Episode 18 - Turning Dreams into Reality with Values-Based Financial Planning
Making a life-changing move is never easy, especially when leaving a place you've called home. On this episode of Beyond Budgets®, I share the poignant journey my family and I are undertaking as we transition from the sunny beaches of Florida back to Missouri.
This episode also presents a comprehensive guide to values-based financial planning. We dive deep into a six-step process to help you achieve financial goals while staying true to your core values. From gathering self-knowledge and setting realistic yet ambitious goals to analyzing your financial situation and consulting a financial advisor, you'll find practical advice tailored to larger financial milestones and simpler, more immediate goals.
Whether you're contemplating a major life change or simply looking to align your finances with your deepest values, this episode offers invaluable insights and inspiration.
Episode Highlights
(01:44 - 02:46) Importance of Core Values in Relocating
(06:46 - 08:34) Family Motivation in Florida
(10:07 - 11:44) Careful Deliberation Led to Moving
(21:29 - 23:18) Developing a Realistic Financial Plan
Full transcript
Deb Meyer (00:02.062)
Hey, I have some big news to share today. And before I dive into that news, I do want to encourage you to listen through the whole episode because even though I'm going to be sharing a little bit behind the scenes what's happening in my family, I also am going to be walking through a six-step process that can help you reach your financial goals using this values-based approach financial plan.
So I do encourage you to listen to the entire episode. I think there's going to be a lot of nuggets of wisdom in here.
And yeah, without further ado, I will share we are moving. My family of five is moving from sunny Florida back to the Midwest. We're heading back to Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis, where we lived before we came here. It was about four and a half years we've been here in Florida and we're going back to a house within about 10 minutes of our old house. I know that sounds a little bizarre, but I do have an explanation for it. And I know when I run into friends here in the neighborhood and I'm sharing our news, a lot of them scratch heads and say, “Hey, what's motivating this?” And my short answer is, “we're going back to be close to my husband's side of the family.”
But the longer answer is a bit more complicated. So I'm going to refer them to this episode from now on. All right, starting off here, I just want to state the importance of having a clear set of core values. And that's really the main reason my family is moving … because of this idea that we want to live in alignment with our core values.
Now, my husband and I have different core values, but our two shared core values are faith and family. And I'm going to detail a little behind each of those. But that really was a big driver in our decision to relocate. And I encourage you, if you haven't already taken a values exercise, I will provide that link in the show notes, and then I'll also reference it in the later part of this episode.
Deb Meyer (02:21.102)
But I do want to say that's a crucial piece. Any financial plan is great, but having something that's in alignment with your values where you really feel like you're carving a pathway that's true to who you are and who you want your family to be.
So, faith. I've shared a little bit of this in the first episode giving more of my backstory, but I am a cradle Catholic, which means I was born and raised in the Catholic Church. Same with my husband, Bryan. And for me, my faith is a critical part of who I am.
I engage in daily prayer, I have a spiritual director that I meet with once a month virtually named Meritt — Roots and Wings Ministries if you're interested. I also attend Mass weekly. I read through the scripture verses that my lovely neighbor Justin sends on a daily basis. It really is a crucial part of my life and kind of how I show up to other people. I want to be centered on a relationship with Christ.
For a lot of people, just having that intimate relationship with Jesus is one thing, but if you're devout in your faith, you also want to be able to grow in community with other people like you. And quite frankly, since we've lived here in Florida, we just had a hard time connecting with people at our church. We found a church not too far from our house where we attend weekly, but there aren’t a lot of opportunities for fellowship or socialization outside of the normal mass times. And I guess we could have been more intentional in trying to, you know, invite those families over for dinner and things like that, but I'm not much for hospitality, cleaning the house, all of that. I just prefer to meet people out.
Deb Meyer (04:26.19)
So for us, not being able to really engage with a lot of people that share our faith was hard. A lot of the friends we have here are dear friends, but they aren't practicing Catholics. If they are a faith denomination, usually it's some other Christian faith, and that's great. But for us, having a closer community of people that share our faith that we can do life with, I think is really important.
And quite frankly, had a hard time when my mom had had some pretty severe health issues and I expected our church to really be there in a time of need. I vividly remember the day she passed away and that morning I was trying to have our priest from our parish come and deliver Last Rites and was met with very unkind words by the main administrator/layperson there at the church. Granted, it was between Christmas and New Year's, so I know there was a lot of trying to take some time off for the holidays. But it really left a very bad taste in my mouth, not only of my parish but the faith in general. There, for a few months there, I really didn't want anything to do with the Catholic Church. I almost didn't have my kids receive the sacraments.
I had my youngest, going through First Holy Communion and Reconciliation. And I just kept going and showing up at church strictly for the sacraments. I know that sounds awful, but that's the way it was for me. That summer we explored some other Catholic churches in the area further away. We also explored our church in our neighborhood, the Community Church with Pastor Matt. And he's a wonderful man, but he's Lutheran.
For me and my husband, ultimately, we had to make a decision, like, are we going to completely change our faith over this one experience with one person at our current church? Or are we going to stay true to the Catholic faith that we've grown and known our entire lives? And we decided to stay with the faith.
Deb Meyer (06:44.718)
So although we still go to that same church, today I'm excited to be going back to our faith community in St. Charles, Missouri, which was always welcoming. And I hear they have two new priests as well, which I think has brought a lot of vibrancy to the parish. So I'm really excited for what the future holds with regard to our faith life and the community that we're going to be part of again.
Then the other big thing for us is family. That's another core value.
And as I said before, you know, one of the main motivators for our family to come down to Florida was to be close to my mom. She was diagnosed with a very serious health condition in 2017, permanent atrial fibrillation and also had congestive heart failure stage four in 2017. So we knew every day on earth was a gift. And just wanted to be part of her life for as long as we knew she was going to be around.
So it was wonderful living within a mile of her and my dad for a couple of years, but then when she ultimately passed away, I didn't want to make any rash decisions. But I also knew she was a big reason we were down here in Florida to begin with. And any new motivation we had for staying had to be separate from her.
My dad's a very self-sufficient guy. He's healthy and he still likes to go up to up north in the summers. So he's not even here some of the year. But for him, for me to stay close by and just have him as the only family member, there was a little bit of, I guess, selfishness in that. Because my husband...
His whole family lives in St. Louis. He's one of five and one of his siblings lives outside of St. Louis, but everyone else is pretty much within a one-hour drive of St. Louis, Missouri. And even his extended family, it's very large, lots of cousins and their kids and everything else. So when we come for family gatherings, it's like 70 people at Thanksgiving or Christmas.
Deb Meyer (09:08.494)
And so for him to be away from his family this long was a big challenge. And I know we're all very excited to be back back there and reunited with them. We can still come and visit my dad periodically or he can come visit us but for us just being close to extended family was also really important.
And then I will also say for our family, we have to think about our kids and their schooling. We have three boys, our youngest is going to be entering fourth grade, middle son will be entering sixth, and then our oldest is going to be entering his sophomore year of high school. For the community we're currently in, it's great. There's a neighborhood school, which has been really helpful for our younger two boys. Our oldest, though, has really struggled with the format.
It's a very different type of learning and type of school environment because it's a newer growing community. The class, the grades have fewer students in them at the high school level. They have, you know, concerns with teacher turnover and things like that as well. So we just want to be able to provide our son with some additional options that were close by.
And quite frankly, the area we live in today doesn't have a lot of other options nearby. There's one Catholic grade school, one Catholic high school in all of greater Fort Myers. And for us, that's a 40-minute drive each way without a lot of traffic when snowbirds come down. And typically like December to May is a busy time with traffic.
So that's 40 minutes outside of those times. Anyway, Missouri for us offered some additional school choices. We have school choices of public and private, multiple private schools within a close drive of our new home. Again, for us, it was a combination of those two things. And also understand when we were making this decision, it was carefully discerned. This was not a rushed decision.
Deb Meyer (11:26.382)
My husband and I had multiple conversations about it. Oftentimes me flip-flopping on what was the right course of action. But I think I exhausted him quite a bit talking about the same thing over and over. And I am appreciative that he put up with me all those times, all those conversations. But ultimately, I think we both knew long term, this is going to be the better decision for our family, at least for these next couple of years while our oldest son finishes high school.
And we also had to come to terms with the fact that even though we thought about making this move earlier than today or earlier than this year, the timing never worked out right. I am a true believer that God's timing is perfect.
For us, that meant making the transition this year. We had looked at it in prior years and for one reason or another, something just backfired. We either couldn't get spots in the school we wanted for both of our younger sons or a house was too difficult to come by. Even though we had savings, we were finding ourselves in bidding wars and putting offers on houses and it not going through.
I know some of that is dissipating now, as we get further removed from post-COVID, but for a lot of places across the nation, there were a lot of bidding wars happening in 2021 and 2022. The timing just didn't feel right at that moment.
Now, as to the financial side of it, we are very fortunate. Both of us are in paid roles. I run my business WorthyNest and my husband works for Robert Half based in St. Louis. There are offices all over but he works for the St. Louis office. For us, it made sense professionally as well to make this transition back because his role is up there and because I have a lot of clients that live up there. I was going back and forth about twice a year to to meet with clients as I was maintaining my home here in Florida.
Deb Meyer (13:45.166)
So again, for a multitude of reasons, we were able to make the transition up there and were very diligent and thoughtful in our savings process. Once we knew there was a possibility we wanted to move back, we started saving pretty aggressively, living off my husband's income and then saving my income.
So that we had a nice cash reserve to not only put down a substantial downpayment but also to have some reserve for home improvements that we want to do on the new house. The new house is not new, it's like 24 years old. So it does have a lot of projects.
But again, this is a big financial move for us and it's actually more expensive for us to live in St. Louis than it is to live in Florida at this moment in time. Because we were trying to stay true to our values and just learning what the best path forward was for us, it made sense to make that move. And even though we locked in a higher interest rate on our new mortgage, we know that eventually interest rates are going to come down and at that time, we can look at refinancing into a lower rate.
I think the days of 3 % interest rates that we became accustomed to in 2020 and 2021 are probably long gone. But even if we can get down to, you know, 5 % or 4 % range, that's probably going to be a healthier barometer going forward on interest rates. So it does give us a little bit of flexibility as well.
Deb Meyer (15:58.19)
Okay, let's take a break. I would encourage you, if you're enjoying the podcast and you haven't already, please, please, please leave a rating and possibly a review if you are so inclined. I really appreciate every one of the ratings and reviews left already. I see them on Apple and Spotify and I'm just so grateful if you've already left one.
Even if you left one early on when the show started in November and you still find a really great nugget of wisdom and want to put a new review, that is more than welcome. I think as long as it's at least three or four months after you left the first review, that should be good.
And if you haven't yet left any reading or review, it really would mean the world to me if you do so now.
Okay, let's talk about you now and focus on the six-step financial planning process that I take clients through in the one-on-one relationships. Not to give any specifics here, but I am going to at least outline each of the steps and how they might apply to your financial life and some of your goals and dreams.
The first step of the process is gathering the client info, which in this case, you already know yourself, so there's not going to be a lot of info you need to gather. I would consider it not applicable if you're a podcast listener only.
And then the second step is to really establish the goals and objectives. And when we think about goals and objectives, sometimes it can be hard to figure out what those are.
I like to start in a broader context of general dreams. What are some of the things that you dream about? If you could wave a magic wand, and again, some of it has to have a realistic edge to it. It's not like, okay, if you make $50,000 a year, you're gonna be living in a $10 million mansion. That's not very realistic.
What are some of the dreams that you have for your family that you think are maybe just a little bit out of reach, but with enough hard work, determination, and a solid plan in place is something that you could attain? And before you even start with that step, I would also encourage you, if you haven't identified your core values, to do so now. There is an article I wrote a while back on assessing your values, but more recently I found a great resource.
Think2Perform does this values exercise and I got to have the physical cards so I've been using those with clients in one-on-one in-person meetings. But anyone who wants to take the values assessment from Think2Perform, they can go to their website. It's www.thinknumber2perform.com/values. And I'll also link to it in the show notes.
That's a nice assessment; it probably takes 15 minutes or less and you just siphon through and say, “yes, this is important to me or not important to me,” divide those piles and then further refine them until you get about five core values. If you're married, I'd encourage both you and your spouse to independently take those assessments and then try to come together after you've taken them, see your results, and then see, okay, are there one or two core values that we share as a couple? And those can be the core values driving the family decisions. So again, for me and my husband, we had five unique values that were our core values individually, but then we found faith and family to be the kind of two shared values among us.
Deb Meyer (20:06.222)
All right, once you've identified those core values, that's when I would encourage you to start dreaming a little and going through that discernment process, especially if you're Christian or Catholic, trying to understand is this a more of a worldly goal or is it something deeper? Maybe it is paying for a certain portion of your child's college education or maybe it's changing to a different career or perhaps it's retiring within five years.
On some of this, again, depending on what the goal is and how much you can kind of DIY it yourself, that's fine. But if it's a broader goal like, “hey, do I have enough financial resources to retire in three years?” Typically, you need to work with a financial advisor who can run those illustrations in their planning system and give you a realistic picture as to whether or not that's attainable.
It's great to have these dreams and goals, but the next step is really analyzing your financial situation. Step three, analyze the financial situation. Quantify in dollars how much this goal or dream is going to cost. And then, you know, really evaluate: what kind of income do you have? What kind of expenses are typical for you? Where are your assets and how much are those relative to the liabilities? So again, in any of this, if you're trying to do it on your own, that might work for some smaller goals.
But for larger goals like college savings, retirement, big philanthropic goals, whatever it is, usually working with an advisor is going to be more helpful because we have planning software where we can model these things out and show you, “okay, if you work at this level of salary for the next three years, five years, whatever it is, and this is what your expenses are … here's the level of realistic savings, this is the likelihood of achieving that goal.”
If you just try to monitor it on your own, it can sometimes be challenging to see how that plan is developing and how to make progress along the way. But if it's a simpler goal like, hey, I want to save $12 ,000 over the course of the next year, you can do the math. It would be $1,000 a month would be your targeted savings goal. And it's really going back and examining your budget, understanding, “Okay, if my income increases, how much do I need?”
You also have to consider taxes.
“How much do I need to increase my income to save this? Or how much do I need to decrease the expenses or a combination of the two?”
Again, just to review the six-step process, one is gathering the client info, which is not really applicable. Two is establishing goals and objectives. Three, analyzing your financial situation, seeing if you have enough assets or income to support some of these goals. And on the liability side, if you find yourself deeply in debt or struggling to make payments on a lot of different items, let's say you have a lot of auto debt and credit card debt, things like that. It can be really difficult to achieve some of these goals. So maybe for you, a debt payoff goal is the most important thing to focus on.
But if you find yourself, well, hey, your only debt is the mortgage and it's at a relatively low interest rate, you don't need to be worried as much about debt. You might be able to have some of these higher-level goals. And if you're compensated well in your role, that also opens the door to, you know, look at some bigger savings goals too.
All right, the fourth step is to develop a financial plan. Like I said, go back to your budget, really understand the income and expense drivers and what could be tailored or tweaked, and be realistic about that. If you're currently spending $1,500 a month on food as a family and you say, well, I need to save an extra thousand a month, so I'm just going to go down to 500 on food food spending, that's unrealistic. To cut your grocery bill and dining out more than half is unrealistic, especially if you're doing it like cold turkey, right?
If you're trying to go from here this month to something completely different the following month, some people find success when they're doing more incremental changes. Maybe with your goal of saving 12,000, you say, “Hey, realistically, I'm going to save $500 a month for the next six months and then increase it to $750 a month and then increase it to $1,000 a month.”
Just understand the timeline for when you're going to achieve that goal. It’s going to be extended if you're not saving the full $1,000 a month from day one. So working backwards within that financial plan is also important … understanding what the overarching goal is and what that's going to cost and then quantifying to see, okay, what's the timeline for achieving that goal and what's a realistic number that we can do.
All right, step five is implementing the plan. So again, just if you say you have this goal and you want to save $1,000 a month over the next 12 months, try to save $1,000 a month for the next 12 months. Implement it. Actually work on making that transfer from one bank account to the other … from a checking account into a savings account.
And then the last step is monitoring and reviewing the financial plan. Understand that you might need to rework the plan if you're consistently missing the mark. In that same example, if we're trying to save a thousand a month over 12 months, maybe it's going to make sense to cut the goal in half to $500 a month over the next 24 months. I don't know. Those are ideas, depending on what the goal is and what realistic timeline you have for it.
Deb Meyer (26:56.814)
If it's not as big of a rush and you say, hey, this is really a five-year goal, let's do bigger targeted amounts each year. And it might not be on a monthly basis you're making deposits. It might be on a quarterly or an annual basis. Usually I don't recommend anything less than quarterly, though, in terms of savings goals and making those deposits. But for self-employed or small business owners, sometimes the way profit distributions and things like that work, they only take them every so often and it's hard to put things away outside of those times they're making those profit distributions.
All right. Then the other part along with monitoring and reviewing is to celebrate small wins along the way. It doesn't have to be a big or expensive celebration. It could be just a simple date night at home if you're married or if you're single, you know, pouring a glass of wine and watching your favorite TV show, whatever it is, but...
Just understand that if you're constantly focused on that next month or that next goal, it can be difficult to keep that momentum going. One of the books I love is Finish, and that's actually where I got some of the ideas around the goals and cutting the goal in half, celebrating the small wins. The book Finish by Jon Acuff is great in keeping motivation high. So highly recommend that.
He also has a wonderful podcast. I'm forgetting the name at the moment, but I'll make sure to link to it in the show notes too. All right, that concludes the episode. I hope this has been helpful to you. And yeah, just remember I'm here to support you. If at any point in time, you're trying to DIY it and you feel like, “Hey, no, I could really use an advisor to help outline a concrete kind of customized plan for the family,” I do offer free consults. I'm not going to be reopening my calendar until August, but yes, I would love to meet with your family and better understand your financial goals and what some of your dreams are if you think it's worth working in a one-on-one relationship. I will be in Central time zone starting in August, and I will also be accepting Zoom invitations and any virtual meetings. I work with clients across the US even though I'll be physically based in St. Louis. Take care!