Think Marie Kondo but with money. (I highly recommend her book, The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up.) The author is a master of decluttering and organizing. She believes that you put your hands on everything you own, hold it close and ask yourself if it sparks joy, and if it doesn’t, thank it for its service and get rid of it.
Now it would take a lifetime if we tried this with every dollar we earned, but the concept can be adopted.
If you want to bring clarity to your money and your decisions then it is fundamental to understand what your priorities and your values are. Easier said than done, so I’m going to give you the Financial Values Mind Map to download and complete.
Before you start, you might be asking, what are personal financial values? Simply put—your values represent what is important to you. They are the choices you make and why you behave the way you do.
Our values will help us grow and develop. Every day we make decisions that are a reflection of our values and beliefs and they are directed with a specific sense of purpose and meaning. The purpose is what is needed to bring a collective and collaborative approach to our lives. When our values are shared within a family, we build a positive, healthy, and thriving unit with the benefit of being able to prioritise effectively.
After reading this and completing the Financial Values Mind Map , you will have a framework for your financial decisions. Life will get simpler and money choices will become easy. My business and my personal life use this map to guide our decisions. We avoid a lot of pressure and stress by staying true to what we believe is the most important to us. Our money then flows where we want it to and it matches with what we think is important.
I am a fan of Simon Sinek, author of Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action. He has inspired a movement that asks, “Do you know your Why?” Your Why is the purpose, cause, or belief that inspires you to do what you do. This same concept should be applied with your money. When I meet with clients, we discuss why their money is invested the way it is, why they spend the way they do, why they save, and so on. Everything has a purpose with a why behind it.
We often talk about priorities in life, but how many of us have actually taken a moment to stop and write down our priorities on paper? Have you spent more time making a grocery list than you have spent writing down what is important to you and why?
The key is to identify the things that are most important to you at the core. You can have many values in life but you just need to discover the one or two that are your highest priorities.
So, let’s map out your family values and why they are important to you.
Start here: Download your Guide to the Financial Values Mind Map