Episode 422- Balancing Your Money & Lifestyle Goals To Create The Life You Love

Jamila Souffrant

Jamila, hey, hey, hey, journeyers, it's Jamila Souffrant. And welcome to the journey to launch Podcast. I'm so excited to have you here. If you're listening to this in real time, we're in the month of April, and the year is 2025

Jamila Souffrant

it is actually Financial Literacy Month. And I mean, every month should be financial literacy month, but what I wanted to do for a couple episodes this month was to highlight a guide and resource that I created for you that goes along with my book your journey to financial freedom. And I want to go over some important things that I think will be helpful as you navigate your financial life. Now, first, if you haven't yet, you can get your free downloads, Book Club downloads to have discussions around the book and have questions so you can implement what you've been reading, what you've been learning. If you haven't started the book or picked it up yet, perfect opportunity to pick it up, because these free, downloaded guides provide you with questions and insights to help you take what you're going to be reading in the book and applying it to your life. You can get those free guides right now by going to journey to launch.com/book

club. I'll put that in the episode show notes, where you can get your free guides. Also, if you missed my fire calc class that I recently held, along with the tool that allows you to plug in your own numbers and figure out how you're going to get to where you currently are. Listening to this episode, maybe feeling like, you know, I don't want to go to work anymore. I want to reach financial independence, but how do I get there? From here, the fire calc is for you. You can actually purchase the tool and watch the replay of the class by going to journey to launch.com/fire

Calc. You'll get more information there. Now for today's episode, I was inspired to cover this topic, because recently, I went on a girls trip for my friend's birthday. We went to Florida, and we had a great time. It's just three of us, and, you know, we were just relaxing. And, I mean, I've been hanging out and traveling with these girls for decades, from my 20s, and so our lives look totally different now, now that we're in our, you know, early 40s, and we were just talking, and we had these moments about our current lives and how we well, I was expressing, I love the balance of my life right now, the fact that I am not working as much, I'm also not earning as much money as you know, when I was working full time in corporate America or even in my high income entrepreneurship years. But I'm really happy with the balance of my life and the fact that I only work a couple hours, if so, a day, and if this was what my life is, and the best it becomes in terms of money and work life balance and the things that I have that I'm fine with, that as long as we can sustain our current lifestyle, and I know that we can always adjust, if necessary. And I was talking to my other friends about their lives, and we were just thinking, when it comes down to it, what would you be willing to give up or not give up in order to live the life you say you want, and that might include giving up expenses or things that really make your life feel good in the moment, but delay your financial goals keep you dependent on working in a job so Things like maybe a car lease or where you live, right? Maybe it's a mortgage or your rent. It could just be expenses that add up every day, every week over time, like not checking out how much you spend on food, right, going out to eat, vacations, right, trips, all that. Like, how does that feed into and take away from this life you say you want. Because I do think you can't have both in terms of financial goals and lifestyle goals if you are in a stage of your life where you're trying to get out of something if you're not happy with your current financial situation. And so I am prompted to talk a little bit about financial and life goals for this episode topic. It's also something discussed in the free episode guides and in my book, Your journey to financial freedom. So I want to go over lifestyle goals slash life goals versus financial goals, because I do think when we talk about goals, we just kind of lump them all together. If you're just like maybe talking to a friend, and you're maybe thinking about your life, where it's important to separate the two, because life goals are different than financial goals, and most of us we want to live.

Our life goals. You want to have our lifestyle goals. You want to feel good and financial goals help us live our life goals. But there is but so much money. Money is not money can be limitless. You know, they do print it.

It is created almost right, like the markets. The financial markets can either boost your portfolio or take away from it by with interest rates and all these mechanisms and financial tools. And so in a way, I do think money is limitless, but I think in our everyday lives, there is a limit, and when we know that limit and accept that limit, not in a restrictive way, but in a realistic way. So we can then make proper decisions, smart decisions, about moving forward. We can then really get a handle on our not only financial lives, but our lives so breaking down life goals like wanting to go on girls trips and going out to eat, which is like my life goals, what I like doing, or the balance of not working that much and being able to work out and run in the morning, really have just relaxed days. Versus financial goals, which for me, are making sure we are on track for our standard retirement, which we are we are potentially moving up our early retirement dates, saving and investing for our kids, whether that's college funds or just activities that we need to do for them, those while they're lifestyle because they're not necessarily things we need to do. I feel like financially, they are important, and so how do we do all those things? And I'm sure you're grappling with that question yourself, how do you balance between living a life you want right now and setting yourself up for a good life later, but also reaching your financial goals? So first, let's break down life goals. I'm actually going to read the definition of life goals from my book, which is on page 110 of your journey to financial freedom. So here I say life goals revolve around desired experiences you want and the person you aspire to become throughout your lifetime. These objectives may encompass both long term aspirations that require saving and investments, as well as smaller aspirations that can be integrated into daily life through discretionary expenses. And I think it's important to understand and identify your life goals, which, by the way, can change as you change and evolve, but understanding them really helps you figure out the life you want and how much it's going to cost to live that life.

A lot of us have been conditioned through society, through our current environment, through the norms of the way things are, of what we think we should be and have and want to do, but ultimately, understanding your life goals, which I have a couple exercises in the book, really help you figure out what it's going to cost and how long it's going to take for you to reach your version of financial independence and decoupling society's expectations and other people's expectations from your own and what people told us we should be, even from, you know, our well meaning parents and family and friends. It's really not easy. It's really a self,

introspective, inward journey to discover what it is you really want out of life. What do you want to do,

you know, and a few examples of what a life goal can look like, or what you're thinking about could be things like, Do you want to travel more is it? Do you want a life where you are able to travel for two months out of the year? Do you want to live near a beach? Are you a water person and you want to be around water? Do you want a flexible work situation where you're not in the office on a day to day basis? You have the flexibility. You can work remotely. You can work from home. You can work from anywhere. Do you want to have more time for activities such as exercise or hobbies? Do you want to write a book or have certain hobbies and things that you do bring that more to the forefront and have more time for them. What is the lifestyle and life you want to live when you think about how you feel and what makes you happy? And figuring that out is important because then it allows you to see how much it's going to get you there.

Also want to note that it is okay to want

and to desire lifestyle or life goals for superficial reasons.

Quote, unquote. So I think there is a stigma or wanting to make people feel bad for wanting things just because they want it or because it maybe, you know they're buying it because of what other people think, and ultimately,

not that that is I mean, if you live your life completely that way, you won't have any money, because you're always going to be buying things for other people and trying to maybe, quote, unquote, show off. But actually think there's nothing wrong with just wanting something because it's in trend or nice. Now, I'm not necessarily like that, but I can understand why other people are, and if it is that, I think it's important to own it right? Like some people just like labels or love trends and what's in

Now, depending on where you are financially and the goals you've set for yourself, which we're talking about, the financial goals that may be keeping you stuck. But I want you to send to admit, if that's what it is. I want you to admit, if you want the nice car or the nice clothes or the nice things, because you feel like it elevates your position in life based on what other people see and or you just want it because it makes you feel good in the moment, and when people look at you that feels good, that they know or see you have something again. I think it's just important, even if we feel shame around some of this, or, you know, uneasy feelings and oh, I shouldn't feel that way, to just admit because awareness is key. And once you can become aware of it, you can decide and admit it. You can then decide, You know what, I'm going to keep doing this because it's what I want. Or you might actually see a shift in what you're willing to do or not do.

I also think that your lifestyle goals, or your life goals, where they're tied to more of your discretionary spending, in a way, meaning it's the things in your budget that you don't necessarily need to spend on or at the highest level, but you want to. So that is what I equate to guac lifestyle levels, which go from one to five. If you've been around with my content and my work, you already are aware of the guac lifestyle levels. But the Guac, Guac, again, the guacamole lifestyle levels really refer to and I just wanted to have, like, a cute name, to include guacamole and guac, because I love, I love avocados and guacamole go from one to five, and it can, it can be basically how you view your entire expenses and the way you spend one being you spend a little you're the most frugal, versus five most extravagant,

or and three is in the middle, or it can actually relate to different parts of your budget and spending, because you may be a guac level four on vacations, because you want to really enjoy your vacations in a luxury manner. And maybe you're a guac two on

going out to eat like you don't really care about restaurants and spending a lot of money there, and so you're really frugal when it comes to that. So you can apply the guac levels in a way where you're looking at your entire expenses, or just different expenses and line items. But your life goals relate to that, because if you want a more extravagant life or a nicer life, and that costs money,

then your guac level will be higher, and you'll just need more money to save and invest to support that lifestyle. And that may include working longer, working in a job you may not love. It does require or love, right? I think the goal ultimately is to find something you love that pays you money. And if that's the case, understanding that so guac levels also are something covered in the book on page 120 so if you're following along, you have the free discussion guides, which you can get that is where I walk through what the guac levels are, and how to identify where you are in the guac levels, and why it's important to know, because if you are currently not living a lifestyle you enjoy, you want more, or you find it hard to scale back in order to get to your financial goals that we'll Talk about that help lead to your lifestyle goals, then it may be because you really desire a higher guac level and you're living at a lower one, and that may explain why it's harder for you to pull back and do certain things versus some people. I would say for myself in general, it's easier for me not to spend.

Money on certain things that I don't have a higher guac level desire to spend on. So understanding that about yourself and seeing where you are The journey is important, because then you can give yourself more grace, or at least it can. You can understand why in some moments it's harder to accept or to delay gratification.

All right, let's move to financial goals. Remember, I'm going back to and this is referring back to us balancing our life and lifestyle goals versus our financial goals. So we have kind of talked about our life goals and lifestyle goals and what they are, and some examples. But now I want to talk about the financial goals, because without financial goals, it's hard to really accomplish. I mean, it's impossible to accomplish our financial independence goals that we have for ourselves, the ultimate idea and the want to not have to actively work or to be secure, really secure in our money journey. But in order to do that, we have to understand our financial goals. So I believe that, you know, there are really five financial goals. And the five financial goals are broken out, what I call lead or domino goals, and then gap goals. This refers back to my fi formula again. I actually talked about this a couple episodes ago, and in the book. And the two lead or domino goals are your income goals and your spending goals, and then the gap goals are your saving goals, debt payoff goals, and investing goals. Now why do I call the income and spending goals your leader domino goals? Those are your lead or domino goals, as in a domino at the top. If you line all dominoes up, you hit one of the dominoes down, it's going to allow all the other ones to fall also. So by accomplishing your lead or domino goals, you can then accomplish your other goals that are in the gap. So just a quick recap. The fi formula is your income minus your mandatory expenses equals a gap that is money left over, hopefully in your budget.

And then with that money, you can then decide to pay off debt, invest and save. I mean, ideally, all three, depending on where you're on the journey, and then also pay for your discretionary expenses. So sometimes when people are saying they have goals, like I want to, I want to earn X amount more, or I want to spend less. That's great, because you have to find a way to increase the gap to have money. But those goals,

you have to first start with, how do you going to earn money or spend less or optimize in order to be able to do any of the other goals you have. So they are the lead and Domino goals. So you have to be specific when you're thinking about your goals. Is it a lead or domino goal that you're thinking about, or is it a gap goal? So if you want to pay off debt, how are you going to find the money or additional debt? How are you going to find the money to do that? Are you going to increase your income or look at your expenses, and then use that money to pay off debt.

Sometimes we just go straight to the gap goal and then wonder why we can't do it. So I want to invest more, but where are you going to find the money to invest? It's either going to be by your income and or expenses. Sometimes it's just a matter of organizing your money. You may have the money already in your budget, it's just slipping through the cracks because you're not tracking it and you're just not organized. But for a lot of people, you have to make a whether it's a change or be aware of the money coming in and going out in order to allocate it to an actual gap goal. So let me just like define these goals and give you some examples. So let's first start with the leader domino goals.

The income goal is a financial goal tied to how much you make. So examples of that would be, I want to earn 1000 more a month, or I want my salary to be $100,000

and it could also be something like, I want to make $30,000

more in X amount of years. Those are examples of income goals, spending goals are goals tied to how much you spend, usually cutting back or optimizing in an area. So perhaps is it is, I want to spend $200 a month on going out to eat instead of 500

I want to cut my budget overall in terms of expenses back by $300 those are spending or expense goals. Now, earning more and or spending less will generate the money.

Need to do the goals you and live the life. So going back to lifestyle goals of what you want to live, and these are where the gap goals come in. So then understanding what your savings goals are, your debt payoff goal and investing goals are important. Let's go through the definitions. A saving goal is a financial goal tied to saving for something specific. So this can be, I want to save X amount into my emergency fund. I want to save, let's say, $20,000 into an fu Fund, which is defined as a more

hyped up and

expansive saving fund to hold you over for longer periods of not working or preparing to leave a job or situation.

Here's another type of saving goal I want to save up for a down payment for a house right? You'd have a specific amount that you you calculate, but that would be a saving goal, and you can actually add your lifestyle goals in here also. So perhaps you want to take vacations, you would then say, I want to save up X amount, 2000 $3,000

for my annual vacation budget. So that's a saving goal you're saving for in advance. Debt payoff goal is a financial goal tied to paying off debt. So I want to pay off my $5,000 credit card. I want to pay off $30,000 of credit card debt in five years. You are specifically figuring out what the debt payoff goal is, and naming that and giving it a time frame. And then the investing goal is a financial goal tied to investing. You may say, I want to invest X amount, $500 a month. I want to invest $200 more a month in my Roth IRA. I want to increase my four way, four 1k contributions by X amount, percent. Those are investing goals. I

So going back to it, you cannot accomplish your saving, debt payoff or investing goals and lifestyle goals. If you know we're going to include that in there without figuring out a plan for your income and spending goals, how are you going to get to those? How are you going to increase income or optimize spending. Applause,

uh, now that is just a start on

thinking about your goals differently and organizing them in a way where you can begin to now make a plan to achieve them. In order to do that, you need to know your goals, and that means sitting down what I call a goal dump, like dumping them all out. You may not even know some of your goals yet, because as you start writing things, you might figure and think about something else, but just starting and putting all your goals out there, writing it down on paper, what it is that you want to accomplish financially, right? And don't even think about the buckets just yet, and organizing them into what's a lead goal or a gap goal, but just writing them out, and once they're all out there, you have a goal dump completed, and you have what you know, then you can begin to organize your goals. What are the goals that are more income based goals or expense based goals? And then what are the goals that are investing, that pay off and then saving and or lifestyle goals identifying that will then at least get you to be able to categorize them and put them into buckets. From there, you're going to want to figure out what is the amount of time it's going to take to reach that goal. Now there's going to be some work involved in how much it cost to accomplish that goal. Some goals are going to be you're saving up over time to reach it in X amount of years. And then some goals are you have to find it within your cash flow, in your immediate budget in order to support that goal. And so understanding how long it's going to take, and realistically how long it's going to take, is going to be important, and how do you bake that into your budget?

And you might find out, as I have, and most people do, which is where we come back to the.

How do we bounce it all is, how do we do all the things we want, like we I want to do everything at the same time, right? I want to live my life, but most likely, that's not going to be possible. So you have to prioritize what is most important for you to accomplish, and rank them to see what you should be doing first.

So first step is do a goal dump, write them all out. Next, organize your goals right. Label them. Now that you know the different different types of goals, label them and then organize it by time frame, and then prioritize them by importance, you're going to also need to calculate how much these things cost. This is actually going to be a back and forth, because as you make changes to your budget, as you make changes to your income or your expenses, you're going to see how much more money you have to put towards a goal. And that's going to be an iterative iterative process as you go back and forth.

And this is why I really do believe that the honesty and truth comes out, which is why numbers are so important, because you have you're confronted with the limitations of your budget, you have to make a decision. So unless you have unlimited income and you can do all the things, which not even I believe the wealthy people

can do, they even overspend and get themselves into a bind, you have to make a choice and a decision. So how do you live the life you want to live, but then be responsible to your financial goals, and that may include cutting back or cutting out some of your life and lifestyle goals until the debt payoff goal is reached. It may mean that you are focusing more on the lead and Domino goals so your income and spending so you can save up for the thing that you want to do over time and not have it be an immediate expense, but looking at the numbers and seeing that is going to show you versus what a lot of us do is just live our lives, spend the money, and then look back at it as a reaction. And we're not we're not able to be proactive about it.

Being able to reach your goals, you're going to need fuel.

So if you have the book, turn to page 132

but I go over gold fuel, and I want to mention it in the episode, because

let's just say you've been following along. You got your goals together. You have an idea of what it is, and now there needs to be changes made, right? Like you identified the goals you want to accomplish, but now you're like, where do I start? And I call this goal fuel, how you get to accomplishing your goals. Now, some of it are it's going to be what I call the internal work. It's the mindset work or the habit work, and some of some of it is going to be especially when it comes to your gap goals. You're going to just need to earn more, spend less. But mindset goal fuel

is, how can you improve your mindset to accomplish this goal? How can you think differently about yourself, or about this situation or about this obstacle in terms of getting to that goal. And for example, if you have an income goal, what can you think about and how can you increase your mindset and capacity to be able to earn more and believe you deserve and want to earn more and you can earn more, right? That's mindset that's actually working on your mindset to accomplish that, and then this habit goal fuel, which is what habits can help you get to achieve this goal that can come into play when it comes to expenses, for example, and planning ahead of time so you can save money on not going out to eat as much or not Buying food outside that you may consider a waste of money, and then you have your more direct ones that we know about your income goal fuel. How can you increase your income to achieve that gap goal? Or how can you decrease or optimize your expenses to achieve that gap goal? So

as you move up on the journey or stages, or in the levels which are going from what I call the Explorer stage just beginning trying to make ends meet, to the ultimate Captain stage of being financially independent. So there are five journey or stages that will help determine the balance between the lifestyle and life goals, like how much money and income you spend on that versus how much money you spend on.

Your financial goals, and so understanding where you are on the journey levels, meaning, if you're an explorer, you're just getting it together, you're just making ends meet and being able to cover your expenses. Or a cadet, a cadet is the second journey or level. That is where you are working on paying off consumer debt.

And then as you move up the next stage is the aviator stage. That's where you paid off consumer debt, and you are spending, well, go back Emily, that's where you paid off your consumer debt already, and now you're able to save and invest. You're able to build and accumulate more assets, and,

okay, you're able to save and invest more in the aviator stage. And then the commander stage is where you have work flexibility. You're working on maintaining that you are able to have work be more of a choice. You still need to work, but you're able to be in a position of more power. And then the ultimate Captain stage, you have reached complete financial independence. You don't have to work unless you want to. So knowing where you are and which one of those you are can help determine how you balance your lifestyle goals versus your financial goals. I have a nifty little

infographic in the book on page 139 that shows how as you go up the levels your financial goals, not that you don't have to worry about them, but you can actually spend more as you go up the journey levels on your lifestyle goals. So my suggestion is, when you're in the beginning stages, is to actually focus more on your financial goals. And it's not that you can't enjoy your life and do the things you want to do in the cadet or Explorer stages. It's just that your financial goals should take priority. Otherwise you'll stay in these stages longer. And then as you move up to like the aviator commander stages, it can begin to even out where you split your financial goals and your lifestyle goals. And then, as a captain or someone who is more sound and stable, you can choose to spend more on your lifestyle goals as your financial goals, for the most part,

are taken care of, or you feel Secure in them. You

okay so I hope that this episode gave you a taste of or at least a let me do that again. Okay, I really hope this episode helped you to identify and think about your goals differently, to think about how to split up your lifestyle goals versus your financial goals and how to organize it in a way that you can incorporate it into your life in a way that makes sense. Listen, I know a lot of this. This is not just a one time fix. This is an ongoing work in progress. As we as humans, constantly change our mind and things come up that we can't control or are outside of our control. But the idea here is to gain more confidence with the decisions you make and the life you're living, not that you can't make mistakes, but that you can bounce back from them, that you can have a fluid life and a life that involves having fun and enjoying the fruits of your label labor now, but also being smart so that you're setting yourself up for a sound and great financial future. So if you want the

that again, so

if you want to dive deeper into some of the topics that I talked about, check out the free book club guides that you can get by going to journey to launch.com/book

club again. They're based on my book, Your journey to financial freedom, which you can pick up anywhere but get the guides hat, even if you know, even if you want to start with the guides and you don't have the book yet, which, I mean, I wouldn't recommend, just get the book too. But you can actually, like, look at the guides and go through the questions, but ultimately it's to help you with the book and to implement what you're learning. Go to journey to launch com slash book club, and if you're listening to this, take a screenshot, share it with me on social media. I'm on Instagram at journey to launch and at Jamila Souffrant, and love seeing that you're listening to the episode. Love seeing your takeaways, by the way, and how it's helping you on your financial journey. And until next week, keep on journeying. Journeyers. I.