Finances are shaped by personal experiences. The most common mindset block I unravel with my clients is their fear of making more money. They doubt their ability to earn more. They think they’re just bad with the money they already have. They let their emotions get in the way, and they let their brain stay stuck in this realm of financial pressure and uncertainty. The don’t even know where to start with financial visioning.
I want to give you the tools for financial visioning that will allow you to expand what you think is possible for your finances, to identify money gaps and blocks, and to find financial clarity.
Today, I’m walking you through my process for financial visioning. I used this approach to totally transform my finances and uplevel my money mindset—and you can, too. I’m explaining how to build and achieve your dream budget, and I’m sharing how you can create space for abundance in your life. If the thought of earning more seems impossible, financial visioning will allow you to shift your mindset, and your budget, towards expansion, possibility, and purpose.
In this episode, you’ll learn…
- What “financial visioning” means for your money goals and journey [1:56]
- How I’ve used financial visioning in my one life [3:06]
- How to identify how much money you need to make to live the life you desire [6:35]
- Why it’s vital to recognize when you’re underearning and take steps towards making more [9:23]
- How to achieve your “impossible” financial goals [11:20]
- How financial visioning helps you expand your possibilities and money mindset [13:18]
- How to create a dream budget and get started with financial visioning [16:33]
- How to make your plan for making more money [18:56]
- Why it’s important to keep your dream budget top-of-mind [19:44]
Tune in to this episode to learn my process for financial visioning and achieving your dream financial future.
In the episode…
If I asked you today if you want to make more money, would you say yes? Most likely. But when you really sat down to think about doubling or even tripling your income, would the doubt and fear start to creep in? Probably.
Financial visioning can help you identify your money blocks. Whether they’re tied to your self-worth, distrust in yourself, or childhood beliefs about money, you have to replace the block with a purpose. Ask yourself, what is the purpose of money in your life? Think of the opportunities money brings. You can buy a home. You can pay off your student loans. You can fly first-class. You can pick out fancy cheese at the grocery store without thinking twice.
Envision the life you’ve been longing for, and allow yourself to believe it’s possible. The life that you want and the experiences that you value are available to you. You just have to expand your mindset and create space for them. Shift your thoughts from, “I can’t” and “I don’t know how” to “I can” and “I will.” It’s okay if you don’t when your big goals will happen. The important thing is that you write them down, that you envision them everyday, and that you work towards making your dreams reality.
Financial visioning can help you do exactly that. This process helped me buy my first home, increase my monthly savings from $25 to $1000, and create the financial security I needed to start my own business. Now, I want to share this process with you.
Start by putting aside financial limitations and allowing yourself to dream about where you desire to go. Then, follow these simple steps:
STEP 1: Create your dream budget.
First, grab a copy of my spending plan and start getting really specific about what you desire. Create this plan for future you and the life you desire. Include the mortgage payment for the house you want to buy, a category for regularly attending concerts and festivals because it’s what you love, and a more rigorous debt repayment plan so you can finally pay off those student loans. Create space in your dream budget for the things you value most.
STEP 2: Sit with the number.
Once you have your dream budget laid out, add up each category to find your monthly income. Think of this as your next financial level, the next step on your journey. Don’t let your brain tell you that this number is unreasonable because it’s not! The purpose of this exercise is to envision your ideal future and create space for more in your life. When something seems impossible, this approach will help make it reality.
STEP 3: Brainstorm ways you could create this money.
Now, ask yourself, What would it take for me to create this amount of money? Spend some time brainstorming. It might mean finally monetizing your business ideas, negotiating your salary, or applying for new roles. When doubts or negative thoughts start to surface, remember the ideal budget you’ve created and the possibilities you’ve dreamed up for your life.
STEP 4: Post the number.
Once you’ve settled on your ideal income, post that number in a place where you’ll see it daily. The fridge, the coffee maker, the bathroom mirror … Whenever you see it, remind yourself that this isn’t just some arbitrary number. This number is very personal and very real. It represents the value of your work, your earning potential, and the next step on your financial journey. Don’t worry about when you’ll reach this number, just focus on keeping it top-of-mind.
Here are the takeaways on financial visioning that I want you to remember from this episode…
- Money and your desire for it isn’t bad or evil. It’s simply a tool to live the life you want. Give it purpose, and focus on the opportunities it opens up for you.
- If you truly want to reach the next version of your financial self, you have to start envisioning and planning for it now.
- Focus on the why of your desire to earn more money, not the how. The details will figure themselves out once you’re clear on your vision.
Ready to craft and achieve your own financial vision? Apply to work with me, and let’s start working on financial visioning.
Listen to Brent’s episode about how he negotiated an $18k raise!
Transcript for “How to Use Financial Visioning to Achieve Your Money Goals”:
Hi and welcome to Money Files, I’m Keina Newell from Wealth Over Now. I work every day with professional women and solopreneurs to help them get out of financial overwhelm and shame so they can experience more flexibility and ease with their finances. Are you ready to gain confidence and learn to manage your finances intentionally? Tune in and grab financial tips that will help you master the way you think about and manage your finances.
Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Money Files, so today I want to share. A concept review that I call financial visioning, and one of the things that I hope you have learned from listening to my podcast is that finances are very behavioral and they’re emotional. If you are judging yourself about where you are financially. I want you to stop. I want you to start thinking about how I can really approach my finances from a place of grace? How can I approach my finances from a place of compassion? I always tell my clients more working together that they’re building a new muscle and muscles don’t grow overnight. And so although there might be hiccups along the way that they’re still there doing the work, and that’s what matters. I just want to offer that to you as well, no matter where you are financially, just to know that you are showing up here, even if it’s listening to this podcast and. Thinking about, you know, what are my words sparking within you and what are they making you think? Because that’s right, there is a shift that’s happening within you and that’s what we want. We want the shifts, we want the milestones because those shifts and milestones are going to create new results for you.
So today I’m going to talk about a new concept that I have used in my own life, and I gave it a name last year. And so the concept that I’m going to teach you is called financial visioning. And because finances are very behavioral and so many of our decisions are based on our own personal experiences, I think it’s very important for us to think about where we desire to be financially and how we can craft the next vision for where we’re going? This is important because so often we aren’t able to identify our own blocks, our own money blocks that we have. And when I’m thinking about financial visioning, it helps clients. It helps people that are currently under earning. It can help you get really clear if you’re. In a place where you can’t think about what comes next in my financial situation, maybe you’re thinking about paying off debt or you actually feel really comfortable financially, it can actually be beneficial for you. It can be beneficial if you’re not clear on a revenue goal in your business. It can also be really beneficial if you struggle with thoughts about money being good or money being bad or money being evil. So I’ve used financial visioning in my own life, and how I’ve seen it show up for myself is that early on I would say, like in my 20s, I was making like thirty thousand dollars a year. As a teacher, I had seven over seventy thousand dollars worth of student loan debt, and I was at this place where I knew I wanted to buy a home. I want to be able to pay down my student loan debt. I want to be able to save. I want to be able to pay this credit card debt off. But it seemed like I couldn’t do all of these things at once. It felt very overwhelming, which I’m sure a lot of you can relate to. And so what I started to do was to, like, create budgets that were mirror images, if you will, of my current budget. So I started to dream. What I call my clients is like creating a dream budget and starting to think about, OK, what’s the next version of me financially? And so at the time, my goals were like, I wanted to be able to save more. So I thought about like, what would that look like? Let me actually write it down on a budget. OK, I want to be able to save $200 a month. I want to be able to still make my student loan payment. So I got really specific as to what those numbers would look like. And then what I could see after. I had actually created this dream budget so that I knew exactly how much money I would need to make in order to achieve that next goal. So doing this over time allowed me to like save my start, going from twenty five dollars a month in savings to hundred dollars a month to save. It helped me prepare to buy my first home. It helped me prepare to even go into business for myself because I knew where I desire to be financially. And it gave a very clear purpose for the money in my life. And this is a tool I still use when I’m thinking about my financial goals and where I desire to be financially. I joke all the time. I shouldn’t even say it’s a joke, but my current dream budget has me making twenty five thousand dollars a month. That’s what I would bring home after taxes. And I can’t tell you the direct path that I’m going to use to get there, but I’ve already started to think about what’s the purpose of money in my life? What do I desire to create? In terms of how much money do I want to have saved, how does this relate to what I value in terms of community family being able to travel and experiences? I should tell you that within that twenty five thousand dollars a month, like I’m also thinking about if I were to be able to build a custom home if I stayed within the D.C. area, what would that look like? So I’ve just allowed my brain to go beyond the barriers and constraints that it currently knows to be able to think about. What do I desire next? So when I’m able to think in this way. I believe that my brain goes to work, to think about, OK, like what can be possible, how can I create this money? What else would need to be true? And so from this moment right now, so whenever that moment is that I create the ability to be able to pay myself twenty five thousand dollars a month like my brain is going to have gone to work, created the budgets in between and made the financial decisions in between. To make that something that’s possible for myself.
So let’s take this back to you and where you are financially. And maybe you’re someone who identifies like, I’ve made sixty thousand dollars a year and it’s something you feel very comfortable making and you’re making more than like the people around you. You’re making more than maybe people in your family have ever made. And maybe your salary has increased this year to seventy thousand dollars a year, and that feels very significant for you. But if I were to talk to you about the opportunity to make ninety thousand or even one hundred fifty thousand dollars a year like that might seem like something that seems nice, but not something that you could actually achieve. And the reason why financial visioning will benefit you is that you can start to identify like. Where’s the financial gap for yourself? So sometimes I’m working with clients and they have this thought that they’re not good with money. And the truth is that they don’t actually earn enough money. And so financial visioning helps people that are currently under earning because what they’re able to do is actually sit down. And think about what is the next financial version of myself where I’m able to save a thousand dollars a month, where I have the mortgage, that’s two thousand dollars a month, but they can really craft what they desire to create. And what you’re able to do is identify, well, how much would that mean that I would actually need to bring in per month? And then you can think about, OK, well, I needed to bring that in after taxes. What does that mean? I would actually need to make it per year. And so it gives a purpose to the money that you’re actually creating. It’ll also help you combat ideas like in terms of money is evil or money is good, whatever that may be for you. It’ll help you shift some of those thoughts, because now we’re actually able to see like this has nothing to do with money being good or money being bad. I desire to make one hundred and twenty thousand dollars a year because it’s going to allow me to give money back to my community. It’s going to allow me to save consistently. It’s going to allow me to pay off my debt. It’s going to allow me to have a mortgage with a home. It’s going to allow me to travel. So then we’re talking about increasing your income and what that would allow you to do. So we’re going to shift from money to evil. Money is bad when talking about the purpose of money in your life.
So financial visioning is really great for people that are under-earning. I can talk about my client, Brent, here because we used this concept when I was working with him to help him actually earn another eighteen thousand dollars annually because we were able to say like, OK, great, we have your budget, we have it in place, right? But now what more do you actually want to do with your money? How much more money would you need to create? And he had lots of thoughts about, Oh, I’m not sure if I can make that, you know, in the nonprofit industry. And so we had to work through some of those things. But then he also had a very strong reason, for why he desired to make another twenty thousand dollars a year, and I’m still encouraging him to make more money. You’re making more money because it aligns with where you desire to be financially. It has nothing to do with money being bad, money being evil like you actually have a purpose for money in your life that would allow you to be a homeowner. It’s going to allow you to invest in other people. It’s going to allow you to start creating a legacy in your life. So if you are an underearner, you definitely want to make sure that you follow the steps for financial visioning. And maybe you don’t know you’re an under earner, but you might have the thought like, I’m not good with money. But then if we actually look at the numbers, it might just be true that you don’t earn enough. And I see this commonly with people that I work with, and they are used to only making so much and they can’t see themselves making more. So financial visioning helps them be more purposeful with how they’re going about talking about money, how they’re going about negotiating at their job, how they’re going about looking for their next job, their next role. They they become clear on what is that role, how much is that role need to pay me so it can help me get closer to where I desire to be financially.
Financial visioning is also really beneficial for someone who is looking to achieve impossible financial goals. So if you right now are so bogged down by your thoughts about debt, like you’re like, Oh my goodness, I’m never going to be able to get out of debt or I’m never going to be able to to buy a home. What financial visioning can do for you is help you actually be able to craft the numbers that are going to help you create your financial plan. So we’re going to get away from your normal budget. And what that looks like, and we’re going to start talking about what you desire to be true. Notice we’re not talking about all the things you can’t do. We’re talking about that next step and creating what you desire to be true because so often we’re talking about our limitations with our finances instead of talking about where we desire to go. So this is something like I said that I used for myself and I would say I fell under this category of being able to achieve impossible financial goals. It felt rather impossible to be able to pay off my student loan debt. It felt rather impossible to be able to buy a home when I was making $30000 a year. But because I sat down, I looked at what’s the next version of myself financially? What’s that dream budget going to look like? I was able to make strategic decisions about applying for different roles, and I knew exactly how much money I desired to make and how that money was going to help me start working towards first paying off my debt. It was going to help me start working towards saving more. It was going to help me start working towards buying my first home. And so if you go through this process, it can help you as well start achieving those impossible goals and start really working towards creating that plan for yourself.
So when we think about financial visioning, I want you to think of this as a tool that allows you to expand what your brain currently thinks can be true with your finances. This is a tool that’s going to allow you to welcome possibilities. It’s a tool that’s going to help you create a lifestyle, so you can say yes, here’s where I am right now, but here’s where I’m going. So it becomes a part of your overall financial plan because you’re not always going to be in debt, you’re not always going to be trying to figure out how to save. So I need you to have a plan for when you make the amount of money that you desire to make that you know exactly how you want to use it, exactly how you plan to support it. Yourself. And when I say support yourself, I’m talking about how that money is going to be in alignment with your values and how that money is going to be in alignment with your goals. Remember, our budgeting is. A tool that allows us to be expansive, but our budget is also something that is always flexible, it’s something that is going to evolve with us. So like, why wouldn’t you have a dream budget? Because you know that over time you’re going to dream bigger over time, like you’re not going to have the goal of just paying off your credit card debt. You’re not going to have the goal of just saving your first thousand dollars, you’re going to have bigger goals.
And for myself, like I have shifted from the goal of buying a house to the goal of being a full time entrepreneur. What’s the goal of being able to find my spy array every single year, so just knowing that those goals, even for myself, evolve, I will always have a dream budget that is guiding where I’m going financially. And once you know this number, well, it’s going to be true that for some of you, this is going to be very easy. Maybe you make six thousand dollars a month after taxes and when you do your dream budget, you realize, Oh, I want to make eight thousand dollars a month. And so now you know exactly the number your problem solving for, you’re not doing any mental math. And you know that your financial gap is two thousand dollars a month. And so your brain can go and think about things like, how am I going to solve the difference between six thousand dollars a month and eight thousand dollars a month? But like you’re releasing financial pressure, you’re adding in financial clarity and you are really crafting that next version of yourself. The key to financial visioning when you do this is that you don’t want to let your brain get stuck in the how. Because this is generally our default like, how am I going to make that money? I have a budget that has twenty five thousand dollars a month as my plan. To pay for myself, I don’t know the how and I’m OK with not knowing the how, but my brain, I know is going to work and it’s going to help me figure that out over time. And so for my brain, I’m allowing this new possibility about what could be true with my finances, I’m promoting financial curiosity.
So if you’re ready to try this approach, I’m getting ready to tell you how. So the first step that you want to do. If you’re going to create a dream budget. That means you’re going to go take your current budget, and if you don’t have one, go to my show notes and I will link a copy of a budget. So you’re going to take your budget and you’re going to make a copy. And what you’re going to do is you’re going to map out your numbers for the next version of yourself. What do you desire to create in your life financially? Do you want to put in a mortgage? Do you want to be paying yourself more? Are you spending $10000 a year on vacation? But like, what is it that you want to spend your money on? And you can even take it one step further and think about it like, Oh, I wouldn’t be paying student loans anymore. Or maybe you still are paying student loans. Maybe you’re going to have that life where, like, I’m paying student loans, but I also have the house paying student loans, but I’m also saving. I’m paying down credit card debt, but I’m also buying a house and I’m saving money. Whatever that looks like for you, I want you to just think about how I desire to spend money and then ask yourself, like what else could be true? What else do I want? So when you think about in what ways do you not want to feel restricted? Maybe you like eating out? OK, great. What does that look like? Maybe you like, you know, going to concerts. Well, what would that look like in your budget? But really allow yourself to be expansive with what you would be spending money on, then go back and ask, like, what haven’t I included in my budget when I think about my values, when I think about my goals? Put those things in. So you’ve created this dream budget. Now I want you to, like sit with the numbers when you add up all of your monthly expenses. Like this would be your next financial level. I don’t want you to be scared of the number, I just want you to sit with it. I want you to sit with the number and I don’t want you to allow your brain to start telling you it’s unreasonable. Because right now, you’re just in a space of being able to dream and you’re creating space for more.
The next thing I want you to do is create a list of ways that you could create this money. So think about where you are right now, how much do you make a month? That number that just became really clear for you. And there’s going to be a difference of some sort, so maybe right now you are making $6000 a month, but you desire to be making eight thousand dollars a month. How could you make up for that $2000 difference? What would that look like for you? Just make a list of all the ways you could create that money. Maybe you increase prices in your business. Maybe you apply for new jobs, maybe you negotiate your current salary. Just think about it, what are all the ways that I could create that money?
Lastly, I want you to post the number in a space where you’ll see it. Don’t worry about how or when this will be your number? But I want you to see it, and I want your brain to go to work every single day thinking about how you are going to get to that number. Thinking about how creating that amount of money in your life will allow you to add more value to the world. And knowing the number is going to help you set the path for getting there. This process was created by your brain. We’ll start to accept that your next level of financial success is possible. I want you to be thinking differently. I want you to be more curious about your next financial decision, and I want you to start making more powerful financial decisions that allow you to leave your fear of money behind and reach your goals of being able to save more. I’m going to be able to pay down debt. I’m going to be able to stress less about my finances. And the result of you continuing to hold this financial visioning process front and center in your financial journey is that you are going to be able to reshape. Your relationship with money, because you’re going to start seeing that this is the purpose of money in my life. Thank you for listening to another episode of money files and I hope that you will really go through this financial visioning process so you can start to set financial intention for the results that you desire to create and have knowledge of the gap between where you are now and where you desire to be. I am so glad you tuned in. All right, until next time.
Thank you so much for listening to money files. If you’re ready to take the next step to reach your financial goals, head to www.WealthOverNow.com/Appointment and let’s get started.
