Do you beat yourself up when you see your savings or emergency fund get drained?
This is a theme I’ve seen in lots of the clients I work with.
They measure their financial health and success on this ONE measurement.
When the balance of their savings or emergency fund goes up they feel great.
When it’s going down they feel stressed.
Sound familiar?
I get it.
In 2023 we saw our emergency fund and savings get decimated.
It was painful to see.
During November it sent me into a negative mindset and I started to operate from a state of fear and doubt.
I knew I had to shift my perspective to the bigger picture of our financial health.
I once heard Alex Hormozi say something along the lines of “the more ways you measure the more ways you can win.”
I’m a big believer of this philosophy when it comes to your finances, business or any area of your life you care about.
I track so many areas of finances and business which means there are so many ways I can win. I don’t measure my success solely on how much cash we have sitting in our bank accounts.
This is what I communicate and teach my clients – look at the bigger picture, and…
TRACK, TRACK, TRACK!
In today’s newsletter I will share my annual financial review process I use that helps me shift my perspective and see the bigger picture of our financial health and progress.
It’s an exercise you can start doing if you want to start feeling like a winner in more ways than one.
My End of Year Financial Review
This week I’ve been getting my geek on. 🤓
I’ve been crunching the numbers and completing our end of year financial review for 2023.
This is a ritual I started back in 2019.
And it’s evolved each year as I’ve evolved and my processes have evolved.
It’s similar to a monthly Net Worth update – but on an annual basis.
And what I measure is slightly different.
I break this exercise down into two categories:
- Personal Finances
- Business Finances
This is what I track and measure for Personal Finances:
- Total Income for the year
- Total Expenses for the year
- Total Passive Income from Shares for the year
- Total Passive Income from Property for the year
- How much cash/savings we have
- Superannuation balances
- Share portfolio balances
- Crypto portfolio balances
- Investment property balances
- Our Net Worth
- How much we invested
This is what I track and measure for Business Finances:
- Total Revenue for the year
- Total Revenue (after tax) for the year
- Total Expenses for the year
- Profit for the year
- Average monthly revenue for the year
- Monthly recurring revenue (MRR) as of Dec 31st
- How much we donated
- How much we invested in personal development
As you can see there are a lot of areas I track and measure – which means there are so many ways we can win!
If we only tracked the balance of our savings then I would feel like a big loser right now – because our savings are down 61% from this time last year.
But if I shift my focus to other metrics – I can see our Net Worth has TRIPLED over the past four years!
Net Worth is one of my favourite metrics to measure because it shows you the bigger picture of your financial health.
It takes into consideration:
- Your savings
- Your investments, and
- Your liabilities
Completing an end of year financial review is an exercise I highly recommend doing.
When you do your review the first time you only have one data point so you can’t see much progress.
But the more data points you enter in as time goes on, the more valuable this exercise becomes. And you will be able to appreciate how much progress you’ve made.
I created a simple template you can use to start your review process.
Then click ‘file > make a copy’
Make this your own – your situation will look different to ours.
If you have any questions on how to complete this exercise them reply to this email and let me know.
