Designing SMARTER Money Goals #248

is trying to reach. But I'm not sure a lot of folks have thought about smarter goals when it comes to their their personal finances, when it comes to our own goals when it comes to our money, And that's exactly what we're gonna talk about this episode, buddy. Yeah, it's like a method that can help us, I think,

be more effective in our goal planning. And you know it, sometimes in the in the work context, smarter goals or smart goals have not been great, I think, and and sometimes that's like a communication issue or a bureaucracy issue. But I think in our own personal lives, when it's like us in our goals, that it can be an effective method for actually achieving greater things when it comes to our money. So yeah, we'll talk about that on

this episode, Matt. Before we get to that, though, I wanted to mention that I saw this interesting article and consumer reports about dash cameras that you put in your car, and you can get those for bucks something like that. They're not really terribly expensive for a cheap one. Well, yeah, twenty bucks. I'm not gonna spend twenty bucks get like a FO dash game. I don't know if you're gonna if you're gonna get him, man, go all in get

that primo dash cam. Why well, if you're actually gonna go through getting one, I mean, what would be more frustrating than actually not being able to see what it is that you need to see? And you did spend some money on the actual item. I'm not saying go out and like spend all of your hard savings on, you know, a FO one, but maybe not a twenty dollar one. Yeah, I probably wouldn't go with it. Yeah, I find on a sale it's a two dollar camera normally,

but no, it's twenty dollars. I would give you my stamp of approval, my two thumbs upright, that was you. Well, I'm not up for spending like massive amounts on something that like a dash cam necessarily, but I think like even a cheap dash cam can actually give you what you're looking for in regards to like, you know what, this article was saying that it's helpful for and actually

for insurance purposes. I guess yeah. And actually it's interesting that insurers don't offer their customers free dash camps, because I think it helps insurance companies most of all. But in this article they referenced a guy who was driving got pulled over for talking on the phone. He wasn't talking on the phone, and his dash camera could prove it because it takes video of outside the car and then inside the car at the same time. So three

six action. Yeah, I bet you can't get that with the twenty dollar dash came Maybe maybe that's the eighty dollar one, but but yeah, like that's huge for him. He just was able to go down to the courthouse and say, hey, I've got video and I wasn't on my phone, take a look, and they dropped all charges. And so that's the kind of thing where like a small amount of money could actually prevent um us having to come out of pocket for a lot more money

later on down the road. Yeah, I would definitely install one of those if my insure was providing one for free. If you're driving all the time, like like your dad, he's on the road a lot for work, I think it could make a lot of sense for someone like him. But man, like these days, seriously, I feel like I'm biking just as often as I am driving, which actually makes me think. Didn't you win a bike cam that you're that you like stick on your bike or something

like that Streets Alive last year. So it's a bike festival here in Atlanta. It's like a dash cam pour my bike. Yeah, yeah, that way, if there's a motorist that cuts you off or you know, God forbid hits you something like that, you have proof that they did that. But what's the deal. I haven't seen that on your bike, and I remember you talking about it, but yeah, give me an update on that. No, it was on my rad Wagon and then I sold my rad Wagon waiting

on the next iteration. So yeah, yeah, I never saw in action. Yeah, well, dang it, it's pretty slick. You should have taken that off and like given it to me or held on to it for your next bike. I'm glad I won that one. Because that one was like a four camera something that really you included it on the bike? No, no, no no, no, I kept that. No, I up the camera. Oh I thought you said you had it on your Okay, I did took it off.

I'm gonna put it on the next iteration. But yeah, if if you need convincing that a dash cam might be appropriate for you, we'll post a link to a YouTube video of the craziest like dash cam accidents in our show. Notes Man, I think a lot of them are like Eastern European videos, but there's some crazy stuff that happens over there, and dash cams are documented like a lot of weirdness, a lot of hitting runs, a lot of crazy like natural disasters, cows flying through the

air in a tornado like whatever. This isn't Twister from the nineties. Yea, all right, maybe I made that one up, but there's a lot of crazy stuff in those videos. Well, I think there would be just as much craziness going on if we had those mandatory in the US. I think they're actually mandatory in Russia because of all of the fraud that goes on when it comes to insurance claims.

But but certainly, I mean That's the biggest reason for it, I think would be if you were involved in an accident and you had somebody that was trying to make an insurance claim and they're falsifying it, right, well, that's gonna come back and hurt you. If you're insured, has to pay for that, and so it's great, you know, in that case, would be amazing to have some actual video footage to back it up, to back up your side of the story. That would totally be an instance

where it would be worth it. Have you ever actually been in an accident where there is a disagreement on actually what happened between me and the motorists, but not between like the police and what actually happened. Yeah, oh yeah, I had literally had a dude, I was in the far right lane. Guy, I was two lanes over on the left, cuts across all lanes to try to take a right and yeah, and and then he was like,

you ran into me. What are you talking about? So, yeah, I didn't need a dash cam for that, but it probably would have helped at least. Yeah, That's what I'm talking about. Man. Uh So, I've never had an instance like that myself, but yeah, if you happen to do a lot of driving, certainly something to consider. It would also be amazing too if insurers took that into account and you know, to give you a discount on your insurance,

you know, because you had that proof. Yeah, like having a security system at your home, you typically get a discount. Having something like a dash cam on your car makes sense. You should get a discount, absolutely, But you should buy the ones. That's all I'm saying. Yeah, get get that nice one on sale. All right, man, this episode, were drinking in Alpha Abstraction Double I p A Volume thirteen and this is my Wild Leap brew company out of Lagrange, Georgia.

We've had a couple of their beers before on the show. I'm looking forward to enjoying this one with you, man, and we will share our thoughts on this brew at the end of the episode. Sounds good man, All right, Well, let's get onto the topic at hand. We're talking about designing smarter money goals, and Matt, there were just like so many ways that we can evaluate ourselves for how we're doing in life. Yeah, like how much you can

afford to spend with a nice dash cam? You Richie rich Over there all of a sudden, Man, I'm just in a weird mood. I don't know why I'm I'm harping all about these dash caams. I'm gonna take your credit cards away because you are in an interesting mood today.

I don't want you spending anything you regret. I have wanted a go pro before, Like I've kind of gone through these phases where picture having a go pro, like especially on vacation, and just how fun that would be, you know, like just take in the ocean, coming in and out of the water with the kids. I don't know, you'd be a better version of yourself with a go pro. I just like cameras. You know, I'm a photographer. Maybe that's the part of it that I'm drawn to. Like,

I got cameras here, you know, my house. I got cameras on my phone. I when it camera in my car, Well get them all, man, have cameras everywhere. But again, we digress, We digress, all right, Let's get back to it. So often we're measuring ourselves in so many different ways in life, and and I think obviously money is just one thing that we measure kind of how we're doing by And it's certainly not like the most important measurement

of how we're doing. Typically, there are other categories that we place more importance on, right, like wellness or you know, our relationship status is and how how those are going, and generally are like our overall happiness and well being, that's what we're really concerned with. But money is something that can be used intentionally to aid us in some

of these other important categories. But on the opposite side of the spectrum, it can kind of turn into an idol of sorts, right, I think, and have this opposite effect, and it can lead us down kind of a path that never satisfies because when is enough enough? Right? And that's a thing that any of us who have tried to get good with our money have had to combat

and had to think about as well. Matt I saw this article and it talked about how actor and comedian Martin Short actually came up with nine categories that he evaluates every single years. Yeah, And I was like, man, I was really impressed, because I think that looking at all of those non categories could be really helpful to kind of have an overall evaluation for for how I'm

doing as a person too. And the categories were self, immediate family, original family, which meant his friends from growing up, his current friends, money, career, which means like doing fulfilling work, creativity, discipline, and lifestyle. And I mean I think like sometimes we as humans tend to be kind of like ships where our rudders turned just slightly, and then you know, just a few years down the road, we could be Uh, we could be a heck of a lot more off

course than we thought we would be. We can end up in a place that we didn't intend to be. So yeah, I think we can find ourselves in a state of drift and it can have a massive impact on our happiness. And the same thing with our money, like we can we can find ourselves in a state of drift over spending in certain areas, and it's time to reevaluate. It's time then to to rethink our money goals, designed some smarter ones that that we can actually stick

to and that we can consistently implement. Yeah. You know, on the the topic of happiness, I think a lot of people have heard of this twenty twin Princeton study where they found that happiness how it doesn't necessarily increase a lot once you earn more than seventy five dollars a year. Well, guess what, there's this new study that that seems to disagree and the points to the fact that people with incomes over a hundred thousand are a

good deal happier than folks who make less. And it also shows that the correlation between income and happiness has steadily risen over the years. Maybe that's due to inflation, who knows about. The methodology was different in these studies, and obviously you know that plays a role. But the reason I bring this up, though, is it is important to see that money and having financial security it does play a role in our happiness, even though it isn't

necessarily the end all be all right. I think the real problem is when we confuse having lots of money with the things or the experiences that the money can afford us. Nobody sets out to hoard money, you know, like we all laugh at the idea of becoming scroogement ducks where swimming and skiing down all of our you know, all of our gold. But that can easily become our def vults when we don't identify and reevaluate our larger

money goals. Yeah, man, we actually got an email recently from listeners Shay that actually, I think kind of spurred on our idea for this episode, and she wrote, I had never heard the term financial independence before listening to how the money then and the current COVID situation has made my husband and I realized it's okay to slow down, reevaluate, and think about our true values. She says, hint, we'd give away our cars before we gave away our six

little chickens. And she says, I came up with a manter to reflect this newfound wisdom, and I've put it on the bottom of my computer. I'm looking at it right now and on my two credit cards. I just wanted to share it, and I think your listeners might benefit from coming up with our own mantra and placing it around their house, on their credit cards or even on their computer every time I try to shop online or might be wasting time instead of working on my

side gigs. I asked myself this question. Does this support my journey to financial independence in a simple, liberated life? She says, it does. Wonders seeing that before she goes shopping online or before she makes a big purchase, and

I love that idea. Of as we're making these goals, putting those goals front and center, sending them in front of us, like on the things that we see the most, whether it's your mirror as you're getting ready in the morning or on your computer, to remind you of what is indeed valuable and meaningful, because like, once you've got that goal and you've got that kind of simple mission statement,

it can really guide you in in the follow through. Yeah, exactly, man, I love that she totally has the right mindset here for her. It's it's not about amassing huge sums of wealth. It's about continually realizing what is actually important. You know, in her case, that's a simple and liberated life with some chickens. Maybe even she'll get a goat someday, or maybe not because that's too complicated. Whatever she wants to do,

it's up to her. But you know, taking these small steps to remind her of that helps to enforce behavior that will help her to continue in that direction. Basically sort of like you're saying earlier, Joel, SHA's rudder, it seems to be working perfectly. You know, it's pointing her in the right direction that she knows that she wants to go. So that's what this episode is gonna be all about. We're gonna talk about re evaluating our current money goals so that we can pursue more of what

actually and really matters in our lives. So we'll get into the specifics of what that means for you right after the break. All right, we're back from a break and we're talking about designing smarter money goals. We're gonna get to kind of the smarter system and how to come up with your own money goals because they're different for all of us. Right, we just talked about listeners. SA one of the most important things in her life

was her six little chickens, and that's so cool. So it's probably not like the specific chickens, although maybe I'm sure she loves them dearly, but it's probably if you dig a little bit deeper, it's what the chickens represent in her life, right, which is maybe self sustainability, the pace of her life, you know, maybe her connection with

the earth. I think a lot of times, Uh, these different things in our lives represent something deeper than what you can actually just you know, see with your eye, Yeah, for sure, And we're about to get to kind of maybe a system that can help. But before we get to that, matt Um, it's so tough to reevaluate goals that you haven't even really gun to create, right to design smarter goals if you don't have money goals in

the first place. And so like, the first step that I think you and I would would recommend for folks is to spend some time in introspection. So much of creating money goals comes with knowing yourself better. And say obviously knows herself, she knows what's most important to her. She'd give away certain high price items before she gave away her access to taking care of awesome little chickens in her backyard. It's pretty hard to create proper goals

without really knowing yourself. And you think it might even be easier to do this given some of the social distancing constraints that have been placed on many of our lives. But we're pretty inventive when it comes to ways to

distract ourselves from doing the things that truly matter. So while most of us have a little more time, a little more space to actually do some of this introspection to figure out what do we want our lives to truly look like many of us have avoided it, and COVID feels like the perfect excuse to avoid it, even though it is actually the perfect excuse to pursue some of those things. It's the perfect time to slow down and actually look inside yourself a little bit. But instead

we've we turned to flicks. Yeah, and also we like, we don't just turn to entertainment, but we looked at to other people. You know, so many of us are are used to making decisions based on what we see our neighbors, what our friends or coworkers doing and whatever it is up they're buying, or maybe like we're even following the lead of whatever media companies are feeding to us. You know, we're showing a constant stream of goods based

on digital marketing algorithms. Uh. And unfortunately we haven't taken enough time to figure out if this is actually adding to our happiness in our our own satisfaction. We went pretty in depth on this on an episode way back in the day called The Why Behind Our Money? This is episode twelve, and figuring out your own personal you know why behind your money is so crucial to helping

you accomplish those goals. Yeah, it's so much harder to stick with a goal if there's not like a really good solid why that you've thought through behind what you're doing. And Matt, it just makes me think of like in in school when we would get busy work from a teacher and I didn't care about those assignments, and I know most of the kids around me knew that it

was just busy work. Also, busy works the worst, yeah, and and like you have to get this done, but you don't care at all, You don't put much effort into it. And I think that's the way it works sometimes when we set goals but we don't have a good why behind it, there's just less of an attachment and less of an interest in pursuing it. Well, the busy work wasn't necessarily helping you get where you needed to go. It was just to keep you occupied. And I think it's the same thing with with some of

our goals. If we don't have a strong and healthy attachment to those goals that are pushing us in a direction that we definitely want to go, that it's easy to fall off the wagon for sure. Yeah, you know, on the flip side, the best teachers gave assignments and they're able to explain well the why behind the assignment, and knowing that why can make all the difference in

terms of motivation. In a similar way, it right, not many of us aspire to have, uh, you know, Warren buffet like wealth, and if we're honest about the real priorities in our lives, it would actually mean shaking things up, maybe living our lives a little differently. Uh and you know, spending our money in incredibly different ways. In order to figure out your why in your goals, it's vital to not be inhibited by what you see around you, you know, but by what you're being fed by media or by

what your friends are doing. Instead, we want you to think big about what your life could look like and realize that you can make meaningful changes by consistently taking action. Now, yeah, Matt, When I initially kind of went through the why behind money exercise in my own life, I found it to be so helpful. It clarified a lot of things for me, and it changed some of the things that I was

actually pursuing. So let's get specific here, Matt. When I was young, first starting out in my career, you consistently took some action I well, honestly, the the introspection, the thinking about the why behind my money had a massive influence. There were things that I thought were out of reach for me. But when I did do this exercise and I took the time to see that, you know what, my money wasn't necessarily aligning with my actions in every way.

And if I did do a little more of that, then I could pursue some of those things that I thought I couldn't afford, like traveling to really cool places. I had to make some sacrifices to be able to go on a cool trip to a place like Shanghai or Norway. Those didn't come easily right. Um, But at the same time, you're living in a sub hundred thousand dollar home with a roommate to help pay most of the bills. Was totally worth it. Yeah, man, you do

some house acking, you can definitely do some international travel. Yeah.

And I think it would have been easy to see what my friends around me were doing and try to imitate that, like living in a fancy apartment complex with all the great amenities, but without that like intentional look inward, writing these things down, doing some real soul searching, I would have found myself missing out on some of those great opportunities, and I probably would have spent my money in a way that that really didn't resonate with what

I actually wanted to achieve. Yeah, and for you, Joel, it sounds like you were able to be a little more intentional about that time, right. You're able to think

through what it was that was making you happy. Like, I don't necessarily remember a specific time where I sat down, but I did know that this is what I wanted my life to look like, right, Like, there weren't specific things that I knew I wanted to except that I did know I didn't want to necessarily have to go into a like a traditional nine to five job, and I was tempted to, right because health insurance is expensive, and especially to when when you're looking at growing a family,

it's it's certainly something you consider. You get a corporate gig, you get a normal quote unquote normal job, and you got your benefits covered, you got health insurance. But I knew I really didn't want that. That just wasn't It's just not a part of I guess who I am. I didn't want that. Kate didn't want that for us as well. We just love the flexibility that we had

from working for ourselves. But the problem there was that our income was inconsistent, and so for us, one of the big steps we took in order to maintain that work flexibility and kind of control over our time was that we saved up a lot of money and we invested that money in real estate. By by having long term renalms man, that allowed us to kind of diversify our streams of income so that even though we were self employed, those ups and downs, you know, throughout the years,

that wouldn't have an impact as much on us. And so in our case, it was something that we identified and it wasn't like a specific thing like like you know, with you as traveling, you're like, I want to be able to travel every single year, going these awesome trips. For us, it was kind of like the opposite. I was just like, I just want to be able to stay home and not go outside. Uh, and before us

to commute to work. So obviously everyone's motivation is going to be different, and even arriving to that motivation can look different for different folks as well. You know, so if you haven't done that before, right, if you haven't taken the time to figure out know what the y

is behind your money. Seriously, there's no better time than now, and so for real, like right now, grab a pin and a piece of paper, switch your phone to airplane mode, and just take fifteen minutes to think through what you want your life to look like. If you are in your twenties, think through what it is that you want to spend your time on when you're thirty. Maybe if you're in your thirties, like, think about what you want to be spending your money on by the time you're

forty years old. Think through what you want your typical mornings to look like, what you want your vacations to look like. We want to encourage you to think through what your ideal life would look like, so you know, right now you can go ahead and hit pause on this episode. We're serious. We're also going to take a break ourselves, but when we come back, we'll outline how to make sure you're actually achieving goals to get you to that ideal life, and we'll get to that right

after this break. All right, we're back from the break and hopefully back from your break thinking about your fifteen minutes of introspection exactly, which is I'll really take right now. And sometimes you know you might need to meet with your partner or significant other or a good friend to bounce some of these things off of You're typically not gonna get it done in fifteen minutes solo, but maybe maybe you did, and at least I think you can

get somewhere. And hopefully you realize too that the things that you wrote down, the things that are the most important, many of them don't cost that much money. Some of them might be closer to getting a used chicken coop on Facebook, getting those six chickens and starting your own little urban farm. It doesn't really cost that much money in order to make that happen. But Matt, let's keep

going on from there. Having a Y is like this essential motivation that can influence the goals that you end up coming up with. It will influence how much you're saving, how much you're investing, all that kind of stuff. But you can't just stop at the motivations. It's time to get practical, and I think that's where the smart or smarter approach can be really helpful. And I mentioned at the beginning of the episode that the smart goal system.

We've had it actually in my workplace for a lot of years, and I've actually seen it fail in a lot of ways. In the corporate context, the follow through is not often good. The intentionality when it comes to coming up with these goals and all that great, and I think that's where the disconnect is. But I do think that on an individual level, or a familiar level, this system can actually work to help us create goals that we can follow through with and that are meaningful

enough that that it's worth pursuing. Yeah, and the goal, you know, for taking this smarter approach is to essentially link this big y you know, like hopefully you've identified it already, but if not, over time you'll kind of develop what it is that drives you your motivation, like Joel said, But we have to find a way to link those bigger goals to our daily actions, to the

things that we we do every day. On the RAG, we're trying to bridge that gap between the theoretical the things that we think will make us happy in our minds, to the practical the things that we do every single day. So let's go ahead and talk through this man so smarter. It's an acronym right, each letter of smarter stays for something, and that's what we're gonna talk through. Now, we're gonna talk through how these different terms apply to us and

our money. And we're gonna start with S. Let's go on H. S is for specific while identifying your why. You know, we talked how that can be great motivation. It can be pretty vague when it comes to money goals, you know. So for example, if you know that you want to save a lot more money, well, getting specific and then saying that I'm going to save up for a down payment on my first house, that's gonna be a lot more successful because you're being specific. You're telling

it to a very clear and identifiable goal. Uh. If we just set out to save more money, well you can't really put your finger on that, but you can put your money on a specific dollar amount, yeah, or even just I'm going to save up a down payment for a home, and yet there's nothing else going on there. I think that specific number creates something tangible. It creates a real goal worth achieving, as opposed to yeah, I'm gonna funel more towards saving up for the down payment,

but not getting specific with it. And the next letter is M, which stands for measurable and it's it's pretty closely related to specific, but oftentimes when it comes to our personal finances, there are two factors that we need to make sure are measurable, uh, the time and the dollar amount. So let's tell about the downpayment again, Matt, fifty dollars. That's a great specific goal, but the measurable part of that goal is what's the time period I'm

gonna be able to achieve that in. If it's saving up fifty dollars in the savings account in the next four years, then it's measurable, like, did I hit my goal? Did I get it in the timeframe that I was aiming for? And that's where the M and the S kind of work together really well. It's a specific number in a measurable time frame, which really helps you zero in on that goal that you're aiming for. Yeah, man, that data needs to be quantifiable. Uh. So the next

letter is A. UH. Within the Smarter acronym, A is for attainable, right. Uh. We don't want you to necessarily shoot for the moon like we want you to stretch yourself, but make sure that you're being realistic about what you can achieve, as well as the time frame which you can do it in, so that you don't immediately give up on the goal. You know, a good place to start is by looking at what you've been able to

accomplish in the past and then go from there. So, for example, you can look at how much you previously saved every single month, and then you can channel yourself to maybe save a little bit more. You're basing that number on something that you know is certainly doable because you have done it before. You're not just shooting from the hip saying that like I'm gonna say three thousand dollars every single month. You know, like that's not going

to be very attainable. There's a similar advice to to what we say when we're when we're talking about budgeting, right, and we talk about starting like before you budget, start with tracking your money, because if you're able to set a budget based on what you have set previously, you are going to be more likely to be successful. Yeah, it makes me think about our podcast goals and aiming for, like Joe Rogan download numbers. That's unattainable, man, that's just ridiculous.

Don't even include that you want something that that is actually within your reach. With this within your grasp, So don't overshoot, because that's a recipe for ditching your goals altogether when they become depression or depression. Yeah, it's so easy to ditch goals because they're unreachable. So it definitely has to be something that you can attain, all right. The r and the Smarter goal system is for relevant. Do you ever go back to it to do list

and add items that you've already completed? Guilty yet just so and cross it off and you're like, oh, yeah, I got it, feel a little sense of accomplishment. Yeah, and it does add that, right, But this point is for people like that, people like you, Matt, and make sure that your immediate financial goals are moving you towards the true bigger goal of the why behind money. This goal has to be relevant to what you're actually pursuing. So we just gave the example of a down payment

on a home. Maybe you don't care about homeownership, and in fact, you don't need to care about homeownership. We've talked about that on the show before. It's not best for everybody, although it works great for some people. And so this goal not only needs to be specific, measurable, and attainable, it needs to be relevant to the things that you're actually trying to pursue, what you want to become your reality essentially of what the good life looks

like in the coming years. Yeah, and when it comes to some of the smaller goals that you might be crossing off your list, that's where in my mind that you need to make sure that you're moving towards that larger goal. Right. I understand the need for a psychological win here and there, but it's really important to make sure that the small money wins align with that larger money goal. Um. And that's actually where our next point

kind of plays into that stands for timely. This is where we're acknowledging that smaller goals that you can reach on a shorter timeline, how they are just really crucial for success, you know, just the the bigger goal, the longer it's going to take you to actually achieve that goal. So we know that it's important to aim for bite size goals that will create momentum and keep you on track. And so we keep bringing up, you know, this down payment example, because a lot of folks have a goal

of owning a home. Some don't, some do, But in full years that might seem really overwhelming, and it might be easy for someone to kind of get off track of that saving his goal, Like how do you actually go about saving that much money up in four years? You know? But if you break it down, what you're looking at is setting aside, you know, a little more than a thousand bucks every single month. It's very clearly defined.

It's it's set at smaller intervals of time, and it will be a lot more difficult for you to get off track saving up that fifty grand for that down payment, you know, by breaking it up into into monthly bites. Until I know, even when it comes to our budgeting, if I don't check and update our budget like a couple at least a couple of times a month, I know what that means is that at the end of the month, we're eating literally like beans and rice and leftovers,

because we'll blow through our grocery budget. We'll blow through our entertainment budget. So we're not going to be eating nice cuts of meat, We're not going to be going out to eat, going out on a nice fancied date. The last week, maybe even the last two weeks of the month if I haven't done a good job of

staying on top of that budget. And so I'm not necessarily going to advocate for, you know, moving to a weekly budget, but I do know that's important for us to kind of set these small little milestones throughout the month where we were able to update our budget numbers. Yeah, I mean Rome wasn't built in a day. Uh what do they say if you want to eat something like like a huge animal, it's one bite at a time, Like that's the way you do it, Like an elephant,

I believe. Yeah, yeah, an elephant like you, You're not gonna eat it in one sitting, like super quickly. Why would people want to eat an elephant? Anyway? They're gentle creatures, are very sweet. But like that is the kind of thing that we're getting at here. Is is the timely portion of it. You only accomplish these things over a period of time going in the same direction. It's like that rut or turning just slightly to get you on that path to saving a little bit more every month

to help you reach this goal. But fifty bucks in four years seems ridiculous. It seems absurd. Until you break it down into those bite sized chunks and then you can actually accomplish it. That's the important part of what team brings to the table. It actually makes me think of you remember the episode when I was talking about World Cup tickets because they announced how that how North America was going to host World Cup and six I think six years from now, hopefully we can watch in

person soccer matches them by then. I'm sure we will, but uh, but yeah, I mean I based the numbers on what the tickets in Russia we're going for, and like, it's ridiculous. I mean, it's thousands of dollars, and if we were to take our whole family, it would be a lot of stinking money. And in my mind is like, okay,

there's no way we would ever go to that. But based on some calculations, I figured that if I just set aside thirty bucks a month, we would be able to attend the World Cup no problem, all six of our family members, which is crazy. Yeah, to think that we would take that many people. It's like that planning ahead, right, And yeah, it just takes planning ahead and just and bring can get it up into into the small bytes. But now it doesn't feel insurmountable, right, not at all,

whereas it did. You know when you initially got the sticker shock of this is how much it would take to go to one World Cup match. It's like, that's crazy, that's not gonna happen. But breaking it down makes it possible totally. Alright, let's get down to the e R. So smart goals are kind of the way it's typically talked about, but you can add this e R onto the end smarter and and and that's what we're doing. And I think that helps even more because our goals

need to be continually evaluated and reevaluated. That's the e ER. I know, some of the goals that I said back in the day just aren't relevant to my life anymore. For instance, travel, I'm really glad I've gotten to see a lot of the places that I've been, but international travel as a family just isn't as important to me. And so our goals have changed in a lot of ways. So it's important to evaluate and then re evaluate those goals along the way. Your goals are going to look

different as you grow and as you change. I would say, just like Martin Short, who we mentioned at the beginning of the episode, he evaluates himself on an annual basis according to those kind of nine markers of how he's doing it and what his life looks like and and if that's what he wants it to look like. So maybe revisiting your goals on an annual basis can give you that ability to see whether they're still meaningful or whether you want to pivot and go in another direction.

Are you still trying to go to Mexico for an all inclusive vacation with your with your partner, that to Loom to to Loom, that's like the hotspot or it was like last year, a couple of years ago, I'd go to Koom, I'd hit that up. Yeah. But but maybe now you're expecting a baby and you're like, no, that's not our goal anymore. No, now we're saving up money to do some home renovations to make it feel like a better space to bring our baby home to.

It's important to be intentional, and I think using a system kind of like the Smarter Goal system can be helpful. But it's also only really helpful if we continue to look at those goals that we've set and make some changes when they just don't fit into our plan like they used to. Yeah, so there we go, Joel, that's the smarter system when it comes to our personal finances

and goal setting. But man, you know what, we're not always going to get it right, and so we feel it's important to note that, like, we have to be able to give ourselves a break, you know, when we fail. We're not gonna always get it right the first time. But at the same time, don't be afraid to immediately hit reset and set another goal straight away. There might be an unexpected bill and that could derail your savings for the month, but that's okay. You don't have to

throw in the towel altogether. You know. You just were talking about evaluating and re evaluating. Continue to do that regularly, uh, and and just stay committed to the larger money goals that you have by revisiting the different things that are going to be important to you. Yeah. Mat At the beginning of the episode, you kind of talked about a couple of different studies that talked about the impact of money on our happiness and there's not a direct correlation

after a certain point in time. The idea of just building massive amounts of wealth in order to hoard it for ourselves. That doesn't appeal to many of us. It doesn't appeal to you and I, right, But it is important though, to identify what it is that truly will

make us happy. Right And in many instances, saving well, investing well, being more thoughtful with our money does make a difference, does make a drastic difference in helping us to be able to achieve of things that actually do matter, many of which aren't even terribly money dependent, but so much if it starts with knowing ourselves and then implementing

something like the Smarter Goal system. You can obviously choose to go a different route when it comes to implementation, but I hope that thinking through how we assess and then implement money goals for ourselves and how that kind of fits into the broader context of our lives was helpful for everyone today. Yeah, and Joel on a related note, away that you and I that we are able to implement uh a goal, albeit a pretty small goal, into our lives, and even on the show is craft Beer.

You know, this is sort of like Shay. This isn't a major thing, it doesn't cost a ton of money like her chickens. Right. Craft beer doesn't cost a ton of money, but it's something that we are able to enjoy and it moves the needle a lot for us. Uh. And so every episode we have a craft beer man. This episode we enjoyed an Alpha Abstraction, volume number thirteen

by wild Leap. What were your thoughts on this brew? Yeah, this is another I p A in a long list of I p A s by Wild Leap, who's just around the corner from Atlanta, and this one packed massive melon flavors in the hops. It was super sweet, Like a lot of their I p s are actually just incredibly sweet and sometimes a little too sweet for my my palette. I don't love it when an I p A is this sweet, But I like what they're up to.

I like the direction they're going in. Even though this isn't like top ten for me, it's still a really, really solid I p A from a great brewery just around the corner. Yeah, I'm with you man as far as the melon flavors, but I feel like, in my opinion, it balances really well with the bitterness that accompanies those hops. You know, It's like they included the cantelope, but they also included like some of the skin as well, and you have to also eat that, right, But in my opinion,

it's a nice balance. It's a really juicy beer, and we'd recommend for you to swing by that brewery if you're heading down the interstate here in Georgia. Maybe you might even see Joe and I there. We have yet to hit them up, but we will one of these days. It's gotta make it happen for sure. All right, that's gonna be it for this episode. Our listeners can find our show notes up on the website at How's money

dot com. Yeah, and just a quick reminder, put your money where your goals are and then put those goals in plain sight, put them on your computer. Whatever it takes in order to remind you consistently of the things that actually matter and the things that you're trying to pursue, and maybe it helps you avoid spending money in an errant way. So all right, Matt, that's gonna be it until next time. Best Friends Out, Best Friends Out.