How to Find Your Money Values | By Astra Financial

Money values are funny things. They are built on our previous relationships with money, where we sit with it now and where we want to get to. They also often don’t involve just one person – when you’re sharing your life with a spouse and/or kids or anyone else, all your money values come into play.

In my latest episode of “Heart of Our Money Talks”, I’m going over why it’s so important to understand your money values and how to align them so you can do the things you want.

For me and my family, we love to travel so we know that eating out or ordering takeout every night doesn’t align with us being able to save for those trips that mean so much to us. Take a listen here now to learn more about money values.

Show Notes:

Hello, and welcome to episode 31. This week, I’m sharing something that can help you with your family, your spouse if you have one, or it can help your stress level and your bank account. It’s a way to bring simplicity to your life. Today is about creating a money values guide that will be your north star going forward.

Think Marie Kondo, but with money, I highly recommend her book. It’s called, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing.

The author is a master of decluttering and organizing. She believes that you put your hands on everything you own, hold it close, and then ask yourself if this sparks joy. And if it doesn’t thank it for its service and then just get rid of it.

Now it would take a lifetime if we tried this with every dollar we earned, but the concept can totally be adopted. If you want to bring clarity to your money and your decisions, then it is fundamental to understand what your priorities and your values are. But that is easier said than done, I know. So I’m going to give you a cheat sheet and it’s super easy.

It’s a Financial Values Mind Map to download and complete. You can find this in the show notes on our Astro financial blog. And like I said, it’s just super easy. It gives you a place to jot down a few things. Then you’re going to actually see a trend and you’re going to be able to pick out and that’s going to be your guiding north star and making your financial decision.

So before you start, you might be asking what are personal financial values? Simply put, your values represent what is important to you. They are the choices you make and why you behave the way you do. In our family, our financial values system with my two daughters has always been freedom – the freedom to choose.

If we want to travel, we can. There’s a freedom that if something came up and we needed to make that expense, we could. And in doing that, we just had to make sure that we put our money in the right places. We did the right things with our money and we didn’t overspend. We knew that because it gave us freedom.

It gave us the freedom that, every summer we could go to Tofino and rent a place for a couple of weeks. We could travel, we could go down to Mexico and visit my parents. There was a trade-off. We knew what was important to us, so during the rest of the year, we just made sure that we had a reign in our spending because we knew what our other important financial values were.

It really helped us. Our values helped us grow and develop an open conversation in my family with my two daughters. We make decisions that are a reflection of our beliefs, and they’re directed with a specific sense of purpose and meaning. The purpose is what is needed to bring that collaborative approach to our lives.

That’s what I use with my daughters. When our values are shared within the family, it’s actually positive and healthy. We’re talking about it because we knew we didn’t talk enough about money. Then we became a thriving unit with the benefit of being able to prioritize effectively.

It would be too easy to be able to order in there or eat out every night. Now there’s that reminder to remember we have family values. It’s freedom. We want to use our money so that we can travel. So let’s just check the pantry.

Maybe we’ll cook tonight so that we don’t have that feeling that this doesn’t really align with our values. Life just gets simpler and then the money choices become easy. So it’s actually redirecting our brain and our decision-making and then it feels like a choice of abundance, not scarcity.

In my business and my personal life, I use this map to guide my decision. It avoids a lot of pressure and stress by staying true to what I believe is the most important to myself, our money, your money and my money. Then it’ll match with what we think is important. And at the end of the day, it just feels really good. You’re in harmony.

Now I’m a fan of the author Simon Sinek. He’s the author of, “Start With Why”. It’s about how great leaders inspire everyone to take action. He inspired a movement and asked, “Do you know your why?”

I love this and I use it all the time. So your, what is the purpose, cause or belief that inspires you to do what you do?

This same concept should be applied to your money. When I meet with clients, we discuss why their money is invested, the way it is, why they spend the way they do, why they save in what bucket that they’re saving in.

Everything has a purpose with a why behind it. We often talk about priorities in life, but how many of us have actually taken a moment to stop and write down our priorities on paper?

There’s magic when you put pen to paper. I’ve spent more time making a grocery list than spending time writing down what’s important to me and why. And so this is that today is your reminder to really know your financial values, know your family values, know what’s important to you and then know why it’s important.

The key is to identify the things that go right down to your core and those will guide you. You can have many values in life, but you just need to discover the one or two that are your highest priorities. This could be that family check-in every month to talk about what your highest values or priorities are right now with your money, get everybody on board or set it with yourself because it’ll redirect you and set you up for a couple of wins.

So today’s mission, if you so choose, is to map out your family values and why they’re important to you. You can start with downloading it, which is super easy. It’ll be on the Astro financial blog and in the show notes here. Download your guide to the Financial Values Mind Map. Look at it, figure it out.

Just jot down a few things and then use that as your guide. Send me a note at [email protected]. Let me know if you have any questions or if you have any comments and let me know how you did on your Financial Values Mind Map. I read all my emails and I do reply. That’s it. Until next week, take care.