Conversation #124 | Turning SMART Goals Into Action: Your Roadmap to 2024 Financial Success!

Hello Hello! 

Welcome Back to The Mindfully Rich Podcast!

Are you ready to transform your financial situation this year?   Well, that's what we on over here on the podcast, and I want you to win with your money, too, in 2024. That's why I'm taking you on a personal journey through the power of intention and the beauty of a well-crafted financial goal to add to your vision board.

Today, I'm laying out the blueprint to help you visualize and actualize your 2024 money moves. From dreamy aspirations to concrete steps, let this episode be your financial compass, giving you the clarity and direction to navigate the path to success and confidence to achieve your financial goals this year!

This year, it's out of there for just dreaming big because this year, The Mindfully Rich Podcast is making those financial dreams you have a tangible reality!  I'm arming you with the knowledge and motivation to create successful strategies for your goals!

Book Me As Your Financial Guide:

Everyone's financial journey is unique, and I emphasize the importance of research when tailoring strategies to your specific goals. Whether you're looking to save for a home, invest for retirement, or pay off debt, customizing your approach is key.

But the guidance continues! I'd like to introduce the option of working with you as your financial guidance coach. To kick things off, I invite you to a no-cost discovery call to explore if we're the perfect fit to work together. I'll also explain how my expertise can complement your efforts, offering personalized strategies and support on your financial path. Click Here to book an appointment with me!

Above all, I want YOU to win in your finances. To achieve this victory, we delve into the significance of using vision boards to keep your goals at the forefront of your mind. It's not just about setting goals; it's about seeing them, believing in them, and taking actionable steps to turn them into reality.

Please tune in to Episode 124 as we embark on a journey of financial empowerment, setting SMART goals, and crafting strategies that lead to triumph. Your financial success story starts here! Don't forget to check out the link below for your no-cost discovery call—I'm here to help you achieve your 2024 financial goals. Let's make it happen together!

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Transcript

Gina RichE Richardson: 0:00

Hello, hello and welcome back to the Mindfully Rich podcast, your weekly check-in that encourages you to elevate your overall relationship with money and guide to building better financial habits. On each episode I'll discuss real-life situations and give you all practical advice. The point of this podcast is to help you stand your financial lane so you won't end up broke. I'm the creator and host, gina Richie Richardson. Now let's jump into today's conversation. What's up? Y'all, we back, we back. I know y'all was like where is she at? She said we back Chow. Let me tell you what.

Gina RichE Richardson: 0:39

Okay, last week was my birthday week. You know I end Capricorn season for those of you who know. You know I'm a Capricorn and so it was so much going on and along with that, my voice was playing with me. Now, the last episode, I had no idea real raspy Y'all. I was too raspy, I couldn't even talk. I was like, uh-uh, we not even finna do that. I'm not even finna. Play y'all and have y'all wait. We just gonna go ahead and get it out on the regular day. That's what we gonna do, okay, and last Friday was my birthday. The 16th was my sorority's, founder's day. The 15th, mlk day. I was at the walk. It was so much your girl been booked and busy. Okay, let's just say it like that. But check this out. I'm back.

Gina RichE Richardson: 1:25

All right, let's go ahead and do a quick recap. For those of y'all who don't know I'm back Period. I am Make sure you go check out the episode before this one, just because I was talking about creating vision boards for your financial goals, having that daily visualization so that way you can continue to look at your 2024 financial goals. Now, this is the thing about those financial goals. If you haven't already created that vision board, today I'm going to talk about strategies, just because I spent a lot of time talking about why a vision board would be good for your financial goals and also how to create that financial goal.

Gina RichE Richardson: 2:05

But I'm going to go a little bit more into detail today just because I realized I was like you may have put the cart before the horse. Now let me tell you about me and my old Sands. Now I don't know what it is. I was telling my best friend Reesey. I said I am in old Sands zone. Like I've been saying a lot of old Sands, I don't know what it is. I don't know if this is the introduction to 39. This is my introduction to being an elder or what, okay. But I realized after listening back to it even though a whole bunch of y'all listened to it, okay, like I think the first day I had like over 300 downloads and I was like, shut up, y'all better be up in here listening. But what I wanted to do today was kind of rewind a little bit focus. Those financial goals bring clarity to it and also strategies to it.

Gina RichE Richardson: 2:56

All right, so let's go ahead and jump into today's topic. So we're going to do this through our mindful money moment. Lots of you who have been rocking with me for forever Y'all know what this is. For those of you that are new, I normally will take a topic. I used to take topics directly from songs that I like, some titles that I would like, but ciao, bye, bye, bye. I've been doing this for a long time now. I think this is episode 126. One enough songs, okay, and everything ain't gonna go with everything. So I just had to get used to that. But still know your girl love music, all right, and so let's go ahead and jump into our mindful money moment, where we're going to talk about and clarify some strategies to help you with reaching your 2024 financial goals.

Gina RichE Richardson: 3:44

All right, capricorn season has come to an end and I believe last episode and this is just the fact during Capricorn season, there's a lot of resolutions that are being put out there. People are starting over, people are making intentions for the year. They are saying I'm about to do this, this is going to be my year, because it's the beginning of the year, that can also feel a bit stressful to put on yourself All of the things that you're going to do. I realized that I needed to start this episode, probably in November because December is so busy, but probably in November. So next year, we're going to start talking about this stuff in November, because I get how stressful that is People trying to hurry up and create goals before the end of January and y'all. This month has went so quickly. I don't know what is going on, but all I know is that this year I want y'all to win. I got a different fight in me this year. I don't know what's going on, but I want you to win. I'm going to win. We just going to be winning all 2024. And so I know that there are aspirations that you have for your life, that you want for your life, and I want to be that very financial godmother for you to help you with creating those 2024 financial aspirations that you have for your life and also giving you those strategies that can help you, because it's nothing to just say, oh I want to do this right, but how are you going to do that? Like I'm going to give y'all an example, take you into my world. All right.

Gina RichE Richardson: 5:17

This year I told myself that I want to be healthier mind, body and spirit. Also want to lose weight. Okay, I'm getting older. Metabolism ain't metabolizing like it used to. This is a good 200 child, okay, and so I know that those are the things I want to do. Lots of people want to do that, right, but what am I going to do to reach that? It's not hard. It's not like everybody doesn't have knowledge on what does it mean to eat healthier? Eat healthier foods, right. Lower your lower your carb intake, lower your sugar intake. You know. You know there are things that you could do off top without even having to research it.

Gina RichE Richardson: 5:56

I know that if I want to lose weight, I probably need to exercise and eating better, eating healthier. It's going to be one of those ways that's going to help me. So this is the thing, right, although I know those things, how am I going to stay motivated to that? What are my strategies to do that? Just because, if, if I could have just did it, I would have done it right. So that's the reason why last week I was saying keeping it in front of you, having that vision board, but also the strategy part, is going to be very important. So, for this particular example, how I'm going to eat healthier, how I'm going to lose weight, I'm going to walk 10,000 steps every day, rain permitting, child, because I don't know what's going on out here, the rain, just do not want me to be great. Okay, I'm like look, I got a whole goal to make you, in my way, rain, all right. So 10,000 steps is the goal.

Gina RichE Richardson: 6:48

I'm also recording the foods that I eat into my fitness pal. You're probably wondering what does that do? So, with me recording the foods in my fitness pal, I'm getting a chance to see how many calories is each food that I'm eating, and I'm being honest and I'm like, ooh. So it's funny because I started off recording the foods as I would, you know, just regularly eat food, just saying I'm going to record it, but in my fitness pal. It gives you the opportunity to put in what your goal is Are you trying to lose weight? And it tells you how many calories you need. So if I'm putting in food for the day and then I see I'm over those calories, it's making me think twice. So I'm doing actions to assist me with this goal. I get a chance to keep it in front of me. Those are strategies.

Gina RichE Richardson: 7:36

Using my fitness pal walking 10,000 steps, I'm also yeah, I'm trying. Okay, and I had the pause here. Okay, I'm trying to ride the peloton five times a week up to a 30 minute ride. Okay, I'm trying. I have the peloton app. That is reminding me you said five times, girl, I got my fitness power. That is reminding me you didn't put your food in. I also have my vision board that has my health goals on it. That's showing me. Hey, girl, you said you walking 10,000 steps. You said you're doing this.

Gina RichE Richardson: 8:11

So all of those things are created to be strategies to help me with achieving that goal. Now, I gave you that long example telling you about me because I want to use that as an example as we move into your financial goals and creating the strategies that you're going to need so that you can achieve them. All right. So where we at, I'm trying to make sure, okay, I remember where I was going, because I loosely wrote notes for this, just because I don't know if y'all hear me, I'm fired up about this one. Okay, this is, this is my thing. All right, this is what I like to do, all right. And so, going back to last week's example that I use when I was using your financial goals, when creating your financial goals, I'm using a popular goal just because I'm also a financial guide. I like to call myself a guide versus a coach, because I'm both of those things. I've been educating people on their finances for the last 16 years, and so I use the goal of increasing your credit score because that is so popular.

Gina RichE Richardson: 9:11

Lots of people have credit centered goals, and increasing your score is one of the top. Okay, probably literally 90% of my clients. That's what they're trying to do right now, and so, with knowing that that's a goal that you want to reach, what is going to be that strategy? But this is the thing. Before we even create a strategy for that, what I normally do with my clients is if you have a goal to increase your credit score. How much do you want to increase said credit score? Are you sitting at a 590 right now and you're trying to get to 700? Are you sitting at a 700 and you're trying to get to a 50? That's going to be important because it's one thing just to say I want to increase my credit score.

Gina RichE Richardson: 10:01

We, as people I'm realizing this because I'm taking some classes on consumer behavior, the science behind why we act the way that we act we, as people, need to have very specific goals, which is where smart goals comes in, because you can say, at 590, I want to increase my score. Say you increase your score to 600. You did what you said you want to do, but you may be thinking in your head, but I didn't increase it to this, but you didn't say that initially. So you have to make sure that you have that. What's the word? Did you all see how it almost jumped out there? Let's just say specific. I was about to say specification Maybe that is the word, who knows. Whatever Specific, we just going to stick there. Ok, if I'm using this as an example, but I know that this is in actual financial goal for a lot of people, if raising your credit score is your financial goal for 2024,. Make sure that you get real specific. We're going to go, we're going to talk talking smart goal language. You got to get very specific and say I want to increase my score 50 points. I want to increase my score 75 points, 100 points, 200 points. But this is the thing. As you are being specific and saying, all right, I want to increase my score by this amount of points, it also has to be measurable. How are we going to measure that Right? How are we going to measure if you are increasing your score? All right, we know that there are tools for us to measure if your score is increasing.

Gina RichE Richardson: 11:44

Checking your credit report I always have my clients go to experience, download the experience app. You can also review your credit report and score on experience website for free. They give you a new score every month. They monitor throughout the month. You can always see where you're at. I like that just because it's an actual credit bureau. Remember, there's three experience, equifax and TransUan. And I just like experience. I like the way their reports read. I like the information that they give consumers. Amazing, keep going. Experience All right, you can also check on Equifax. Equifax did I think they just started feeling sorry because everybody information is getting hacked. So they felt sorry and allow people to start reviewing their credit reports and scores on their website. I don't know about the app. You have to check it out Now.

Gina RichE Richardson: 12:34

Transuan I plan with y'all. Transuan is like look, you can't get it for free over here. We still got bills to pay. Okay, I think TransUan is located in Chicago too, so that makes sense. That's how we all we like you got to pay. We're going to come up, okay. So TransUan you can't look at for free.

Gina RichE Richardson: 12:56

But there are other places where you can look at your TransUan report and score, like credit karma. When people are going to credit karma, you have two bureaus on there. You have Equifax and TransUan and so you can see your credit report and you can see your score. But those are Vantage scores because there's a thing called your FICO scores, which are going to be the scores normally that your credit bureaus are going to be using. So like, if you go to get a loan, they're looking at FICO scores, but there's a thing called Vantage scores that came out after FICO and it kind of increases your score a little bit. It don't be the real score, but this is the thing. You can still go to credit karma. Look at the report. It's going to have a score, but just know it's not your FICO score. That's the best way I could put that. You probably got a whole bunch of questions about that. You probably need to hit up my website so that you can be one of my guidance clients. Okay, can go into all that right now, but anyways, fico scores, vantage scores also, just say it where you could check both your credit report and check your score, because when you set the goal of wanting to increase your credit score, you have to make sure that you are measuring it and seeing. So, with my clients, we're looking monthly. Sometimes we're looking twice a month so that we can see where were you at on January 1st, where are we at on January 15th? Where are you at on January 31st? Where are you at February 1st? You get it. So that way we can measure it.

Gina RichE Richardson: 14:19

Okay, so still talking in smart goals, since in the sense of increasing your credit score. So, moving to the, what are the SMA achievable? Yes, setting the goal is the score that you want to reach. Is it achievable, right? So I just said, if you have a 590 and you set the. You set a goal of I want to increase my score 200 points. Okay, so you want to go to 790. Now I'm not going to tell you 790 is not possible. 790 going to be a stretch goal because you're going to have to do some things so that you can get the 790 that you want.

Gina RichE Richardson: 14:56

Okay, I was about to go somewhere that was going to be so funny, but we serious, right now that's going to be I'm trying to use a good word it's going to be more challenging to reach a 200 point increase from 590. Then it would be a 75. Or a hundred score increase. Just because, how realistic is that? Okay, that's going to be the R. How realistic is that? Because we don't want to set goals that we not going to achieve. All right, let's just be for real. All right, you can set the.

Gina RichE Richardson: 15:34

You can set the standard and say for my goal, I want to increase my score 200 points, depending on your credit report. Some people can do that because they credit report may have a lot of issues. Challenges is the word we're going to use here. They may have not been paying their bills on time. There may be a lot of credit card debt that they can pay down where that type of score increase is possible. Now there are people like my clients who want to purchase houses. They're paying their bills on time. They don't have a letter credit card debt. A 200 point increase is going to be harder for them to reach because they're already doing the right thing. So now we have to figure out what are healthy ways to build and establish new credit to help put that in your total credit mix to increase your score. So you get what I'm saying.

Gina RichE Richardson: 16:25

Everybody's situation is going to be different. That's the thing that I always I can't explain enough because it's like a lot of people think oh, I see this one person. They said do this, that has to work. Everybody's situation is different. That's the reason why there is a need for financial guides and coaches like myself to assist individuals with what it looks like for you. What Bobby's sue did over here ain't gonna work for Becky's suit.

Gina RichE Richardson: 16:53

Okay, because we all have different credit needs. We pay different, we keep different amount of debts. We are not the same, but lots of people like to take information, look at it as if it is just one. It is in one case. This is the only thing that you can do. No, just like there are several ways to lose weight, there are several ways to reach your financial goal and, using the same example of increasing a credit score, there are several ways that you can do that. But your case may be different from mine or someone else's, so you have to understand strategies as a whole, understand where you're at, understand where you stand within your income situation, your expenses, everything in order to know what strategies are going to be realistic enough for you to be able to reach your goal.

Gina RichE Richardson: 17:48

All right, and get into the T. I got through that pretty good. Okay, and get to the T. We got to put a time on it. All right. Anytime I'm working with my clients, look, we got to put a time on it. So that way we can know in the next three months, in the next six months. Three to six months are very good goals, even nine months, all right. I like to most of my clients short term, but some of them stay on. I'm going to say three to nine months on average, just because some people they get the answer to what it is that they wanted to know and boom, I'm out. I'm cool. Then they back when they have another one. That's cool because it happens like that. It's kind of like therapy. Right now I'm in therapy because, baby, I need therapy right now, okay, okay, once I get to the uh-huh, the final uh-huh, I don't know how long I'm going to stay, but right now I need every single bit of it every week. Okay, that's what we do as people, especially when you have goals that you want to achieve.

Gina RichE Richardson: 18:46

I realized I was stuck in my life. I needed a therapist. I needed to get through this stuck portion of my life. Y'all probably hear how I sound down. You go back some episodes. Your girl wasn't sounding like this. That's because I am five appointments in on therapy. Okay, I was stuck and I'm willing to pay when I'm stuck. Okay, we got to get me out of stuck because your girl got to be back.

Gina RichE Richardson: 19:11

And so that's just like with financial coaches, financial guys, things like that, financial educators getting the assistance that you need, whether that's listening to podcasts, doing your research, going on the YouTube, going and looking at websites, getting the education you need, actually paying for someone to be your culture or your guide. You do what you need to do so that way you can see what fits your situation to get you there. Okay, I've made a lot of mistakes. I spent the whole year knowing I need a therapy and then didn't get it into December, okay. So just giving you an example. But going back to the goals, making sure that that goal is a smart goal I've went through each letter. So it has to be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and it has to have a timeframe that you are putting on it. All right, this is the thing is one thing when we say, all right, I got all that. I know I got my smart goal together, my smart financial goal. I've created it. This is what it is. It's ready to go on my vision board. Got it Okay?

Gina RichE Richardson: 20:13

One more thing I want to make sure that we we understand, in creating our goals, we always know life gone, life. There are going to be factors, especially financial, especially our internal factors, that we somewhat have control over, that are going to affect our finances throughout the year. So I want you to be mindful of that. So, some internal factors that could affect you reaching your financial goals, your smart financial goals of 2024, your income. Whether your income is up, whether your income is down, that is somewhat in your control. What are you going to do? Is your income at a place where you can achieve the smart goal that you need to achieve?

Gina RichE Richardson: 20:59

All right, are your expenses intact? That is something that we somewhat can control. There are things that we need. There are things that we have perceived needs for. There are things that we had to get just because of things coming up. I understand that, all right. So your expenses, your debts are those going to be in a place? Those are things. Those are questions that you're going to have to ask yourself, just because, if you have to put money into trying to achieve your goal, are you going to be able to still live on on the other side of that? Okay? So I want you to think about those internal factors Also.

Gina RichE Richardson: 21:34

I put this down just because I think that this is important Our knowledge of financial concepts. Now, while it's good to have knowledge right, studies show that, although even when we have knowledge, 80% of our Financial spending, what we do with our money, is behavior. It's associated with our behavior, not with knowledge. So I do want you to know, I do want you to be students. I want you to listen to the Mindfully Rich podcast so that you can stay mindful and intentional. I want you to find other resources that talk about money, so that you can take those perspectives yourself and you can create what you're gonna do and how you're gonna move on your own. But I also want you to be very mindful of your behavior, cause there's one thing to know, but it's our behavior, and so those are some internal factors that I want you to think about when it comes to achieving your 2024 financial goals. Woo-chow, y'all getting some nuggets today. Okay, make sure y'all share. Okay, nuggets are being dropped, all right, so let's do a review.

Gina RichE Richardson: 22:43

We talked about a lot of stuff today, all right, we talked about clarifying and creating strategies for your 2024 goals. I'm only using the example of increasing your credit score. Now I'm wondering, and y'all gonna have to let me know, and you gonna have to let me know on the Instagram, the podcast, instagram page, okay, or DM me and let me know. Do I need to go through several scenarios? Is that something that would help everyone? Cause right now I'm only using the scenario of increasing your credit score. You know what I'm probably gonna do scenarios on the podcast page, on the Instagram page, probably on TikTok too. I probably do it there. I feel like that may be warranted, but to review everything that we've been talking about. We're clarifying our financial goals so that we can get those smart financial goals on our vision board. I want y'all to have some goals and have a vision board created by the end of this month, if possible, especially for your financial goals. Now, your vision board gonna probably have a whole bunch of stuff, cause mine do, mine got different categories, but I wanna make sure that I'm helping you with concentrating on the financial goals.

Gina RichE Richardson: 23:53

I use the example of increasing your credit score. Remember, it has to be a smart goal. It has to be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and it has to have a time associated with it. You're also going to have to look at your financial situation, understand where you stand, understand what you can and what you can't do, and this is the thing. If you can't do this on your own, you're gonna have to seek help. You're gonna have to do your research, look out and seek out assistance. Listen to those podcasts, finding articles. Going to the credit bureau's financial education, so Equifax, experience Transition. Going to those websites where it's gonna be reputable, they're gonna give you good information, okay, and also, if you do need assistance, y'all remember I am a whole financial guide out here in the streets.

Gina RichE Richardson: 24:43

I want you to go to my website, immindfullyrichcom If you need assistance making these goals work for you, making them work for your situation, making them be more realistic for you and taking that weight off your shoulders. Because I get it. I pay for convenience. I am a pay for convenience girl. All right, if it's gonna cause me too much time, because my time is money. I can get more money, can't get more time. So if you need that type of assistance from your girl, cause your girl 126 episodes been giving y'all all of the gems.

Gina RichE Richardson: 25:18

Okay, if you need assistance, go ahead and book a discovery call with me. All of my discovery calls are no calls. I don't like saying free because I ain't free, it's a no cost. Let's say it like that. All right, because I want to make sure that you win this year. I want y'all to win because I'm winning. Do y'all hear it in my voice? We winning this year, all right.

Gina RichE Richardson: 25:40

So if you need assistance, make sure you are getting the assistance you need. Hit me up at wwwimmindfullyrichcom. That is my website. You can go to my financial guidance section to see what that looks like. Hit me up, all right, y'all. I think that is it. Let me see, did I cover everything? Y'all? Yo, that's it. This was good, all right. Make sure y'all continue to listen, listen, listen, share, share, share. All right, my marketing team okay, I can't do this without y'all. Want to make sure that we are very clear. Cannot do it without y'all, all right. And so I want y'all to live life mindfully and on purpose, and until next time when I hit y'all with another one.