How Tracking Can Transform Your Path to a Worry-Free Retirement

 Today's episode is all about tracking. Tracking expenses. Now, as I say that, you're probably cringing. It's not a fun thing. It's almost, if not, maybe it's synonymous with that B word, ? A budget word. But tracking is essential. It's essential with money, but it's even more essential as you begin to prepare for retirement. Tracking helps us build awareness. Clarity. You know I'm all about clarity. And awareness is what we need to be able to make the changes we want to reach a goal. And most of us are wanting to reach that retirement goal, hopefully sooner than later. Honestly, retirement life is pretty good. Whether you choose to do a business like me, you go back to work part time, you just travel a lot, whatever it is, retirement life is great. This next phase, Oh, that is why I'm so passionate, but I want to talk about tracking and going back to the feeling when I said tracking expenses. It's probably because you think of writing down an entire list of expenses. Yeah, that's not effective. I don't care who you are. Looking at a list of transactions, you know, you pull out your bank statement and look at it, your credit card statement, your Venmo statement. You can fill this just even by looking at it, not even spending the time writing it down. And it means nothing. And if that is the effort you're putting in to tracking, to build your awareness and keep track of your spending, this is a task that is so cumbersome time wise, you know, headspace wise. that you're going to quit doing this sooner than later. It's not sustainable, and it's not effective. before we dive into some other ways of tracking, I want to share a couple different stories of tracking in different areas that will hopefully kind of open up your mind to how tracking can be effective. Because yes, I did say tracking is essential. Sharing these stories, think about them for you, pertinent to money, pertinent to what you desire with money, and hopefully you can get a better understanding. So if you know me, if you've been here, you've heard my story. I am an avid fiction reader. I, that's what I do. It's what I've always done. You know, I hear some people say, Oh, I became a reader at age 20. No, I think I was you know, whatever age I started reading. It's been a love of my life forever. And so when I say avid, that is what I do. I don't watch TV. I don't really do much of anything else. It is my hobby. It is what I do. I, for many, many years, I have tracked my best Number of books I've read every single year. This is great because yes, it tells me like most years I read a hundred plus, sometimes it's a hundred and fifty, sometimes it's a hundred and ten, sometimes it's a hundred and twenty five, and it just varies. Okay, it's one big lump number. One year I thought, okay, I'm curious of the number that I read. And the varying is because of the size of the book, ? Number of pages. Some are closer to three, some are closer to five or six or a thousand. That's why you're not reading as many. I decided I wanted to track understanding how many of how many of them I was purchasing, How many of them were coming from the library. And how many of them were coming from my Kindle subscription. Now I'm categorizing my books really only in two different ways. Cause the other number, is just my books. And this was great. It gave me better perception on how I was balancing, you know, those that I bought with supporting the library, with making sure I was getting my dollar value of my Kindle unlimited subscription. It's very helpful to do that. And so as I would You know, talk with individuals, we talk about books, share how much I read, you know, they would be like, well, how, how long do you read every day? And I'm like, oh, you know, probably three, four hours a day. And I was stating that because it'd be like, okay, there's a two hour window in the morning I read. That's what I do now. Not what I did when I worked. There's like two hours in the morning and then I love to finish up work like 3 And so if I have time before 3 I cook dinner or not, so another two hours at night. I wasn't going too granular. At the start of this year, I found an app that would actually track how long I read. It was very simple, so that's why I did it. Otherwise, I probably would not have done it. And I realized that in the two hour period, like especially at night, I was really only reading about 45 minutes of it. Because I was either thinking of something else or I had to go do a chore or my husband needed me or whatever it may be, ? This two hour actually reflected only 45 minutes. But that was what tracking showed me. Tracking is essential. Tracking is important. Now, if you look at the flip side of it, how tracking can help us push ourselves. Setting goals and reaching them. Tracking, I believe, is essential as well. Recently I've been trying to increase the number of steps I get every day. Which means I'm not sitting behind this desk working a lot if I'm getting my, you know, number of steps. Before I started, I looked at what had already happened and I had an average. And so I sat off instead of with a lofty goal of I'm going to do 10, 000 a day where I was only averaging about 5. I set myself at a nice goal Nice stretch, ? But not too far out there of 7, 000 steps. Being able to track that, meet that, keep it within reason, has helped me to be successful. More days than not, I've been able to reach that. And that is because I am tracking a goal that is not so far out there that I'm going to find failure. Feel that failure every single, every single day. Again, tracking is essential. Consider this. You head into a financial advisor and you, you tell them, I need to know how much I need to save you. to be able to retire with the number. And so he does all of his calculations. He or she, because I do know there's both. He or she does the calculations and they say, okay, you need to be, you know, saving a thousand dollars a month. Okay, you go ahead and you do that. You set that up. But what if this then takes away from your stability, your spending, your bills? If you have not been tracking prior to that. That thousand dollars may be just a number in the air, but there's also a flip side of that. If you were tracking and he says a thousand at the minimum, but you know, because you've been tracking, say, I can comfortably do 1, 500. I'm just going to do that. Really tracking can serve us in many different ways and being able to make those impactful financial decisions when we're meeting with people that we have asked to help us. maybe you're somebody who's like, I still don't see how tracking is going to help me. I just don't understand it. hopefully, I can break it down. Hopefully I can explain that why what you've been doing hasn't been working. Again, writing things down is just not effective. Avoiding it is just not effective. I have several clients who come to me and they're like, I spend a lot and it's bad. And I'm like, okay, but let's get into it and let's see what's going on. And so other ways for you to try is to look at how much you're truly saving right now. That is the first step you need to be doing to reach retirement, is saving. And if you're not doing anything, you're not going to make it. Start off with that. If you're already saving, figure out how much, what your savings rate is and can you increase it a little bit? Again, you're tracking your percentage. It gives you a number. You're not having to track your expenses. Now you're tracking saving. It just gives you a whole different perspective of being able to track something. If we track something, we will find progress. Another way, if you're like, well, I just don't know about that because I feel like my spending is a lot, write down your list of expenses from the areas you feel like you spend too much. Maybe you feel like you spend too much at target. Go explore that. Maybe you feel like you spend too much at the grocery store. Go explore that. Whatever it is that you're like, I spend too much here. Go explore that. It's very important to actually track this and see this. And yes, it's going to be a process, but it's definitely something that's worth doing, because then you have a measure to follow. Then you have a way to actually make a change. Couple other quick things that could start the juices flowing. Write down your list of subscriptions. Write down how much you're paying, to who, and how, you know, and once you make that list, you can see all of the areas, all of the things, rather than just saying, Oh my gosh, I know I have too many streaming subscriptions. And then when you write them out, you're like, well, I've only got three. Is that really that bad? But then you can explore them. You have that list. What about your debt? You want to get ahead on debt. You want to get rid of it. But do you know how much you truly owe? Have you explored those specifics? Again, it is so important to give yourself an item to then track for changing, track for better awareness, and that's how we go in. When I work with clients, I help them to first understand what's really happening with their money. They need to know what they're doing right now, and so should you. It's not about making these changes to make it fit into something that you want to happen. And then once you know what is happening, as you see it better, you can make that determination of what do you love about it? What do you not love about it? You know, what is the true view of this money and how is it serving you? And is it taking you the direction you desire to go? Spending isn't good or bad. At the root of it, spending is not good or bad. It just has to be. Why you spent or, you know, those types of things is where you can look for the good or bad. And to do that, you need to understand where you're spending to figure out the why. Spending is neither good nor bad. Awareness is key, and tracking is where it all begins. Just like I gained my insights on tracking my reading time, My clients have also experienced significant shifts in their spending habits. Some of them very quickly. Others of them a little bit later. But no matter what, they all see, they all build, they all define, and they all grow. This is where the power starts. This is where changes can begin to happen. You don't know where, what the next step is if you don't even know where you're at. If you want to get to the top of the mountain and you're already there. But you didn't realize that? It's kind of the same concept. So understanding where you are. To do so, you need to start tracking. And like I've shared, there are several ways to do so. Many different ways. I've broken them down, I've given you little sections. If you are more of a creative and not the analytical, You're going to need to lean into something somewhere. That's all I ask. Something that you can measure, something that you can track, something that you, when you apply a change, you can see that change. and know whether you need to do more or less. However, if you have looked, if you've tried so many ways and you're like, I just can't do it. It's not for me. I would love to have you join my membership. The first module is all about cashflow strategy. And in that is a whole new way of tracking, having the help in setting that up and delineating it out to those specific expenses, knowing where to look and how to look, because I believe the how is what is missing most people don't understand. That and I think it's society again I'm going to go back to spending isn't good or bad, and I really dislike it when I hear my clients say it's bad, and it is not what the precursor is, what the drive is, maybe, there's some underlying problems, but we have to spend money in this life. What we need to realize is that we need to spend it. where we truly desire, where we truly, where it truly will help us create the momentum to our goal. So tracking brings the awareness into our spending so we can spend it in the places that will push us forward. closer to our goal. If you have any questions, please reach out on Instagram. Let me know. Or if you're part of my email list, send me your question there. I would love to answer it. And yeah, if you're somebody who's thinking that tracking is just not for you. Jump into my membership. Join me. I promise you this will help you get over that hurdle. It is a necessity. It is essential to being able to reach your goal of retirement. Good luck. I hope you guys are going to head out there and try something new with tracking. I'll see you next week.