Exploring the financial billboard, small steps, and creative spend cutting

Welcome to the Intentional Dollar weekly newsletter — great work taking this small step to move your money forward. I’m Logan, a Certified Financial Planner™, and I’m excited you’re here!

What’s inside?

• One tool to experiment with

• Two quotes from others

• Three questions to dig deeper

• Four lines of poetry for the point

_{One tool to experiment with:}

The Financial Billboard:

What would you inscribe on a personal financial billboard — one you see each day that reminds you to make better money decisions?

• Be intentional

• It’s not worth it

• Pay yourself first

• Consistency compounds

• Today not tomorrow

• Simple over complex

What’s on yours?

The billboard tool is a visual reminder, a sticky note on your wall, that helps you think about a positive financial principle, daily. I find this tool helpful because it leverages a foundational element of habit formation — environment design — and integrates it with your money. When you alter your environment to facilitate positive financial behavior change, you directly improve the odds of making better money choices.

The neat thing about billboards is that they change over time. What you write on that personal billboard is not permanent. For me, it will range anywhere from a reminder to avoid impulsive purchases, to the current “Live Simple” that hangs on my computer monitor.

I go into my office each day and see this billboard (sticky note) staring back at me like my reflection in a mirror. It’s a daily affirmation, or confirmation of the identity I want to wear. The current live simple is a call to avoid the unintentional acquisition of things. I often find myself looking for more. More caffeine, more material items — more dopamine; I’ve learned it’s not fulfilling — I’ve learned that the goal post gets pushed out a little more each time.

I recently read Henry David Thoreau’s Walden. The first chapter on economy stuck me like a thorn. Thoreau sings the siren song of simplicity. For those unfamiliar with the plot, middle age Thoreau strikes out through the woods of Concord, MA, to be self-sufficient. For nearly two years, Thoreau lived on the shores of Walden pond, in a home he built with his own hands — costing him less than the annual rent colleges were charging at the time.

Motivated through Thoreau’s simple living, I took a look at my own possessions — seeking, and finding, an abundance of excess.

In addition to the financial cost of acquiring things, my cognition was inadvertently diffused through all these daily micro-decisions. Should I read on my iPhone, iPad, Kindle, or physical book? Should I watch Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Peacock, or HBO? Should I have coffee from Kenya, or Peru? Should I drink that coffee out of this mug, or my other two? Which water bottle should I choose this morning?

I’ve noticed three wins from the live simple billboard:

• Win 1: Feel good by having fewer choices; decision fatigue has gone down.

• Win 2: Get to realize value from selling these things, or realize charity by gifting them.

• Win 3: Get to save dollars through acquiring less.

When we acquire things we can inadvertently increase fear. It sounds irrational, and it’s counter-intuitive. Owning more things creates more pressure to keep up the circus of keeping and maintaining those things.

When you see that you can live well on less, you liberate yourself from the fear of material loss. It’s refreshing to become intimate with a lower state of living, to practice poverty, and deeply reflect on Seneca’s self-inquiry, “Is this the condition that I feared?”

This billboard can be anything; it doesn’t have to follow the path of simple living (although I would challenge you to try for a period). Customize it and place it where you’ll see it daily.

Your billboard is a near reminder and a mental magnet for the actions you ideally (and intentionally) want to take.

What are you writing on your billboard?

_{Two quotes on small steps:}

Don’t scoff at small steps; longevity turns them into leaps.

_{Three questions on creative spend cutting:}

1. What if I sold one piece of existing clothing before buying a new one?

2. How might I reduce the cost of transportation — run, bike, walk?

3. What things can I cost-share with someone else? (apartment, work commute, subscriptions)

Which question stuck with you? Questions like these are spotlights for the mind. Reply to this email and let me know which one shined light on a previously dark cave.

_{Four lines of poetry for the point:}

Contact Me:

Content ideas, questions? Reply to this email or reach out to me at [email protected]