Exploring weeds, resilience, and direction

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:}

Weeds:

Have you ever pulled a weed from the yard?

Weeds are an annoying sight in the lawn or garden.

They’re easy to spot and seem to sprout overnight. They disrupt the look of our yard. And if we don’t take care of them in a timely and effective manner, they will spread.

A strong yard can protect from an invasion, but it won’t prevent one.

Taking care of weeds in the yard is a bit like taking care of your money. If you have good financial health, you’ve built a layer of insulation from risk — a margin of safety. Even with this insulation, a few unchecked problems could lead to financial disaster — like a few forgotten weeds spreading across your yard.

It’s important to keep in mind that you’re never finished with managing your money. It’s tempting to see money as a task. Once you’re out of debt, you check the debt-free box — task done. But being debt free requires an ongoing process to stay out of debt. It requires discipline with saving, investing, and spending. Being out of debt now does not prevent you from being in debt down the road.

Having solid financial health is an ongoing process. It requires maintenance, it requires pulling weeds — it requires your attention.

Like a gardener, you can decide the kind of work you put in. Do you pick the weed when you first see it? A quick and painless process to maintain the garden. Or do you wait a week and spend more time pulling up the roots of that weed and the others that have joined its ranks?

Some of us spend a lot of effort to pick weeds and then reward ourselves with a rest period. It’s during this reprieve that these pesky weeds start to build up again. We’ll eventually cave and begin the daunting task to pull them all, and so the cycle continues.

Notice how it’s easier to get the weeds when they first come in than to wait.

This principle applies to a lot of things in life — whether you’re cleaning the house or doing the dishes. But It also applies to every facet of our money.

Saving small amounts of money now can be annoying. It’s frustrating, it’s constant, and all the benefits are delayed. But know these efforts aren’t wasted. Saving small and early (maintaining the lawn) will lead to better outcomes than trying to fund a big expense in a short period of time — like trying to remove weeds from an overgrown lawn.

On the other side, you can fix an overgrown lawn. To be sure, it will require a lot of effort, and maybe even reseeding the lawn — but your yard is not barred from beneficial change.

You’re the gardener for your money. Where are the weeds taking over and what can you do about them? Once you clear these, stay vigilant for the weeds that will come, and then pull them right away.

_{Two quotes on resilience:}

No one has a perfect record. Resilience is a necessary component of wealth building.

_{Three questions on direction:}

1. What direction am I headed with my current systems?

2. How might I make a slight tweak to my course?

3. What maps are available to assist me?

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]