Hey Reader,

Happy Saturday! We hope this email finds you well, enjoying a nice cup of your favorite hot beverage while tidying up your budget for this brand new month. Well, that's my perfect Saturday morning activity, at least. :)

We've got 1 podcast, 1 book, and some thoughts on re-writing your vision to share with you today.

Let's get into it...

💲 Money Minute - From Nick

One of the most important skills for managing money is the art and science of decision-making.

We're presented with decisions every day that will impact our time and money in ways that help us or hurt us.

But the long-term effects of our decisions aren't always obvious. So how can we make confident decisions and not second guess ourselves when things don't work out how we planned?

Well, a Pastor named Costi Hinn speaks to this issue in a podcast interview I listened to last week.

I ordered his book immediately after listening to the podcast. It arrived in the mail yesterday, and I'm excited to read it this week. In both the podcast and the book, he outlines 7-Ps for making decisions aligned with God's will.

I plan to use this as a guide for updating my own decision-making process.

Even if you're not a Christian, I think you'll find his approach helpful and insightful. You can check it out here.​

⚓︎ Craft Your Money Story - From Hanna

Nick and I took a year-long English class with the best professor on the planet. (Different years, same experience.) We'll call him Dr. S.

Dr. S assigned us "books that aren't crap," we sat in a kumbaya-style circle to discuss our reading, and we wrote book-related essays.

The class was a dream... until Dr. S returned our first graded essays.

"Don't freak out," he said. Comforting words as I stared at my paper that was either covered in red pen or retrieved from a murder scene.

Nick's, on the other hand, was completely free of corrections. Feeling rather smug, he turned to the last page and read, "I didn't bother marking this. Just start over." 😱

As terror seized every student, we heard these glorious words:

The only way to get a grade you weren't happy with from Dr. S was to just stop writing.

Most students would read, think, discuss, write, and rewrite (and rewrite their rewrites), resulting in essays that far exceeded what they believed they were capable of.

It recently struck me how our experience with Dr. S prepared us for life visioning and budgeting.

We read the Bible, pray, think, discuss, and write down our plans and dreams. Then life marks up our vision with corrections and suggestions for improvement. And we go back to reading, praying, thinking, and discussing.

The red pen of life says things like, "No money in the budget for this! What trade-offs are you willing to make?" or "Your schedule can't handle this AND that... you'll have to choose." And sometimes, life deals a blow so big that you get the terrifying message, "Just start over."

But like Dr. S's class, the only way to fail at your life vision is to just stop visioning. And by God's grace, the results of the refinement process are always far better than our original plan.

Most people are gung-ho to use their money to do more of what matters until they sit down to think through what matters. Then they're paralyzed with overwhelm, fear of disappointment, and anxiety over the unknown.

But you're not most people.

You can take a deep breath, stop striving to get things perfect, and just write something down (no matter how crazy it seems). And then you can regularly examine your budget with that vision in mind to craft your money story.

Because you know the secret about life visioning...

You can tweak, adjust, and even start over as often as you need or like. What a relief!
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Until next week,
Nick + Hanna
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PS: If you'd like to hear about how we've been re-writing our own life vision, check out our podcast episode from last month here.​

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