“Welcome to the PlanEasy blog! We make personal finance easy.
Thanks for visiting.”
– Owen
Three Ways To Visualize Your Financial Goals
Goals are a fantastic way to motivate yourself. Having a big, ambitious goal will help you prioritize other things in your life. It gives you something to work toward. Something that you care deeply about. It helps you balance what you need today with what you want to achieve in the future.
Financial goals have made a huge difference in my life. Setting powerful financial goals has helped me focus on the things that matter to me and ignore the things that don’t. They’ve helped me prioritize my spending to better align with my short and long-term goals.
Because of these financial goals, I’ve cut $1,000’s per year in wasteful spending. Spending that really didn’t provide much value to me. Spending that was mostly driven out of habit. Spending that I’d gladly cut in favor of my long-term goals.
Once you have a financial goal then you have to track it. And this can be a challenge on its own.
One thing that helps me reach my financial goals (or any goal for that matter) is to track my progress visually.
Maybe I’m a visual person but I find it helps me to “see” where I’ve come from and where I’m going. It’s super motivating to see that I’m hitting my monthly goals and that I’m on track to hit my long-term goal.
There are a few different ways to visualize your goals. I’m going to share my three favorite visualization techniques with you.
Achievement Unlocked! 30 Personal Finance Achievements You Need To Unlock
When it comes to personal finance there are many different milestones and each one is its own individual achievement. Personal finance is full of achievements you need to ‘unlock’ to be successful. The more achievements you unlock, the more successful you’ll be at building wealth.
To ‘win’ the money game you need to hit a certain number of milestones along the way. Some achievements are required before you can move forward in the game. Others enable you to accelerate your wealth even faster. And then there are some achievements that are just interesting check points along the way.
Here are 30 personal finance achievements you need to unlock!
How many have you unlocked already?
Best Time To Plan For Retirement? Age 70? 65? 60? 55? 50? 45?
There is never a bad time to start saving for retirement, but when is the BEST time to start planning? We’ve been told to start saving & investing for retirement from a very young age, the earlier the better, but when do you actually start planning for retirement itself? When do you start to think about income, expenses, taxes and government benefits during your retirement years?
Retirement can be very complex. When you reach retirement it’s pretty easy to have 6-10 different income sources, all with different tax treatments and claw back rules. One income source can be tax free while the other is fully taxed. Some retirement income is counted when calculating government benefit claw backs while others aren’t. These rules can make it difficult to estimate how much you can expect in retirement.
Retirees usually have their own source of retirement income from TFSAs, RRSPs, LIRAs, RRIFs, and non-registered accounts. Plus, they have government retirement programs like CPP, OAS and GIS. Then there are government benefits like the GST/HST credit and other senior’s benefits. And on top of that there are defined benefit pensions and annuities too.
With all these different income sources, it can get a little confusing. It can be difficult to know exactly how much can you expect in retirement income, how much will be lost to taxes, and how that matches up with retirement expenses.
As you get closer to retirement it can be extremely helpful to have a retirement plan in place. A plan that integrates all these different sources of income, calculates taxes and government benefits, and ensures you can reach your retirement spending goals. But can you reach a point where it’s too late to plan for retirement?
When is the best time to plan for retirement?
Owen Winkelmolen
Advice-only financial planner, CFP, and founder of PlanEasy.ca
“Welcome to the PlanEasy blog! We make personal finance easy.
Thanks for visiting.”
– Owen
New blog posts weekly!
Tax planning, benefit optimization, budgeting, family planning, retirement planning and more...
Three Ways To Visualize Your Financial Goals
Goals are a fantastic way to motivate yourself. Having a big, ambitious goal will help you prioritize other things in your life. It gives you something to work toward. Something that you care deeply about. It helps you balance what you need today with what you want to achieve in the future.
Financial goals have made a huge difference in my life. Setting powerful financial goals has helped me focus on the things that matter to me and ignore the things that don’t. They’ve helped me prioritize my spending to better align with my short and long-term goals.
Because of these financial goals, I’ve cut $1,000’s per year in wasteful spending. Spending that really didn’t provide much value to me. Spending that was mostly driven out of habit. Spending that I’d gladly cut in favor of my long-term goals.
Once you have a financial goal then you have to track it. And this can be a challenge on its own.
One thing that helps me reach my financial goals (or any goal for that matter) is to track my progress visually.
Maybe I’m a visual person but I find it helps me to “see” where I’ve come from and where I’m going. It’s super motivating to see that I’m hitting my monthly goals and that I’m on track to hit my long-term goal.
There are a few different ways to visualize your goals. I’m going to share my three favorite visualization techniques with you.
Achievement Unlocked! 30 Personal Finance Achievements You Need To Unlock
When it comes to personal finance there are many different milestones and each one is its own individual achievement. Personal finance is full of achievements you need to ‘unlock’ to be successful. The more achievements you unlock, the more successful you’ll be at building wealth.
To ‘win’ the money game you need to hit a certain number of milestones along the way. Some achievements are required before you can move forward in the game. Others enable you to accelerate your wealth even faster. And then there are some achievements that are just interesting check points along the way.
Here are 30 personal finance achievements you need to unlock!
How many have you unlocked already?
Best Time To Plan For Retirement? Age 70? 65? 60? 55? 50? 45?
There is never a bad time to start saving for retirement, but when is the BEST time to start planning? We’ve been told to start saving & investing for retirement from a very young age, the earlier the better, but when do you actually start planning for retirement itself? When do you start to think about income, expenses, taxes and government benefits during your retirement years?
Retirement can be very complex. When you reach retirement it’s pretty easy to have 6-10 different income sources, all with different tax treatments and claw back rules. One income source can be tax free while the other is fully taxed. Some retirement income is counted when calculating government benefit claw backs while others aren’t. These rules can make it difficult to estimate how much you can expect in retirement.
Retirees usually have their own source of retirement income from TFSAs, RRSPs, LIRAs, RRIFs, and non-registered accounts. Plus, they have government retirement programs like CPP, OAS and GIS. Then there are government benefits like the GST/HST credit and other senior’s benefits. And on top of that there are defined benefit pensions and annuities too.
With all these different income sources, it can get a little confusing. It can be difficult to know exactly how much can you expect in retirement income, how much will be lost to taxes, and how that matches up with retirement expenses.
As you get closer to retirement it can be extremely helpful to have a retirement plan in place. A plan that integrates all these different sources of income, calculates taxes and government benefits, and ensures you can reach your retirement spending goals. But can you reach a point where it’s too late to plan for retirement?
When is the best time to plan for retirement?
Join over 250,000 people reading PlanEasy.ca each year. New blog posts weekly!
Tax planning, benefit optimization, budgeting, family planning, retirement planning and more...
Join over 250,000 people reading PlanEasy.ca each year. New blog posts weekly!
Tax planning, benefit optimization, budgeting, family planning, retirement planning and more...