Episode# 027: A Money Pep Talk + Plan with My Financial Advisor
This can be a tough one for some (or MOST), but it’s incredibly valuable to understand where you’re at with your personal finances to see just how far you need to go (and save) to take that leap as an entrepreneur and leave behind your salaried position.
Erik is a Certified Financial Planner and the founder of Panorama Wealth Strategies. As a financial advisor and longtime entrepreneur, he’s giving us the scope on where entrepreneurs go WRONG with the following:
-time
-money
-habits
AND he's giving entrepreneurs that are just starting out tangible tips to start making money by…
-budgeting
-buckets
-saving
Let’s take the first step together and strategize with Erik on how we can replace your salary and take that leap into the passionate life & business you’ve been dreaming of!
Tip 1: Pay Yourself First (as an entrepreneur)
If you work for a company, your deductions are made for you- taxes, health insurance, retirement savings, but if you work for yourself, you have to put that money away on your own- Pay Yourself First (and live off of what’s leftover)
TIP 2: Time Management- There’s a big difference between being busy & being profitable
It's one thing when you're getting a consistent paycheck from an employer, because if you're wasting time, you're still going to get the paycheck…but now all the sudden you're an entrepreneur. And if you can't quantify what your billable hours really worth and make sure that you're achieving that, you're kind of missing the boat. So you know, on one hand you're just an entrepreneur. But does that just mean you don't work for anybody else? That you still have to make a living? So in order to really focus your time and profitability in efficiencies and your billable hour and not just be busy but be profitable, that's a huge mind switch that people who are going to take on an entrepreneurial career for longevity and for lifestyle that they need to definitely keep in mind.
Tip 3: DON’t KEEP UP WITH THE JONES
I would consider successful people or the happiest people are the ones that have set themselves up great for longevity in retirement and things that are important to them. Oftentimes it was not the person in the neighborhood that drove the brand new luxury cars and the Mercedes and all this stuff and had the big house and all their kids went to private school. It was the guy on the other side of the street that drove the Honda accord, you know, live in a modest home at the end of the day. Oftentimes I saw that their net worths and the way that they had set themselves in, perhaps their families up for retirement longevity was much greater because they didn't care who was driving what, whose house look like, what. And if you can just stay within yourself and what really matters to you, you shouldn't need to look outside to compare yourself.
TIP 4: create a blueprint for you life you want
Take some time and brainstorm. Sometimes the people that are most “successful” are those individuals that followed a passion or whether it was a passion for a dream or a passion for something that they enjoyed doing day to day, whether it's health and fitness or a certain lifestyle. So if you can do that and then kind of scaled back and say, okay, well what are some things that I can do and brainstorm to earn money or to earn our living or you know, to build that lifestyle. What does it look like? And we were joking around about it the other day, people always will have a stigma around those of us that do vision boards, right? And those of us that write down our goals and we look at them. It's all of these principles!