In order to create a financial plan that will work for you, you need to make it something that you get excited about. It has to be something that you would LOVE to do. Something that when you close your eyes and envision it, your heart aches for it to happen. This is connecting your heart with your vision.
For most people, that’s the thought of retirement. The vision of playing golf 7 days a week, spending a month in Venice or abroad every year, and being warm on a island beach when others are snow blowing their driveway is something most of us dream of in retirement. It keeps us going during our working years.
When you yearn to experience your vision, the next step is to create a financial plan that you understand. This requires you to look at where you are now, and where you want to be, so that you can figure out what you need to do to get there. Sometimes you can do this with spreadsheets. I’ve seen some real doozies in my time. Others can get an idea using online calculators. But if there’s any doubt, you may wish to have a more believable plan created by a Certified Financial PlannerTM, or a maybe even a comprehensive financial plan (think financial makeover) from a fee-only NAPFA Registered Financial Advisor. However you do it, make sure it’s something you understand. If you don’t understand it, you may dismiss it as impossible, and it will never happen. But if you understand it, you know what you need to do to make your vision a reality, and you can make conscious choices to get there. You’ve connected your head with your vision.
When you connect your head and your heart to your vision, amazing things happen. You begin to see things differently, which leads to synchronicity. That daily want of the $4 cappuccino becomes the $100 DeLonghi Espresso and Cappuccino machine that pays for itself in 1 month (30 cappuccinos x $4/day) and adds $100 a month to your emergency fund every month thereafter. Your emergency fund affords you the comfort level of  paying down your $15,185 average household credit card debt (largely from cappuccinos). The 14.99% (average debt rate) debt no longer costs you $190/mo ( $2,276/yr). Now you are savings $390/mo from only interest and cappuccinos expenses, all because you fell in love with a vision of what retirement could be and took the initiative to figure out how to make it happen.
By connecting your head with your heart, you’ve linked two of the 3 ways we experience life: intellectually and emotionally. The result is that you physically begin creating your vision.
