Put First Things First
Are your goals are conflicting with your debt issue? Balancing dreams and goals with finances is always tricky. Often the feelings and emotions you’re connecting to when thinking about your dreams are more real and powerful than the desire to be debt free.
You can’t have everything you want all at once, so achieving your dreams becomes a balancing act with maintaining financial health. A healthy financial life is a building block that comes before going after more lofty goals. It must come first.

Maslow’s Heirarchy of Needs hypothesizes that in order to self-actualize (fulfilling your human potential) you must first meet your survival and security needs. Otherwise, it’s like building a house without laying the foundation first. If your finances are in jeopardy, your security needs are on shaky ground. If you build your dreams on that shaky foundation eventually your financial house of cards will come tumbling down. Keep this in mind as you’re creating your ideal life. First things have to come first, which includes your finances.

You don’t have to deny yourself of what you truly want because you don’t have the money. Those emotions are a good indicator that you’re on the right track when it comes to discovering what you really want. However, you may have postpone them or do a little soul searching to find out if there may be an underlying want (this is an upcoming step).

Assignment: When you look back at your list of 100 dreams, you may need to be more specific about when they can happen for you financially. If it’s your dream to own a home, how much do you want to be able to put down as a downpayment? It it’s your dream to have more children, do you want to make sure your credit cards are paid off first? If you’d love to travel to Disney World with the kids, how much will it cost and will you save for it in advance? Be specific. The more specific you can be with the financial ramifications of your dreams the less likely you will be to get sidetracked from your goals.

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I don't know about anyone else but I needed this step. Thanks KIM!

Absolutely! I think I needed this whole phase!

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"I want my children to have all the things I couldn't afford. Then I want to move in with them." ~ Phyllis Diller

I have started working on it

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Kimberly Proud Mommy to Bethany Rose April 2006 &

Organizer of the Coupon Clippers of Tacoma

Ok so I have went through my list and what I realized is that many of my goals that I can work on don't have huge or any financial implications. Like keeping up on housework really it doesn't cost anything. Some of my other goals in looking at the list have been fulfilled. A few are being deligently worked on
My list is missing one that I am starting to feel may be worth adding. Choosing and giving our kids the best education we can. I am starting to feel that may require something drastic like moving to an area with better schools. For that to happen we have 3 years of hoping that nothing happens to hinder us. 3 years will have our car payed off freeing $300 in our budget (provided out cars don't have other issues), We need to be able to sell our current home for a Down payment, DH will need to have several raises (not a problem as his company is good with this), Interest rates will need to stay low, housing prices need to stay where they are.
So that has be re-evaluating the Home Improvement goals. It we have a 3 year plan to move that changes the importance of them. I don't want to put more into this house then we need to, Just finish what we started.
My other big goal is having a baby, That relates to many other challenges. It relates to loosing weight, eating healthy, excersise regularly. The implications is that we should be saving up for the out of pocket Max on our medical. So we don't end up with a hospital bill we can't pay. My DH wants to Join a Gym, I don't want another monthly bill, plus having to pay daycare to workout is a deterant to working out. Eating healthy can be more exspensive then how we have been eating. There are small purchases I would like to make but don't because I don't want to spend the money. A pedometer, a food scale, and continueing WW but thats $40 a month and I haven't been as modivated as I need to to make it work for me.
We have hobby goals that are taking the dirrection of making them profitable. DH is interested in selling some of his jewelry but that means he needs to buy exspencive materials. I am interested in doing something with my knitting, I start teaching classes in the fall.
So I guess the biggest thing that will help me in meeting my goals is getting rid of Debt, Getting rid of Debt means we have more available funds to put toward a healthy life style, home projects, hobbies, education or whatever. Currently the answer to can we do this, buy this, work on this is NO we need to put it to the CC. That is our biggest hendrence to many of our goals.

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Kimberly Proud Mommy to Bethany Rose April 2006 &

Organizer of the Coupon Clippers of Tacoma