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_{Exploring the environments, schedules, and enough}

Happy Sunday! Thanks for reading Intentional Dollar — where we look at old money ideas through a new perspective.

What’s inside?

• One idea to experiment with

• Two quotes from others

• Three questions to dig deeper

• Four lines of poetry for the point

Disclaimer: This is not investment advice. These weekly posts represent my simple thoughts, a few quotes, and some questions — for educational purposes only.

What Will Your Retirement Look Like?

Planning for retirement raises many questions. Have you considered how much it will cost, and how you’ll generate the income you’ll need to pay for it? For many, these questions can feel overwhelming, but answering them is a crucial step forward for a comfortable future.

Start by understanding your goals, estimating your expenses and identifying potential income streams. The Definitive Guide to Retirement Income can help you navigate these essential questions. If you have $1,000,000 or more saved for retirement, download your free guide today to learn how to build a clear and effective retirement income plan. Discover ways to align your portfolio with your long-term goals, so you can reach the future you deserve.

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_{One idea to experiment with:}

The Environments

How many different environments — collections of people, things, behaviors, actions, expectations, and beliefs — are you in on a daily basis? A few common ones probably jump to mind: work, school, home, the gym, church, bars or restaurants, stores, vacation homes, coffee shops, computers, phones, TVs.

This isn’t exhaustive, but it captures where most of us spend most of our time. You’ll notice these are broadly defined environments. Within your home, for example, there are rooms—or sub-environments—you spend time in. These environments form a stream with a strong current. And the current’s powerful: it’s much easier to go with than against.

Why does this matter? Because our decisions are shaped, formed, and guided by the environments we inhabit.

When strategically designed, an environment becomes a hyper-efficient behavior facilitator. An office facilitates work. A bedroom facilitates rest. A kitchen facilitates cooking and sharing a meal. Bars and restaurants (generally) facilitate drinking and indulgent foods—anyone else weak for cheesecake?

Whether an environment was created by us or by others, it sets a norm, a set of behaviors it encourages. That’s key because environments don’t force identical behavior. You can eat healthy at a restaurant, but doing so means swimming upstream.

Some important takeaways:

• The lowest-energy path is to go with the norms in your environment, so that’s what we default to.

• We can design our own environments to make desired behaviors easier.

• Environments exist to satisfy a specific need.

• If the behaviors you want aren’t happening, there’s likely an environmental design flaw. If you don’t write in your office, maybe it’s because your phone is there, or an interesting book is in sight.

Think of environment design like building a sealed room meant solely to produce certain behaviors. Each “thing” that distracts from the desired behavior is a leak—temptations that pull you off course. Want better sleep? A TV, a phone, or light sneaking through a curtain is a leak.

Focusing on redesigning your environments to remove leaks greatly improves your chances of producing the right behaviors.

How does this relate to your dollars? What are your leaks, and how can you patch them? How can you redesign clunky, crowded, or broken environments to better support your goals?

And a final note: your phone is an environment itself. It’s a portal into a virtual world that will tempt your attention if you bring it into the wrong environments.

_{Two quotes on schedules:}

If you have a laundry list of money to-do’s, try scheduling them; give yourself a date and a deadline.

_{Three questions on enough:}

1. What is enough for me?

2. How will I know the next acquisition is the one that makes me feel satisfied?

3. How can I engineer constraints against moving goal posts?

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]

Disclaimer: This is not investment advice. These weekly posts represent my simple thoughts, a few quotes, and some questions — for educational purposes only.

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