In this week’s Financial Spring Cleaning series episode, I challenge you to reflect on the first 90 days of 2024. It’s unbelievable how quickly time flies, and it is so important to take a step back to evaluate our financial progress, goals, and habits.
Reflecting on what has worked well in the past quarter allows us to celebrate our progress and identify areas of growth. Acknowledging our achievements, whether it’s consistently saving money, paying off debt, or investing wisely, is essential. Conversely, recognizing what didn’t work allows for honest self-assessment and the opportunity to course-correct. In addition to reflecting on Q1, it’s time to refresh intentions and goals so we can continue to foster positive money habits.
By envisioning where we want to be in the future, whether it’s April 2025 or the next six months, we can chart a clear path toward financial success. My goal is to empower you to take control of your finances so you can spend drama-free and confidently pursue your dreams!
Tune in for insights on these topics:
- [02:10] Write out financial goals and intentions
- [05:45] Audit Q1 – what is going well?
- [07:51] What didn’t work in Q1?
- [09:00] What do you want to do differently?
Tune into this episode of Money Files to learn how to do a 90-day financial reflection and stay on track to hit your money goals in 2024!
Are you ready to start asking for help with your finances? Apply to work with me, and let’s start working towards your financial goals.
IF YOU LOVED THIS CONVERSATION ON, FINANCIAL SPRING CLEANING: 90-DAY REFLECTION OF Q1 MONEY HABITS & GOALS, CHECK OUT MY EPISODE ON AN UPDATE TO REVIEW YOUR PERSONAL FINANCES FOR QUARTER TWO!
Transcript for “Financial Spring Cleaning: 90-Day Reflection of Q1 Money Habits & Goals”
Intro: 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.
Keina: Hello and welcome back to another episode of Money Files. So in this week’s episode of your financial spring cleaning, I want to actually help you take some time to reflect over what’s happened in the first 90 days of this year. It’s kind of crazy that we’re already here in April. I feel like January is generally slow and then all of a sudden at some point we are on a rollercoaster and yeah, now we’re in April, which is crazy, crazy, crazy to me, especially like last week I was talking to clients, I was like, oh, okay, we have a meeting on April 4th and it’s just crazy. So I think one of the practices that I want to help you build this year is really going and thinking about, what has happened in the past and how do I want to inform my future?
But I want you to be looking at your numbers in more like holistic kind of opportunities. Like us looking at your finances over the last 90 days is going to make you reflect on your growth. It’s going to make you think about what are the opportunities. It’s going to help you identify what are the habits that I’ve picked up in the last 90 days that are supporting me? What are maybe some habits I’ve picked up that aren’t supporting me? And so really just helping you kind of like zoom out and prepare for where you desire to be in the next 90 days.
So first thing just diving in here, I want you to write out your financial goals or your intentions that you said you wanted to create in 2024. I know that when January hits, there’s a lot of energy around the year, starting fresh, the last couple weeks in December it’s a little bit more relaxed and you have some time to breathe and people make resolutions or set intentions at the beginning of the year and then, two weeks, four weeks, six weeks. And we forget the intentions that we actually said we wanted to lean into. And I even do this, like I was thinking about like in my business there are some goals that I’ve said I wanted to create, like just reminding myself I want to sign five clients a month, I want to hit a thousand dollars in quarter one.
And so I had this like aha moment for myself where I was like, oh, you remember you said these things Keina. And in January they were like kind of like front view, but then in February and even in March, like they kind of got tucked away. And so one of the things that I’ve been doing and working on even with my nutrition goals is like, let me take the time to write out my goals. It’s really good for my brain to actually reconnect to the things that I said that I wanted to do.
And I really, I mean I’m using the word goals with you right now, but I really like to think about intentions because sometimes I think goals at least for me can be tied to this big like grandiose thing and intentions feel a little bit more bite-sized and connected to habits. I’ve been really loving the idea of building habits in my life. And so I just want to invite you to use whatever word really sparks something within you and helps you feel grounded and connected. But just take some time and write out your financial goals or your intentions for the year and what you said you wanted to do.
And maybe you didn’t even do it for the year, maybe you did it for the first quarter or you’re thinking about quarter two or maybe you’re thinking about for the first six months of the year, whatever that is, write out those goals so you can like dust them off and look at them and see like where am I in terms of making progress on what I said I wanted to accomplish this year and being able to bring those back into the forefront. So that’s why we’re doing that and then I would challenge you write those out a couple of times a week and that’s going to help bring your why back to the forefront so you’re not distracted by the things that are shiny and glittery that can catch your attention.
And one day you said you want to work out and the next six weeks from now it’s not something you’re doing or you said that you wanted to make sure to have money dates on a weekly basis and maybe you did it for three weeks and now you’re not doing money dates anymore. And so if you said that that was your intention this year, it’s just going to bring that back to the forefront. And it’s not from a place of shame or like guilt, it is just literally a nudge to be like, oh yeah that’s a thing that I said I wanted to do because I want you at the end of the year to be excited about the progress that you’ve made and not to feel like, dang, I forgot that I said I wanted to do that this year.
I know that I’ve gotten to end of years and been like, oh I forgot I said I wanted to do that. And it’s just simply because like I didn’t dust off my goals or my intentions. So what I want you to do after you write out your goals is I want you to think about in quarter one, let’s do like a little audit of what’s going well. And so thinking about where you started in January with your finances and you can think about anything from money dates, paying off your debt, you can think about saving money. Maybe you said you wanted to invest more this year or maybe you said you wanted to earn more money this year, wherever you started, you can be thinking about like what went well within those categories. Maybe in quarter one you ask for raise. Maybe you didn’t get it but you put yourself out there to actually ask which that’s an accomplishment, whether your brain wants to see it as one or not.
Maybe what went well in quarter one was that you actually consistently saved money from each paycheck and you didn’t have to dip into your savings or maybe you only had to dip into your savings twice if you were to think about the 90 days before, like at the end of the year you’re like, oh my goodness, I was dipping in my savings every single week. And so being able to understand for you what does personalize your progress, personalize what went well, maybe you hired a financial coach, which is me and you’ve been working through the process and implementing what you’ve been taught in the last 90 days. Or maybe you’ve worked with me in the past and it’s like, I’m still making progress and I’m able to refresh my goals and be reconnected with like the plan and the system that I developed with Keina.
Any number of those things can go in your what went well and I would challenge you like write this somewhere where you can look at it again and be able to look at this, what went well, especially when you have a bad day and you’re telling yourself, oh my goodness, like nothing is working with my finances, which that happens. And so just being able to acknowledge for your brain like hold on, let’s actually look at the facts that nothing went well or that everything is going down the drain. Let’s actually look at what has happened and be able to celebrate and reconnect with our progress.
The next thing I want you to reflect on is what didn’t work. So thinking about Q1, what are some things that you said you wanted to do or you thought you wanted to do, or habits you thought you wanted to have or whatever it is, but like what didn’t work for you? And you can think about this in relation to your goals. So maybe working overtime didn’t work because it didn’t allow you to have enough time for yourself or maybe what didn’t work is you felt like you were eating out three to four times a week and like that wasn’t good for your health goals, it wasn’t good for your personal goals.
You just found yourself impulsively spending and Amazon boxes coming to the house, whatever it is. But like what didn’t work for you? Maybe your credit card debt went up and you weren’t aware of your credit card debt going up and just seemed like it kind of happened overnight, like that could be something that’s there. Or maybe you didn’t actually apply for the job that you were qualified for, that would’ve helped you earn more money because you didn’t have this like belief in your ability to be able to do the work. So just get really clear, get really honest, like you don’t have to show this sheet to me when you’re done, but what didn’t work.
And then lastly, I want you to think about like what do you want to do differently? So we’re thinking about April, May, June, that’s the next quarter. And so if you are thinking about what you want to be able to write down at the end of June and you’re celebrating your what went wells, like asking yourself what do you want those to be? And in order for that to be true, like what do you need to do differently in the next 90 days. On that list might be actually booking a call and applying to work with me, like you told yourself that the first 90 days you were going to get it together on your own and that hasn’t happened and that’s totally okay. But like what do you want to do differently? Like I want to actually hire Keina and work with Keina because I’ve been talking about it and I need that accountability and support.
And so like that’s where I want to invest my time and I want to invest my money.
Maybe you only had money dates once a month. And you want to go from having money dates once a month to being able to have money dates every single Monday after you eat lunch or while you eat lunch, whatever that is. But like thinking about what you want to be able to do differently. I also want to challenge you, like I said, I’ve been really into habits. I want you to think about like what’s one habit you want to build around your finances in the next 30 days. I was talking to one of my clients about this and maybe you want to have the habit of like only having two Amazon purchases for the month and you’re like, okay, I’m going to put things in my cart, I’m going to purchase things on the 15th and the 30th, y’all, I totally made that up. I’m like, is that even possible? Can you do that?
I say that because it’s kind of like the 24 hour rule where you put something in your cart for 24 hours and you wait to purchase it. But think about how mindful you would be if you were like, yes, I am allowed to put things in my Amazon cart, but I purchase them on the 15th and I purchase them on the 30th or maybe every Friday you are like, if you’re someone who can order from Amazon every single day you see something as like, oh, I need it, I need it, I need it, like maybe that’s your thing. Maybe you just want to build the habit of just delaying gratification for yourself when it comes to making purchases because y’all, I am just as guilty of being able to get things quick. And I know if I look on Amazon, I search anything, I can find it on Amazon, it can generally be at my house within 24 to 72 hours.
And so there are times where I think back and I’m like, did you even really need that? Like what was going on with you that that box came to the door? And so just totally made that up. But maybe that’s like something you want to actually be more mindful of how you’re shopping and how you’re spending your money. And do not confuse this with being restricted. It’s not about being restricted, it’s just being able to give yourself an opportunity to breathe before you immediately purchase something. And I think in the society we live in now, there are so many inputs that we have, especially like from technology and they tell us we need things all the time.
And so literally all we do is look for the things that we need and we go searching for them. So that might be something that you want to do or maybe you want to build the habit of being able to look at your money. And so it may look like, I’m going to build the habit of looking at my money every single Monday after I finish dinner or maybe you even make it, want to make it a daily habit because you want to be mindful of where your finances are going in terms of like what’s going on my credit card, what’s going in my bank account? And you’re going to discover so many things if you make it a practice to look at your money every single day, you’re going to be able to shift some things.
You’re going to be more mindful of where your money’s going. So write out what you want to do differently and then think about like what is a habit that you want to commit to in the next 90 days. And if you have a good habit that you’re excited about, I would love to hear about this habit. So you can like DM me on Instagram, you can send me an email if you go to keina@wealthovernow.com, if you respond to any of the emails, if you’re on my email list, I would love to just hear what habits you’re excited about building in the next 90 days and use this podcast episode to really set yourself up to review Q1 and think about where you want to go for Q2.
So in thinking about what you want to do differently, I would also invite you to refresh your financial goals or intentions for the next 90 days, like thinking about where do you want to be in 90 days? And I actually, let me just pause. I actually want you to think about it in a year from now. So think about April, 2025. What do you want to be able to celebrate? And now I want you to scale back. If you want to celebrate that in April of 2025, what do you need to accomplish in the next six months? So like what would be the goals that you accomplish by October? And then even scaling back from that, like what would be the goals that you would need to accomplish by July? So just being able to build yourself like this buildable little pyramid of how you want to be able to accomplish your goals, correlate your goals to habits that you would need to develop in order to create the results that you desire to see in your life.
So short and sweet episode for this week, but going through thinking about your Q1 finances and preparing yourself for your Q2 finances as you prepare to get ready for the spring. So thank you so much for tuning in. And as always, if you want to take this work deeper, go to my show notes, apply to work with me for the five month coaching partnership, like y’all the clients that you hear on my podcast, they’re real people. Some of them met me on the internet, some of them are referral, some of them are Instagram followers, some of them just googled financial coach and I was the person who came up and I was the person that they decided to allow to be in one of the most intimate spaces in their life.
But what you hear happening for my clients can happen for you too. I don’t want you to exclude yourself, I don’t want you to just count yourself out or just like you’re in this space right now where you’re like, I’m going to do it and I’m going to do it on my own or I’m going to get ready, like we give ourselves so many reasons and we create these additional hurdles and obstacles. And that doesn’t have to be true. You just have to basically hold your breath and go apply and work with me, like you hold your breath before you jump in a cold pool. And I say that because sometimes getting started can be the hardest part. So thank you so much for tuning in and I look forward to seeing you on my calendar to become a new client, and I will talk to you guys later.
Outro: 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.wealthover.com/appointment and let’s get started.
