We have to define the destination. I'm going to give you a couple of questions. Now, these are not from me. These are questions that I've heard previously. But I think they're powerful questions for you to consider as you look forward. Into the year coming up. It's one of the things that I do and the first question is this more than anything else? I would love to feel. Now, these are questions that you get to fill in, the statements that you get to fill in. So answering the question and you can. Pause the episode and write this down. And if you're in an intimate relationship, you should do it together. You're living a life together. All right, so finish. This is, more than anything, I would love to feel. What do you want to feel? What do you want to experience? What do you want the feelings of. Your life to be around? Is it excited? Is it secure? Is it safe? What is it that you want to feel in the next twelve months? What did you feel in the last twelve months? Okay, what did you feel? Second one is this. I am happiest when I now, this. Is the question that actually got me. To start thinking about. I'm probably doing stuff that I shouldn't be doing. When it came down to. Doing some. Of the transactional work that made money. But didn't bring me joy. What am I happiest doing? I'm the happiest when I'm on stage serving. I'm the happiest when I'm coaching or mentoring, when I'm consulting. I'm the happiest when I'm doing podcast, interviews and other shows and having a. Chance to interact with you, well, then. If that's where I'm the happiest, let's bring that into our life, because that's when we feel the richest. So answer that question. I'm the happiest when I the third. One is this more than anything, I would like to be? I would like to be what would. You like to be? Okay. The first one was what would you like to feel? What would you like to be? I would like to be a mentor. I would like to be a shining light. I would like to be a safe haven. I would like to be an answer that. Because when we start to define that, what happens is that and a lot of people say, oh, you know, this visioning stuff and all that stuff, but when you put this stuff out on. Paper, it changes your psychology, it changes. Your focus, it changes the things that. You want to do. Think about this. I've got a book coming out, and. I want to hit the charts. But more importantly is not the charts. It's what it represents. It means that we've got the distribution, the reach on the book, that we're impacting lives. And so I have a statement that's. Up here that says, what would a. New York Times bestselling author do today? It starts to define what you do. And sometimes we just take it for granted. We live our life because we feel like lemmings. We get up every day at the same time. We do the same thing in the same way. We go to the same office. If we're going to the office, we're. Doing the same stuff, and we go. Through the motions, and we're not really feeling and experiencing life. Where's the richness in that? Not to judge it, but let's get back to feeling and being. Then the next one is this if. I could do anything, I would. If I could do anything, I would. What would you do if you could do anything? If I could do anything, I'd actually. Do a talk show, which we may do, where I'm interacting with entrepreneurs, where. I'm helping people live real time to get on the right path for financial freedom, but not just for the finances. But for life in a big way. And the last one and this one's an interesting one, what would be your word for the year? Your word for the year? My word this past year was stability. Coming off the cancer, we had shut. All the businesses down. We now started to come back into the game. So I wanted stability. My word for the coming year is expansion. It's expansion and it's guardian. It's giving you a safe haven. I want to be that lighthouse. What's the word for you? A word that is emotional, this rule. And that really starts to drive. So this is the first part. If we don't get the vision right, the rest of this stuff doesn't matter. All right? So now I'm going to get tactical. Now we're going to jump down. We're going to get a little more tactical about what to do, how to do it, what are the specific things I look at? Once I have the vision and I've looked at what I've done this past. Year and where I want to go this next year. We recraft it, we rewrite it, we go through it. My wife and I do it together. Now we start to look at some numbers. Now we start to look at some of the things that are going to happen in the coming years. So the first thing is this. I will take a look. Number one, I will take a look and review my liquidity. This could be your cash. And my debt position. Okay? And when I do this, I'm looking at it for where it is today, but where it has come from. Is my liquidity going up or down? Is my debt going up or down? The host is that our liquidity is. Going up and our debt is going down. Over time, it may or may not. Depending on what you're doing. If you just bought a home this year, your debt might have gone up. Okay? Liquidity might have gone down, but we. Need to know where we're at. Now, liquidity, part of that is going to be your peace of mind fund, as we call it, our emergency fund, as other people call it. Do you have enough in there to sustain yourself if you have a hiccup or life just happens. All right, so I start to look at where's my liquidity, where's my liquidity. Level my cash level? Where's my debt position? Is it going up or down from the prior year? Then I look at a couple of. Other things that are more tactical. And so because of the time of. Year it is, I actually start to review my tax situation. Okay. And what I mean is that I want to see a couple of things. I want to see what my projected taxes are. Now as an entrepreneur, as an entrepreneur. Your income can go up and down. Your income isn't static. It's not like you're getting the same salary every year. And even if you're working for someone, if you get in a year in bonus, that could go up and down. The question is, have you prepared for. Your new income level? Have you paid in enough estimated taxes? What is the projected tax that you're going to owe? Are there things you can do to reduce the tax burden that you're going to get hit with if you haven't watched or listened to? I have two episodes around reducing your taxes before the end of the year that just got recently released. We'll hook them up in the show notes and the description so you have access to them. This is the time that you need to get those things dialed in. But one of the things that I will do now is I start to. Look now and Stephanie's, like during this. Time, I'm constantly moving money around and trying to get things to work out. Because during this reviewing the taxes, not only am I looking at the taxes from projections, I'm also trying to see did we pay enough in estimates or. Do I have to pay more? And I start to look at retirement accounts. Do I need to make contributions. Into. My retirement accounts to get a tax deduction? Should I be going into a sep? Should I be going into a 401K profit sharing defined benefit I happen to have a defined benefit plan and a 401K profit sharing plan. So those are the two major plans that we work with in my situation. So at this point in time, I'm having conversations with my pension administrators to say, let's look at how we can max these things out, maximize our tax deductions, minimize the tax, and maximize the amount that's going into investments for our future. And so at the very least, I start to really dig into the taxes at this point in time. Now then, that leads me to, all. Right, I've got the taxes dialed in. Now let's look at our portfolio. Our portfolio and portfolio performance. Okay? In other words, how much have we made? What are our overall returns from year to year? Is our wealth, our investments? Are they going up? Are they going down? Do we have unrealized gains, unrealized losses, those kinds of things? Okay, did we lose money? Did we make money? Where did we lose money? The other thing that I'm going to. Look at, and this goes along with the taxes. Are there losses in the portfolio that I can harvest? And in other words, can I take. Certain losses on investments that will reduce my taxes by offsetting gains? It's called loss harvesting. There's a specific way to do it to get the benefit of it and keep your money invested. But you have to be careful of something called the wash sale rules. We'll do another episode on that. In fact, I think I've done one already that really start to dig into it. But this is the time that I'm looking at. How did the portfolio perform? What are my gains and losses? What are the losses that I have sitting in there that I have not realized yet, I have not sold to make the loss? And do I have gains to offset? Does it make sense to harvest the losses? And then the third part of the portfolio is we look at our asset. Allocations, allocations and diversification. Now, some of you know that I just had a meeting with my wealth. Team, and this is what we did. So we looked at the allocations, we looked at the diversification. We said, based on my age, based on my situation, based on my circumstances, based on the plan and the vision, are we good? Should we change our allocations? Should we change the portfolio? What is our risk profile? What is our risk need? What is our risk capacity? Understanding all of that to allow us. And this is something that we do with our clients, too, is to allow them to understand, hey, at this point, do we need to make some adjustments? Are we too aggressive? Are we too conservative? Do we see that we have elements of the portfolio that aren't performing, that we need to allocate elsewhere? I sit on a board of directors as an outside director. And part of that, I'm on the pension committee. We're running a $50 million pension fund. And we do this every other month where we're looking at asset allocations. Well, in my case, I don't look at it every other month. I'll look at it throughout the year. But then we make a major refresh at the end of the year to say, do we need to make any changes? Do we need to make any differences? And everything like that. This is the thing that I start to go into from a number standpoint. And then the other thing that I. Look at is my net worth. Not only did my net worth go. Up, but what's it made of? Okay? What's it made of? What's the makeup of it? In other words, having a net worth that's locked up in just your home. Yes, you have a high net worth, but it's illiquid, so you end up house rich and cash poor, which means that if you need to pay bills, that net worth isn't workable. It's why in the affluence blueprint or with my clients. One of the things we focus on is what is our investable net worth? What is the net worth that I. Can use to generate cash flow to allow me to live? It is what we call the money machine. It is what my book is about. How do you build this in a way that gives you a machine that prints off cash for you and takes care of you? And so this is the thing that. We start to really look at it. Now that's a lot on the asset side. I also want to look at my income and expenses. So where do we go from there? Okay, what I start to do is. That when I start to look at. Income and expenses, my income, I actually. Want to look at my income by source. Okay. Remember I've said repeatedly that multiple sources. Of income is no longer a luxury, it's a requirement. It's a requirement for your security. It's a requirement for your financial safety. And it's a requirement for your financial freedom. It doesn't mean you're going to work twelve jobs, but it does mean that you're going to look for additional sources of income so you're not dependent on. A single threat of income. So this is why I look at it and say, what's my income by source? How much am I making from speaking? How much I'm making from consulting? How much am I making from coaching or mentoring? How much am I making from programs. How much I'm making from valuations? How much am I making as director fees, as I sit on companies boards. Of directors, understanding where that money is. Coming from, and then also comparing to what you thought it was going to. Be, the makeup of it last year. Is important because then you see how things are shifting. But now you look at it and say, okay, what can I expect next year? What do I anticipate next year? Well, next year I anticipate I've already booked a bunch of keynotes and I anticipate a higher speaking revenue source. We have the book coming out. Actually, there's certain transactional stuff that I did this past year that I won't do. So I expect that income to go way down or go to zero. And so I'm going to look at income by source so I understand where it's coming from and where my bread is getting buttered, if you will. All right. That then leads me to this. If we're going to look at income, we got to look at expenses by category. Where am I spending the money? All right, where am I spending the money? Not for judgment, but for awareness. Now, there might be a little bit of judgment in there. All right, where you go, oh, I spent too much on entertainment or meals, eating out, whatever. Okay. But this is for you to have an awareness, for me to have an awareness of where the money's. Gone? How many of you have ever come to the end of the year and. Go, I made that much money? Where did it all go? I was just listening to something where they were making 600,000, this couple was making $600,000. They were saving zero, zero. Where's it all going? It's 50,000 a month. Oh, man. So we got to look at our expenses by category. What are the things? And along with this expenses by category. Is you can reevaluate needs and wants. Not because you're going to cancel the wants. It's because you want to be intentional. The whole idea is to be intentional with every dollar. Remember, every single dollar needs a job description. We don't leave it for chance. We are very specific and deliberate with what each dollar is going to do. It's going to pay the mortgage, great. If it's going to pay for entertainment or travel, great. But the question is, what are you doing intentionally with the money? Then? Along the same lines, I'm going to. Look at savings and investing. Savings and investing. How much of my income each as a percentage, each month or for the. Year did I put away? 5%? 0%, 10%, 20%? How much of it is invested? Remember that we say in the wealth priority ladder that depending on age, we want you investing 25% to 30% of your income. 25% to 30%. Now, if you're younger, we can get it down to 20%. But if you're older, it's 25 is closer to 30%. But if we truly want to build that money machine to be financially free, we need to have a substantial amount of money working for us so we don't have to work for it anymore. And so we need to look at that. The other things that I will play around with is to look at is there goal spending involved? Okay? And what I mean by goal spending. Is really this idea of big things. That we're saving for. Could be a wedding, could be a child, could be college, could be a home. Is there goal spending that I'm working on to make that happen? And so this is the review process. That I walk through. This is the review process that I. Walk through each and every year. Starts with a vision, works through the. Different assets and liabilities, the income and the expenses. The view backwards. The idea forwards. Now, I then ask a couple of things, and this is where it starts to really bring this together. Okay? I look forward twelve months. And when. I look forward twelve months, I now. Have a chance to define a couple of things. One is, what are my relational. Priorities? What are the relationships that you want to deepen? What are the relationships that you want to strengthen? What are the relationships you want to start? Okay? What are the things that need to come into place? So what I'm doing now is starting to understand what are the priorities that I want to create for the next twelve months. And I look at them from a. Relational standpoint, a health standpoint. So health priorities. Then I look at business, money priorities, okay? And this last one we'll get to. In a second, but it's really important is that so I want you to figure out what are the relationships you want to deepen, the strength, and I want you to look at your health. Do I need to lose weight? Do I need to control my sleep like me? Do I need to control my blood pressure? Do I have these other things? Do I need to be more regular as far as exercise? Do I need to stretch more? Do I need to take yoga? Do I need to meditate? What is it? That is going to be your health that is going to be your health priorities in the next twelve months? That when you get to this time. Next year, you look back and go, we accomplished it. Then business and money priorities. This is the plan. What do I want with the business? What are the key initiatives that I'm going to drive with my business or my money? As far as a savings rate, an investing rate, a level of net worth, a level of income, a level of spending to get really clear on at least at the general levels you want. And then the last priority that I typically look at is, what are my joy priorities? Listen, if life isn't bringing us joy, why are we doing it? So what happens is we tend to I had this conversation with one of my master's clients who wanted to do something that's on their bucket list, and she wasn't sure about doing it. She said, It's on my bucket list. Can afford to do it, but maybe I'm better off investing and I do. This with all my clients. Where you start to run the risk is when you start to see other people doing things and they go, that's. Cool, I want to do that. But if it's not one of your. Top three joy priorities and we'll talk about what that is, then what you're. Doing is you're allowing the external world to define what you're going to do to try and bring you joy. And the problem with that is, if it's not one of your top three. The joy is fleeting. You'll get momentary satisfaction. It's like eating that ice cream sundae. It seemed like a good thing, felt good at the time, and you feel guilty as hell afterwards. All right, so what we want to. Do is if we're going to allocate. Money, time and effort energy to things. That bring us joy, we want that joy to be sustainable, and we want. It to be at the top of the list. If that joy is travel. Like, one of the things that my wife and I love to do is. Travel together and we do at least. One to two big trips a year. That's at the top of the list. Because it checks off a lot of boxes. We get to share time, we deepen our relationship. We get to create memories and moments together. And so it creates sustainable joy for us versus buying something that maybe you don't appreciate. I love cars, but not at the level where I'm in awe of cars and I collect them. I have friends that do and they get sustainable joy from that. So that's at the top of the list. The question is what are your joy priorities? What are the things that aren't fleeting. But will continue to bring joy to. You for a period of time? What are those top three? Those are the things that we need to focus on. The rest of them are fleeting, the rest of them are secondary. We may get them, we may do them, but they're not a priority. So this whole thing, this whole reflection the next twelve months is what are the priorities relationally, health wise, business, money, and joy wise? Then ask yourself one last question before I close out. Why does all of this matter? Do you remember? Money is a result, it's not a purpose. So everything we've talked about a lot of is results. But I want you to figure out the purpose. What's your driving? Why? What's the thing that makes it so meaningful and so important that it compels you to move forward. It compels you to have the discipline, it compels you to do the right things. Remember, wealth creation is less about the money and more about the behaviors. It's about habits. It's about decisions. It's about behaviors. What is the why that's going to allow you to develop the habits, to develop the behaviors, to make the right decisions, to set you on a new. Trajectory in the coming year, health wise, wealth wise, relationship wise, business wise, joy wise. That's what this is about. Because money without the joy, money without the richness is an empty existence. This is the process that I use. I do it every year. I go deep, spend a lot of time doing it. But I want to reflect on where I've been. I want to project where I want to go and I want to make it a real. And you can too. What I want you to do is. I want you to take this episode, I want you to use it as a checklist. I want you to go through it. It may be the first time you've ever done anything like this and I did it. And it becomes, don't make it work, make it fun. Because you're talking about your life. You're dreaming big, you're looking forward and you're saying, let me find the pathway. Maybe you're only going to put two. Stepping stones on that road to financial. Freedom in the life you want. But it's two more stepping stones than you had before. Let's do it and know that you're not alone. I'm with you every step of the way. That's what this show is about. That's what my book's about. That's what everything that I do is about. If I can help you on this journey, reach out. Reach out. You don't have to go it alone. And in fact, the journey isn't as fruitful and joyful if it's done alone. So let's do this together, all right? Because after all, I think financial freedom is your broker. Let's help you claim it. I hope you found this of value. I hope that you use this process. Over and over again as you pave the path to financial freedom and the life you want. More importantly, the life you deserve. All right? Until we get a chance to see each other on another episode on the. Journey out there while I'm speaking. Always, always strive for life outlived you. Cheers. See you soon. Thank you for listening to The Affluent Entrepreneurship with me, your host, Mel Abraham. If you want to achieve financial liberation to create an affluent lifestyle, join me in the affluent entrepreneur facebook group now by going to melabraham.com/group, and I'll see you there.