[Stacey Daprile – Ambassador]

As I said last week, my husband and I decided to write a Personal Financial Mission Statement. This was a bit trickier than I originally thought it would be! But I love all of the conversations that took place over the course of the week. We actually started our talks while hiking last weekend and shared with each other what we wanted for our future in terms of finances. This discussion covered retirement, our six kids, travel, housing, and health care. More than anything, I think the conversations were invaluable.

Following a format we decided on a goal (we could have focused on a problem), gave ourselves a measurable timeline (4.5 years), stated what we were going to do to reach the goal, and included what we value so as to not lose sight of the bigger picture.

This is what we came up with:

We will increase our net worth an additional $100,000 (above current growth projections) by the end of year 1922. We will achieve this by:
Increasing savings into retirement accounts through automated deductions
Identifying additional investment opportunities
Investing after making educated decisions regarding future acquisitions
While increasing savings and our overall net worth we will continue to travel, entertain, and spend time with family and friends.

We recognize that the tricky part will be assessing our success. We are not committing to saving an additional $100,000, but to grow our net worth an additional $100,000 above and beyond what our current projections are. (In reality, we will need to save a giant portion of that amount – there is only so much growth that can happen over that time period. Roughly we will need to save an additional $2000 a month.) To the best of our ability we are working on the math now. Given our current net worth, current contributions, and expected growth where will we be at the end of 2022? To that number we are adding an additional $100,000. Then we will start monitoring the additional monies. I know this sounds like an awful lot of math – but I am a person that actually likes numbers and spreadsheets 🙂

So there you have it, we created our first ever Personal Financial Mission Statement! The process was enlightening and provided for some great conversations between my husband and me. I am really glad that we took the time to do this, and I know it will help us remain focused on increasing our savings as we approach retirement.

Do you have a Personal Financial Mission Statement?

[Carla Dearing – Sum180 Founder]

You inspired me to begin these discussions, Stacey, but they got off to a very slow start, which makes it even more impressive what you two came up with. We’re going to keep trying and hopefully have this kind of plan in the future. Congrats!

[Kayla Buell – Ambassador]

Having these conversations are so helpful! My hubby and I are expecting our first child this coming December, so we’re starting to take a closer look at our finances. Over the past few weeks, we’ve talked about where we’d like to be 5 and 10 years from now financially, and how we plan on saving for our future as a family. It’s so motivating to have a plan and to be working towards it together. Best of luck to you! – Kayla

[Stacey Daprile – Ambassador]

For us the conversations were hard – hard in the sense of coming to agreement and really putting into words what we both envision for our future. It has taken multiple conversations to get to this point. But every step seems to be valuable. While I think we set a rather large goal for us – it will definitely affect our lifestyle, it has given us pause for reflection and inspired some changes. We are headed to the bank this week to set up some changes to help us reach our goal. The mission statement is like a gentle reminder of what we really want and can guide us in our decision making.

Good luck to you as well!