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How’s Your Financial Well-being?

Financial Planning

You probably spend time each week trying to improve your physical and mental well-being. What about your financial well-being?

Achieving overall financial well-being allows you space to focus on the big picture instead of the sometimes bad news from short-term events. Morgan Housel writes in Same As Ever, “Bad news gets more attention than good news because pessimism is seductive and feels more urgent than optimism.”

What you think about informs where you’re heading; what you actually do determines what you accomplish.

Defining Financial Well-being

Financial well-being consists of knowing what you have; knowing where you are; and knowing where you’re heading.

Your financial well-being should be complementary to the other parts of your life.

Controlling Your Day-to-day Finances

Financial well-being starts with having control of your day-to-day finances. This means following a clear plan for managing your financial resources including income,spending, and saving.

In order for financial well-being to be truly complementary to the other parts of your life you need to cultivate a positive relationship with money. If you’re consumed by “putting out financial fires”, you can’t focus on building financial security or achieving long-term goals.

In my experience, one of the best ways to gain control of your money is to be prepared for a variety of possibilities, not just what you think is likely to happen. Prepare and plan for outcomes that may differ from what you want. Prepare for the unexpected.

The Path to Financial Well-being

Protection

The next step toward financial well-being is protection. You need to take care of the financial resources that you have so that you can stay on track to accomplish your most important long-term goals. This protection should extend beyond your investment portfolio to include taking steps to protect your income, property, and life.

Saving for the Future

Finally, financial well-being should have a focus on saving for the future. Of course, you don’t know exactly what your future will look like, but saving provides you some flexibility. In the absence of sufficient savings, you’re subject to being tossed around by all types of financial winds.

The resilience that saving for your future provides allows you to look more to the long-term instead of always responding to the worries of the day. This helps you develop a mindset focused on financial wellness.

Well-being Through Purposeful Financial Planning

Your financial well-being is directly related to purposeful financial planning. Financial planning is based on your core values, beliefs, and priorities. It’s not unusual to discover through the financial planning process that you need to fix some systemic problems. Things like undersaving, financial fire fighting, and overall lack of direction can stall your journey toward financial well-being.

As you can see, achieving financial well-being has a lot to do with intentionally practicing positive rather than negative financial habits. It’s helpful within this process to unlearn harmful financial myths that might be diverting you from the journey toward your goals.

Most of all, your financial well-being is a mindset. This mindset is a muscle that needs to be used, exercised, and maintained. Start there. Ready for a real conversation?

Disclosure

Apollon Wealth Management, LLC dba J.E. Wilson (Apollon) is an investment advisor registered with the SEC. This document is intended for the exclusive use of clients or prospective clients of Apollon. Any dissemination or distribution is strictly prohibited. Information provided in this document is for informational and/or educational purposes only and is not, in any way, to be considered investment advice nor a recommendation of any investment product or service. Investing involves risk, and while remaining invested can support long-term goals, it does not guarantee a profit or protect against losses. Advice may only be provided after entering into an engagement agreement and providing Apollon with all requested background and account information. Please visit our website https://apollonwealthmanagement.com for other important disclosures.