00:08:15 FEMALE: It’s probably more goals like you said. We know we want to put money for college, we know we want to put money for retirement, we know we want to put money for fun. So it’s not a strict budget like a lot of people do, it’s more like goals, make sure we’re putting the money in those spots.
00:08:35 TONYA: Alright, so goals. We’ve kind of touched on this, but let’s really get into this, because I think everyone has financial goals, but some of them are more explicitly stated. How can we help couples create goals together?
00:08:48 DAN: Yeah, I think that’s a great question. I think a big part of that is recognizing that while you are a couple you’re also two individuals. You may have separate things you want and those both need to come to the relationship and be considered.
00:09:01 So that’s a big piece for me is you know people say what should our goals be together? Well, they should probably be what your goals are separate with some emphasis, some change, some prioritization based on who you are as people together.
00:09:13 TONYA: Yeah, there’s usually some overlap in there, right?
00:09:16 DAN: Yes.
00:09:16 TONYA: Even though you’re separate individuals, you probably have the same values and same beliefs and same goals and so forth. So there usually is some overlap.
00:09:24 DAN: Yeah, absolutely.
00:09:24 TONYA: What about you Axel? How do you help people sort through that goal setting process? Say there’s a couple and we don’t have any goals, what can we do? Where should they start at?
00:09:34 AXEL: I'm sure it’s pretty common for somebody to say our goal is to have goals. (Laughter) So off we go. I think just talking about it. I'm writing down in the next year, in the next five years the short term, medium term, long term goals and I love what Dan said, I think it’s really important for them to feel like they should have their own individual goals and figure out where they overlap so that they can go together in the same direction and maybe compromise on some things that maybe they’re not going to be able to achieve because they can’t do it all.
00:10:00 TONYA: How should people begin to identify what those smaller goals are?
00:10:04 DAN: Absolutely. So we’re going to talk a little bit about that when we talk budget, but I really think it’s start thinking about what is your day to day look like and am I okay changing that or not, right, because if you are living and you’re saving but maybe you’re not saving a ton or maybe you’re not saving at all, right, and you’ve never had a money goal before. You didn’t know you could do that.
00:10:21 And so you want to sit down, you ought to write that out because that’s how we accomplish anything. But you have all these big dreams. Well, that means probably living a little differently than you’re living right now. Not saving anything. So are you comfortable changing that day to day. And then is your partner, right, and having that conversation. How much change? Where is that going to happen? It’s conversation that has to happen together.
00:10:41 TONYA: Absolutely. Typical common goals, Axel?
00:10:44 AXEL: Most couples that I meet with I think are all in agreement that they want to eliminate debt, they want to have a retirement plan they want to have a retirement plan outside of work. They want to have education savings for their children. I mean, it’s very common to have those kinds of things. But again writing it down, and funding it is where it’s got to start, got to talk about it.
00:11:05 DAN: And I’ll throw one in there. Just feeling secure. A lot of times people haven’t had an emergency fund or they don’t really know what that should look like. And it’s such a huge relief to have that. But they don’t exactly know how to articulate that.
00:11:19 And to your point something we use all the time, this analogy of dollar signs and deadlines. When you’re setting a goal, it’s going to either be in dollar signs or deadlines, it’s not just I want to buy a house. It’s what type of house, when, how much do you need? Like that’s how you actually make a goal.
00:11:36 TONYA: Yeah.
00:11:37 DAN: That you’re hopefully going to stick to.
00:11:38 TONYA: Definitely. And then I'm a big fan of once you create that goal write it down and make it visible and place it around the house, put reminders wherever it would be in your view. I know that my husband and I we had a vision board date where we sat down, we did vision boards together and now our vision boards are framed like artwork in our house, but we walk by them regularly so that we both are looking at our visions for ourselves and our visions for our household and what our goals are as a couple as well.
00:12:05 AXEL: I'm going to steal that idea. I'm going to make a placemat for me and my wife and my kids. And we’ll have that every time we eat, it will be right there for us.
00:12:11 TONYA: You sit down, this is what we’re working towards.
00:12:13 DAN: That’s great, that’s a great idea.
00:12:14 AXEL: I’ve had a lot of couples who it’s been on the steering wheel so they have to like take it off and then put it back on, you know, whether it’s just a little post it or a piece of tape or whatever it is.
00:12:24 TONYA: Yeah, reminders are powerful. So I think just writing it down and placing it around. So we set our goal, but now we’re writing it down and making it visible, so that we don’t forget what we’re working towards.
00:12:33 DAN: And one of the things with writing it down again one kind of takeaway I would put from this section is as we’ve all talked about, write those goals down but I actually really love the idea of write those goals down separately, come together and discuss them.
00:12:48 TONYA: Yeah.
00:12:48 DAN: Right, because sometimes you’ll be like oh, my partner is right, they’re smarter about money or they’re on a better track or they’re doing whatever they’re doing, so I'm just going to agree with whatever their goals are. That’s not how it should work.
00:12:57 TONYA: Yeah, and those aren’t your goals necessarily.
00:13:00 DAN: Yep. So write them both down, avoid that group thing, come together and say, hey, this is priority one for you and priority six for me. It’s probably somewhere in the middle. Or, hey, all our friends are doing this, but it’s priority five for both of us, maybe we want to focus on something else.
00:13:15 TONYA: Yeah. And I know I was talking to one of my friends and she said that her and her husband they write their goals down and they identify how important each goal is to them and then decide where they’re going to push, pull and bend based on how important it is to the other person.
00:13:27 Say one is the most importance to you then okay, we’ll work on achieving that, but if this goal is a number eight to you, okay, well, maybe that’s not as important, but we’ll work on your number one and my number one. I think we can agree that people are going to have individual goals but they’ll also have goals as a couple. And we want to create an action plan for achieving those goals. Let’s have a look at what we’ve learned.
