Over the past five years, I’ve learned a crucial lesson about money: financial success doesn’t just happen—you have to plan for it. Just like living within your means and saving for the future, setting clear financial goals is essential. No one cares about your financial goals as much as you do.
The average American spends over 40 hours a week working. If we exclude two weeks for vacation, that amounts to about 2,000 hours a year. Given the amount of time we spend earning money, you’d think we’d spend more time planning how to use it. But many of us, myself included, often choose relaxation and entertainment over financial planning.
There’s nothing wrong with enjoying sports, video games, movies, or other forms of entertainment—they’re important for our well-being. But we must not forget the importance of planning our financial future.
Until recently, I was a poor financial planner. I knew I wanted to be debt-free but didn’t have a solid plan. A few years ago, my wife and I bought a house, and the inspector warned us that we’d need a new roof within five years. We focused almost entirely on paying off our credit card debt. When we had about 30% of the debt left, our roof started leaking—right on cue. We hadn’t planned for this and had to rely on credit to pay for it, setting us back into debt and making me feel like a financial failure.
If my financial path were an actual road, my wife and I were using GPS instead of a map. While I love GPS for giving directions, there are two key advantages maps have. First, maps show the big picture, while GPS only provides turn-by-turn directions. Second, maps help you navigate detours more effectively.
While paying off our debt, we weren’t seeing the big picture. We didn’t account for unexpected expenses like the leaking roof. If we had planned better, we would have realized we needed to increase our income to address both our debt and the new roof. But we were so focused on debt repayment that it didn’t occur to us.
Planning makes building wealth look easy. Take Pauline, for example. She lives near a lake in Guatemala, invests in cattle, real estate, and runs a personal finance blog. It might seem like she just woke up one day in paradise, but that’s far from the truth. Pauline meticulously planned her financial moves. She chose Guatemala for its lower cost of living and made smart investment choices.
A few days ago, I asked my readers about their financial paths. Pauline responded by describing her journey like navigating a river, at first struggling to make progress but eventually reaching a peaceful lake. Her current success is the result of hard work and careful planning.
So the next time you think the wealthy have it easy, remember the sacrifices and hard work that went into their financial planning. Are you planning for financial success?