One of the frustrations that we often experience is the feeling of being stuck. We repeat the same patterns, day in and day out, forming habits that we seem unable to shake. From unhealthy eating, exercise and money choices to self-sabotaging social media, phone and relationship habits, it’s easy to find ourselves living a life that feels stuck in time. 

As most coaches will tell us, it’s because we have blindspots to the choices that keep us stuck. We can see that we’re stuck, and we can see some of the obvious bad choices that we’re making, but we can’t see the stepping stones, or triggers, that keeps us in the cycle of bad choices.

We all have blind spots, and by definition; we can’t see them. And because we can’t observe them, we can’t change them.

If we want those different results, we need to learn to observe our blindspots. In fact, before we can even observe them, we need to acknowledge that they exist. Otherwise, we will be totally uncoachable when it comes to dealing with them.

If we truly want to make changes in our lives, then, we need to stop doing the same things over and over again and expecting a different outcome. As Albert Einstein once said: insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

The solution is to be coachable. We need to find, and then listen to, other people who can see our blind spots.

So – if you’re feeling stuck in any area of your life, you need to ask someone you trust to help you look for your blindspots in that area. Then, when we identify them, and here’s where most of us get lazy, we need to write them down.

This helps us observe the patterns in our lives so that we can then choose to change the ones that we’re not happy with, or that we can trace to unhealthy outcomes. Keeping a journal also helps us track change, and this can be a significant motivator to keep on moving forward in a healthy direction.

This applies to every area of our life, it doesn’t just have to be a food journal or a financial budget. It can be an emotional journal or a memory journal; depending on the work we’re ready to do to bring about change in our lives, journaling helps us observe our blindspots and our habits so that we can regain our power to choose them or release them. Everything is connected and the moment we start to break down and rebuild one area of our lives, we’ll find it starts to open up more opportunities in other areas too. And, the more we can observe, the more we can control.

Most people don’t enjoy financial planning. It’s a practice filled with stigmas of confusing concepts, complicated products, and expensive choices. But the fact is that none of us can live without it costing us money. Even if we simply want to go for a walk, we need to buy the time to do that.

We need to earn enough money during our working hours to buy the freedom to choose what we want to do in our downtime. And to do this, we need to have a plan (however basic it might be) in place.

You don’t need to know everything, but you need to know some things. Here are some ideas from the team at 22seven to help us hold a bird’s eye-view of our financial plan.

1. What are my financial goals? 

Save money, have enough money to live comfortably, make work optional… 

These are reasonable goals if you’re taking the broad-brush-stroke approach. Still, it’s vital to have smaller, more tangible goals along the way that will give you a sense of accomplishment and motivate you to continue on your personal financial journey. 

Your smaller goals can’t be vague – they have to be clear and concise so that you know exactly what you have to do to achieve them. For example, your goal might be: ‘I want to save 10% of my income each month’ or ‘I want to increase my net worth by 5% over the next five years.’ 

2. How much debt do I have? 

Debt doesn’t have to be the millstone around your neck. If you know how much you owe and what the interest on the debt is, you can make a plan to reduce it and ultimately get rid of it.

Make a list of every loan and how much you need to repay each month. If you want to speed up your repayments, allocate extra money to the accounts you wish to pay off quicker – maybe the account you owe the most on or the one with the highest interest rate. From there, you just have to stick to your plan.

It’s not impossible – you can do it! 

3. What is my net worth? 

‘Net worth’ sounds like a fancy term, but it’s just everything you own (your assets) minus everything you owe (your liabilities). An increasing net worth indicates that your assets grow faster than your debts. That’s what you want! 

Net worth is a valuable snapshot of your entire financial situation, so it’s worth checking every now and then.

4. Am I covered when things go wrong?

What if something happens and you can no longer work and earn an income? As depressing as it is, you need to plan for the worst. Some examples are disability cover, dread disease cover and income protection cover. 

This bird’s-eye view is aimed to help you maintain a high-level grasp on your financial plan. Still, each point above has many deeper conversations that help us craft and leverage your financial plan to suit your personal needs and ever-changing circumstances. If you need specific help before our next meeting, please feel free to reach out and let’s keep you in the best position possible to thrive in life!

When life gets a little out of hand, we might say that things are blowing up! Sometimes it comes out of the blue, and other times we can see it coming, but generally, when we look back at how events unfolded, there were signs of a crisis looming. Inflation is much the same; it’s happening all the time, but every now and then, we suddenly feel the effects. Just like the aging process, it happens slowly and then all at once!

Inflation is a measure of how much more expensive things are getting. And, as we know, things just keep getting more expensive, which is why we cannot afford (literally) to under-inflate, or overlook, the effects of inflation on our financial planning.

As always, when it comes to money, we have two choices: earn more or learn to work with what we have. Whilst we can always explore ways to generate more income, it’s not always possible, which is why it’s so important to remain connected and engaged with our financial plan.

In a recent blog from the team at 22seven, they offered a few ways to address inflation head-on and adjust our financial planning as needed.

Planning

Planning is key to cutting costs and being budget-savvy. Let’s use fuel as an example. By planning ahead, you can save on fuel by driving when traffic isn’t as hectic, going to the grocery store closest to your home or office, or making sure you only make one or two trips a day by writing down all your errands and plotting a strategic route. Many people also realise the benefits of having groceries delivered, finding that they spend less on fuel, save time and spend less on unnecessary items.

Change the way you buy

The first step is to overcome brand loyalty. You might need to look for cheaper alternatives or buy in bulk to cut costs. As economies adjust to the war in Ukraine and inflation at a 40-year high in America, prices are likely to keep rising. 

Cut back on costs you don’t need

It’s sad but true – some expenses will have to leave the building. Rethink your streaming subscriptions and other non-essential expenses. Learning to live more frugally might be what gets you through. 

Keep on investing 

It might seem counterintuitive to put away some of your hard-earned money when you’re already anxious about cash flow, but investing will ultimately grow your wealth, even if it means that you have to sacrifice certain small pleasures right now. 

At the end of the day, keeping the ship afloat means keeping it balanced. Talk about your financial situation with your family and friends so that they can help and support you. Sometimes it’s as simple as knowing that you can’t eat out as often, or perhaps your regular holiday plans need to be pushed back or changed to something more cost-conscious.

Whatever you do, don’t underestimate the effects of inflation, especially when they’re higher than expected, and you see your monthly budget being worth considerably less.

We need to be strategic about growth and not just hope it will happen organically. Through a recent interaction with business coach Grant Newland, the importance of this was brought to the fore of our conversation. But it is not just about growing businesses; it’s about developing people, families, and communities.

It’s easy to think that growth will ‘just happen’ organically, but if we don’t have a growth mindset, it probably won’t happen at all. Change happens organically, but not growth, and change can mean many different things. Dave and Hester Vaughan, business and life coaches at Lifestyle Coach, often say that we need to go through a process of construction, deconstruction and reconstruction. This process helps create a high-level view of what a growth journey could look like.

But what does that look like on a practical level? How can we start ensuring that we’re on a growth path? 

Newland suggests that we simplify this process by looking at what’s holding us back and focusing on fixing those things. We articulate the problems, blindspots, biases or stumbling blocks, and then we take action to address them (construction, deconstruction and reconstruction). 

In short, we articulate and act.

Understanding this is the first step; putting it into action often requires guidance, help and accountability – which is why advisers, coaches and mentors play such a vital role in our growth journey. In reality, when it’s your life, family or business, you will probably find many things that need fixing.

In the journey of articulating what’s holding us back, we need to perform a sort of triage where we identify what we need to address and work with first. The whole point of deconstruction and reconstruction is so that we can build back better. We need to deep dive and do what many coaches call “the hard work”. But, if we try to fix multiple projects simultaneously, we can become overwhelmed and ineffective.

James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits, said, “Choosing the priority is as important as working on it.”

Creating an effective, life-changing plan involves articulating what needs to be done and then putting it into action, whether it’s a business, life, financial, or any other plan. If we don’t, we will not see the growth we hoped for, and we will be in exactly the same place a year, two, three or five from now.

“Do as I say… not as I do.” This has been a popular phrase for many, many years. In fact, it was first recorded in John Selden’s Table-Talk in the 17th century. Possibly, for as long as we’ve had structured societies, we’ve noticed a disconnect between what we say and what we do.

In the 19th century, this recorded awareness grew with books such as MacKay’s Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, which show how group behaviour and psychology affect us. Still, it was only since the 20th century that we started matching this up with financial planning and how our behaviours often override our intentions. 

Behavioural finance is the study of the effects of psychology on both investors and financial markets. It aims to identify and understand why people make certain decisions based on their biases and irrational thoughts. We could have all the head knowledge and say the right things, but if we’re stressed, feeling vulnerable, insecure or inadequate, we may act in the opposite way, and our actions will not reflect our words.

“It’s understated to say that financial health affects mental and physical health and vice versa. It’s just a circular thing that happens,” said Dr Carolyn McClanahan, founder & director of Life Planning Partners Inc. “When people are under stress because of finances, they release chemicals called catecholamines.” 

Catecholamines (dopamine, norepinephrine, and epinephrine) are hormones made by our adrenal glands, two small glands located above our kidneys. These hormones are released into the body in response to physical or emotional stress. When we make bad financial decisions, our health will suffer.

Over the long term, these affect our mental health and ability to think clearly, impacting our physical health, wearing us out and making us tired. Lack of sleep, poor health and mental state mean we will be vulnerable to making unhealthy decisions in every area of life, not just in our finances.

Behavioural finance can help us understand our own biases and recognise them when they arise. It can also help us engage in conversations that are kinder, more intuitive to the cause of our financial stresses and lead to practical ways to “walk the talk”.

This is why personal financial planning is such a powerful practice in helping us apply broad-based intellectual knowledge to our unique situations in a way that makes sense and can be implemented in our daily lives. We can cultivate healthy habits that reflect our heartfelt intentions.

Diversification is not just an approach to adopt during market volatility; it’s generally good practice. And, if you want to create a portfolio that mitigates risk and beats inflation, diversification offers one of the best ways to increase your portfolio growth and amplify your savings.

There’s no single “correct” way to diversify your investment portfolio. The overriding principle is to mix assets and classes in a way that helps minimise risk while achieving a higher rate of return. Some people prefer to invest in stocks, bonds or equities because they offer different rates of return and provide compensation for losses in one asset class. But in recent years, ESGs and other alternatives have arisen to provide investors with non-market-correlated vehicles.

The best way to diversify and amplify your portfolio is to work with your personal financial adviser, but here are some popular thoughts around diversification.

Often, the best way to diversify your portfolio is by purchasing a mixture of investments of different types. A diversified portfolio generally has no more than fifteen to thirty various assets, and stocks should be spread across several different industries. Bonds, index funds, and savings accounts are also common and should be part of your overall portfolio. Depending on your personal investment goals, you may consider investing in real estate. This way, you will have a more comprehensive selection of investment opportunities.

Diversification in investing helps minimise risk. Investing in various assets reduces your risk by spreading your money across many investments. For example, investing in multiple areas, countries, and industries is an excellent way to mitigate the risk of one investment going down. Diversification also allows you to balance your investments and reach your financial goals without being swept away by one particular investment’s volatility. For example, if one investment loses ten or even twenty per cent of its value (as we’ve seen many times over the short term), you will still have other funds to fall back on.

It also helps minimise risk by spreading your investment portfolio across different asset classes (not just different assets within the same class). With a balanced portfolio, you’ll benefit from a lower risk profile, and you’ll be better positioned to withstand the inevitable downturns while enjoying increased returns when you diversify.

The idea of investing in various stocks is to spread your investment risk across different industries. Large companies often perform better than smaller ones, and smaller companies, on the other hand, have more volatility. By distributing your investments across different industries, you balance the risk of a volatile industry while maximising your chances of earning a steady income. In addition, diversification can reduce the risk of liability due to an industry crash. It’s important to remember that investing in different industries does not guarantee total financial safety.

Diversification means holding a variety of assets. Depending on the current economic situation and the sentiment of the markets, a diversified portfolio will behave differently. It’s healthy to keep a long-term view on your investment horizon and prepare for steady growth – lottery winners grow rich overnight, but prudent investors grow wealthy over time.

“The only way to find permanent joy is by embracing the fact that nothing is permanent.” – Martha Beck.

Over the last few decades, investment strategies have developed and evolved to move away from market-related benchmarks toward personal goals and outcomes. Modern investors are now creating plans that are more personalised and unique than ever before. The marketplace is innovating to provide models, funds and alternatives to whet even the most exclusive investment appetites.

However, even though we’ve tailored the investment goalposts to our individualised needs and expectations, external factors still play a role in how we plan and anticipate the future and the goalposts keep moving.

As a world-renowned author and life coach, Martha Beck reminds us that we need to become comfortable with constant impermanence. And whilst this can seem like an easy concept to embrace, when we see our investments drop or something happens to upset our plans, we can allow it to rob us of our joy.

We might be on a promotional track at work, attending training and putting in extra hours of study and upskilling, only to have our dreams crushed when our company can no longer stay afloat. External factors, beyond our control, will always impact where the goalposts are placed.

Most of us accept that life is not about ticking off milestones, but because our schools, companies, religious institutions and governments hold onto these models of conditioning and measurement, it’s hardwired into us to create expectations and anticipate them to be permanent.

Every day we need to embrace that nothing is permanent and that our joy in life is about so much more than a timeline playing out according to a plan. Life coaching is all about creating and promoting well-being to attain greater fulfilment through improving relationships, careers, and our day-to-day lives. The first relationship is the one we have with ourselves, and this is where we begin to find a robust and powerful joy.

It’s also found at the heart of a financial plan centred on us and not on markets or benchmarks set by others. This resilience that we are seeing is increasingly essential to succeed and persevere in our current social, political and economic environment. When the goalposts keep moving, we need to become as centred and grounded as possible so as not to be disillusioned and unsettled when we embrace that nothing is permanent.

People often joke about the weather in Cape Town, saying that you can experience all four seasons in one day. And, if you speak to a local, you’ll know that regardless of how warm it is, they’ll always pack a sweater in case the weather turns. Still, as a top tourist destination, the weather doesn’t deter intrepid travellers; they keep returning. Investing in the markets is exactly the same; despite the ups and downs, sometimes, in a matter of hours, investors keep returning. 

For the unseasoned investor, the temptation to dump windfalls into an investment account or market allocation could cost them in the long run. This is because the fluctuations in market prices mean that you never really know if you’re buying at a high or a low in the market. The highs and lows only make sense months or years down the line. Ideally, you want to be able to buy when the market is down and when the market is up so that, on average, your money is growing with the overall curve.

This strategy is called dollar-cost-averaging. It’s the equivalent of keeping a warm top in the car so that you can enjoy the journey regardless of the weather.

It’s a strategy, however, that requires discipline and planning. Dollar-cost-averaging can save an investor from panic buying when they think the market will keep climbing or selling out when they think it’s bottomed out.

If you buy high and sell low, you will lose all your money. The challenge is that, whilst we know that buying low and selling high is a sure way to make incredible gains, we never know what the market will do tomorrow.

Dollar-cost-averaging means that the investor buys into the markets on a smaller but more regular basis than just purchasing a chunk of stock when they get a bonus or large payout. For example, instead of investing ten grand in one go, an investor can choose to invest two grand a month for the next five months.

Or, instead of only investing when you have a specific amount of money, you can choose to invest a smaller amount, more regularly. Not only will you benefit from the growth of dollar-cost-averaging, but you’ll also develop a healthy habit of investing part of your regular income rather than relying on an annual or quarterly lump sum that can be easy to spend elsewhere.

This is not the only way to leverage better returns in the markets, but for an investor who is not familiar with investing, it’s a wise approach to early investment strategies.

Financial planning is a complex and integrated activity that is often simplified in an attempt to make it more accessible. When we look at it as a lifestyle rather than an annual exercise, it’s easier to begin to engage with our financial plan in a more meaningful level. Saving and investing are two disciplines that are core to the foundations of a solid financial plan, and for simplicity sake, they are often seen as the same thing. However – they are very different.

In a recent article for bankrate.com, James Royal explains that while both saving and investing can help us achieve a more comfortable financial future, we need to know the differences to understand how each discipline helps our financial plan.

He says that the most significant difference between saving and investing is the level of risk taken. Saving typically results in earning a lower return but with virtually no risk. In contrast, investing allows the opportunity to make higher returns but accepts an increased risk of loss.

These strategies are necessary to help build long-term wealth: they’re designed to accumulate money. Saving is typically done through your bank with products like money market accounts and savings accounts. It’s a valuable part of your financial plan to create provision for emergencies, unexpected expenses or saving for short-term goals. Investing requires more complex products and integration and requires time and ongoing management to allow your money to grow. This is often what people refer to as “making their money work for them.”

Royal says that there are plenty of reasons you should save your hard-earned money. For one, it’s usually your safest bet, and it’s the best way to avoid losing any cash along the way. It’s also easy to do, and you can access the funds quickly when you need them.

However, returns are low, meaning you could earn more by investing (but there’s no guarantee you will). Returns are generally behind inflation, so for long-term prospects, where the cost of inflation becomes a factor, you can lose purchasing power of the amount saved.

So – saving is safer than investing, but it will most likely not result in the most wealth accumulated over the long term.

When you own a broadly diversified collection of stocks, you’re likely to easily beat inflation over long periods and increase your purchasing power. However – returns are never guaranteed, and this is where risk becomes a factor. Due to the size of the markets and options to invest in alternatives, risk is mitigated by investing in a broad selection of assets and classes.

Ultimately, a balanced and robust financial plan should include savings and investment strategies that align with your life plan, allowing you access to funds when you need them and securing financial independence for your future.

As our world becomes increasingly digitised, personal skills will become more valuable. Many salespeople call these the soft-skills and realise that the old-school hard-sell-skills are no longer as effective. People are less likely to be blown away by some widget and far more likely to remember the way that you’ve made them feel.

It doesn’t really matter if you’re in sales or not, or even in your own business. Networking is a skill that helps us build communities of value, and as we all know, communities are essential for our survival. Becoming a better networker will help in every area of life because, in today’s tiny world of digital space, communication plays a bigger-than-ever role in identifying, attracting, connecting and engaging with other people.

We see it all the time on social media, but we don’t necessarily realise what’s going on. It’s easy to try and self-promote through these channels, whether it’s a business you run, or you’re displaying personal growth and courses you’ve completed; this is often where our understanding of the power of networking grinds to a halt.

But if we realise that we can help other people talk about us, we can intentionally seek out spaces where online conversations are happening that may create the right context for us to engage. These could be community pages, forums or simply in our news feeds – if we know what tags to look for.

Some of this can get quite technical, but at the end of the day, it’s just a bunch of humans trying to engage – and this is why becoming a better networker is helpful. Learning to ask better questions and engage with people one-on-one is one of the most valuable things to do.

In the same way that we might prepare some pitches and introductions before going to a conference, roadshow or in-person networking event, we can prepare and upskill before engaging with people on social media, video calls and direct messaging. We can see this as a virtual alternative to attending a live networking event.

Bob Burg, speaker and author, proposes a powerful list of 10 questions to ask a new prospect that he calls the ‘feel-good questions’. This list works well because it’s underpinned by the premise that people like to talk about themselves more than they want to listen to you talk about yourself. But for most of us, we’re programmed to think that the moment I get to talk, I need to say as much about myself as possible and convince the other person that they want to choose me. If the person you’re talking to is not ready for your product, service or skill set – it will probably go in one ear, and out the other.

If we follow the new narratives, where ​​people are less likely to be blown away by some widget and far more likely to remember the way that you’ve made them feel, then Burg’s questions begin to make a lot of sense. The more you can get people to talk about themselves, the better they will feel and the more likely they will be to remember their engagement with you in a positive light. 

This is one of the secrets to becoming a better networker: make people feel good about themselves.

Here are some of the questions that Burg suggests, and he recommends choosing only two or three at a time.

“How did you get your start in the business you’re in?”

“What do you enjoy most about your profession?”

“What separates you and your company from the competition?”

“What advice would you give someone just starting in your business?”

“What one thing would you do with your business if you knew you could not fail?”

“What significant changes have you seen take place in your profession through the years?”

“What do you see as the coming trends in your industry?”

“What’s the strangest or funniest incident you’ve experienced in your business?”

“What ways have you found to be the most effective for promoting your business?”

“What one sentence would you like people to use in describing the way you do business?”

These are open-ended questions, and they’re all focused on the other person. If you can make people feel good about what they do, and who they are, they will most likely want to speak to you again, opening up the way for a conversational (more than simply a transactional) relationship.