This is part I of our series on strategic planning for your finances, and how the right financial planning process can help you gain clarity, get organized, and grow your wealth.

In this episode of the Beyond Finances podcast, we’re talking about strategic planning for your money.

We’ll dig into what a formalized financial planning process actually looks like, and take you through the inner workings of the framework and systems we use at Beyond Your Hammock to help people use their money as a tool to get more of what they want in life – now and into the future.

This is a multi-part series to explore all 5 stages of the strategic process you can use for your own money:

Stage 1: Setting goals, clarifying priorities, and stating values
Stage 2: Building out a formal plan and choosing specific strategies
Stage 3: Developing investment strategies (the engine of financial growth over time!)
Stage 4: Protecting yourself, your family, and your assets
Stage 5: Measuring, managing, and maintaining your financial plan on an ongoing basis

This episode covers stages 1 and 2… while also taking a moment to get grounded in the why behind all this process and planning talk.

Your wealth doesn’t grow by accident. It grows with intention, care, and deliberate effort.

A strategic process uses organized systems and frameworks to keep you organized. It also enables proactivity, helping to identify what you have versus what you still need to do (and how to get it done).

Using a system can also help reduce emotional decision-making. Without any guiding structure, you may find yourself more likely to act on impulse or make choices that take you away from your stated goals.

A strategic process is also critical as you deal with more and more money.

Yes, it’s true. More money does lead to more problems.

That’s not to say life is easier with less money. (It’s not. Money makes things easier to achieve.) But life does get more complex when you have increasing resources to manage.

As you earn more, you have a greater responsibility to act as a good steward over your wealth. You also have many more options to choose between, and decisions to make.

This is great! And hard, because you have to make the right choices, the right decisions, the right moves. Otherwise, as you expand your financial power and grow wealth, you increase your risk of making unforced errors.

Having a process in place helps guard against mistakes and false steps. It helps you to actually act on the advice you get regarding the right money moves to make.

Finally, a good financial planning process gives you a way to consider the tradeoffs that you have to make along the way.

We all work with finite resources of time, money, and energy. These are not limitless resources, and while you can find ways to replenish them, they are not infinite. You have to manage them wisely.

Part of doing so is recognizing where we may give up one in favor of another, or when we actually value one resource more highly than the rest. Making tradeoffs is a necessary task, too.

The strategic planning process for your personal finances starts right there: by identifying what you want, what your priorities look like, and what core values you hold.

If you’re ready to learn about a strategic planning process for your finances that can help you get clear on what you want while you grow your wealth, jump into this episode here:

Want More? Here’s How to Connect

We’d love to connect with you and continue the conversation! If you have questions or comments, send us an email at team@beyondyourhammock.com.

You can also learn more about working with BYH as a financial planning client – click here to request a complimentary consultation and one-page financial plan.

And of course, we’d love to hear what you think.  You can share your review of the show here.