hello and welcome to Savings Circle where we help millennial professionals feel confident about managing their money i’m your host Vineett Prasad the founder of Savings Academy on today’s episode with 2021 right around the corner i know a lot of people will have goals coming into the new year related to getting on track financially so i wanted to share uh one of my favorite tips that i often that i use myself and then i use with clients around getting on track towards those goals and generally feeling like you’re in control of your finances so that tip is money dates so in terms of what money  ates are um it’s just very simply a commitment to regularly checking in on your finances putting it on your calendar and a certain set of activities that goes along with that and a certain mindset that goes along with that and i believe just the act of deciding when you’re going to do your money
money days deciding what will be done in them and deciding how to approach them will really help you with any financial goal you have for 2021 i think it will be a great starting point i’ve seen it work really well for myself and for others so let’s jump in with what is a money date but beforehand i just want to mention this is not just for couples this works really well for couples but it’s also something if you’re single or you’re managing your finances by yourself that it could work great for you as well um it’s just again taking the same approach um as i’m gonna describe here and and using um the same mindset uh so let’s dive in so the first thing uh what a money date is fundamentally uh is like i said taking time for your finances and specifically uh when we talk about the content of a money date um the the fundamental thing is you want to be checking in first of all on your goals and when i say financial goals i mean so for what’s worked well for me and clients i work with is to actually have those goals listed out to have them prioritize so actually to put them in order and to have a target date for when you want those goals to be achieved and this sounds again very simple but the vast majority of us
don’t have financial goals listed and certainly don’t have them prioritized and i really like using a spreadsheet for this that’s how i manage my finances in
general if you don’t like spreadsheets you can just use a document or whatever else you do any other goal setting if you are doing this with a partner
that’s where you’re going to realize more times than not there’s not complete alignment in terms of what you’re seeking and that is a really good place to start i’m just getting on the same page about what are your goals by when and what are the priority what do you want to save up for first second third is really important so from there i would say each money date you want to start by checking in on that because that’s what what drives this and
you see what’s changed in regards to our goals from there you want to check in on how your finances have been going since the last time so you want to look at either if you have a spending plan in place which i recommend to the vast majority of people having some kind of spending tracking system or spending plan in place and i’ve covered what i recommend for that in other videos um so checking in on that seeing how that went for the month and i do recommend a monthly cadence for the money dates um or if you are not using a spending tracking system um checking in on your assets in debt
and seeing just how your account balances have changed if you’re someone who is saving regularly already maybe you don’t need to do spending tracking um if you’re already saving a lot of money regularly maybe you just need to look at your account balances and you can even figure out based on like your typical savings rate like how much should your account balances be the coming month and kind of gamify it a little bit and see where you were versus where you expected um but for most people i recommend doing the whole spending tracking spending planning thing it’s easier than you think um just gotta get in that habit and then then now we get into the kind of the approach or just the the mindset around it so fundamentally you’re going to be looking at uh what you spent or where your account balances are versus what you planned and it’s just understanding okay how are we doing in relation to our goals but the mindset is the key thing key thing here what i’ve seen not work well and really derail this is if couples especially or even individuals are unkind to each other or unkind to themselves when approaching this know that the vast majority of people feel really crappy about their finances they feel like they’re not doing well or like their partner isn’t doing well and if you if you take that approach um very critical of each other
yourself you’re not going to want to come back to this so i just say commit to approaching this with kindness the second thing i would recommend is
try to make it quick um try to make it less than 30 minutes and schedule that and know that if you don’t get to everything that’s okay um at the beginning you know things may take you a little bit longer but still try to orient on speed because we’re all busy people um and you want to make this something that you can do consistently and is on the calendar and you only spend the amount of time on the calendar um on on this on this thing and if you have some action items that you realize need to be done before the next time just have one person volunteer to do them but end the money date on time end it positively have fun with it and that approach regardless of what your financial goal is i think will be really helpful to get you on track and start you off right for 2021 so if you’re listening to this yourself with your partner i’d highly recommend you try to schedule when your first money date will be in January when you can look back at December and look at your goals that’s all for today thank you for checking out today’s episode and for more personal finance tips you can always check out my website savingsacademy.com if you found today’s episode useful i would greatly appreciate you leaving me a rating or review so more people can learn about the show and until next time keep saving my friends keep saving