4 Simple Tips for Keeping Your Small Business Finances Organized

 

In the midst of tax season, a lot of us are looking to do better on our finances. Maybe you got a big tax bill and are now wondering where your earnings went. Perhaps you were a little less organized than you would have liked. Or maybe this time just makes you extra aware of where your business is financially.

Whatever the case, mid-points like this are great times to give your finances a makeover! Here are my 4 simple tips for keeping your small business finances organized and intentional.

Review Your Goals

After a big financial event like tax season, the financial goals you set earlier in the year deserve a revisit. Check in with them and ask yourself if they still fit. If not, give your goals a nice update! Make sure what you’re aiming towards is relevant to you. You can check out my article on doing a mid-year review of your finances right here.

If you don’t have any financial goals, now is the time to set them. Harness whatever financial fervor tax season (or whatever other financial situation brought you to this post) has instilled in you.

What are your ideal financial conditions? Dream them up, write them down, and come up with a plan. If you need some pointers, here’s my article “4 Strategies for Setting Doable Financial Goals.”

Set Up a Weekly Money Check-In

So much of creating the life you want is about habits. One of the best habits to adopt, in my opinion, is regular “money time”. Find time each week to check in with your finances. Start with a short chunk, to make it feel more manageable. Fifteen to thirty minutes should suffice.

Use this time to check in with your expenses, upcoming bills, IOU’s, and more as needed. Here are my suggestions on what to look for during your weekly money check-in.

Make a Plan to Stay on Top of Your Books

Especially if organization was an issue this tax round and you run a business, making a plan to stay organized until next tax time is a great thing to do right now. Ask yourself what you need to be able to do this.

Do you need to work with a bookkeeper? Do you need to get some training on how to do your bookkeeping yourself? Identify your needs and take some steps to set yourself on the right path.

Find a Money Buddy

It’s my personal belief that anything can go better when you have an accountability buddy. Find someone in your circle who has a financial goal they’re working on too, and join forces! This might be a fellow business owner, or someone from your church, or another mom from a play group.

“Why You Need a Money Buddy”

Once you’ve found your money buddy, establish the terms of your accountability partnership. How often do you want to meet? How do you want to do check ins? Do you want to learn about finances together, or just trade tips on goals?

These 4 tips will help set you on the right path. If you’re a small business owner looking for more ideas, you might like my free eBook, the Cash Flow Reboot Guide: A Guide to Thriving in Uncertain Times. Click below and get your free copy.

By |2023-04-11T13:53:14-07:00April 11th, 2023|Categories: Financial Clarity, Money Mindset, Personal Savings, Personal Spending, Small Business|Tags: , , , , , , , , |0 Comments
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Always Base your Financial Goals on Your Values: Here’s Why

I’m not a big fan of making money for no reason. When we have an abstract number in our head about how much we want to make, this can be distracting and counterproductive at best, and leave us feeling empty at worst. Financial goals shouldn’t be based on round, nice-sounding numbers that carry an air of success. They should be based on what we actually want to get out of life!

Your Values = Your Satisfaction

The way I see it, your values are pretty simple. The more you incorporate the things you value into your life, the more satisfied you are. In other blog posts, I’ve written about Vicki Robin’s concept of enough, and Lynn Twist’s ideas of sufficiency. Having enough, feeling sufficient and satisfied – isn’t that what most of us really want out of life? Your business, your finances, and your goals should enable you to have enough of the things you value in your life to feel satisfied.

For more thoughts on identifying your values, I suggest reading “What’s Your Money Why?”

Stay the Course

This is much easier said than done! We live in a world where we are met with many different distractions that make us feel insufficient. This can be especially difficult for business owners, because we can get caught up comparing our incomes and lifestyles to others, instead of staying focused on what we want for ourselves.

Creating goals that are based on your values helps you maintain your focus on your own ideas of success. It can help you avoid anxious behaviors like overworking and over-saving.

Assign a Number

Rather than falling for some number that “sounds like success,” it’s important to assign a number to your goals and dreams.

For example, you take time to really analyze your values and your dreams. You decide that what you want is more fun in your life, specifically through taking an aerial silks class (or whatever intentional choice you might make to increase your value of fun). You would then assign a number to that dream by calculating how much a class and any necessary supplies would cost, plus any other associated expenses you might want to be aware of. That gives you a dollar value that can help inform your financial goals.

Happy goal setting! If you enjoyed this post, you’ll probably like my free e-Book, Reach Your Life Goals: A Business Owner’s Guide. Click there or below to download your free copy.

This post was first published in 2021. 

By |2023-01-27T09:48:00-08:00January 27th, 2023|Categories: Financial Clarity|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , |0 Comments
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How to Set Doable Financial Goals: 4 Tips

If you set financial goals that are way out of your reach, you’re setting yourself up for defeat and disappointment. Rather than curtail your progress with emotional roadblocks, try simplifying your financial goal-setting for this year. These four strategies can help you create goals that are meaningful, motivating, and realistically achievable.

Check in With Your Values

Check in with your values before setting goals. Your business, your finances, and your goals should enable you to have enough of the things you value in your life to feel satisfied. Basing your goals on your values will also give you a clear way to connect with your “money why” and stay motivated when you’re working towards them. 

Set One Goal

Set one goal, not a dozen. This will make it easier to manage and complete the goal. James Clear is a great thinker around goal setting, and brings up the psychological concept of goal competition. “…Your goals are competing with one another for your time and attention. Whenever you chase a new goal, you have to pull focus and energy from your other pursuits….What often looks like a problem of goal setting is actually a problem of goal selection.”

When you cull your goals down to one, you’re able to direct all your focus and effort towards this one goal. Of course, I’m speaking about the general realm of your finances. In reality you’ll of course still have a full and complex life – all the more reason to simplify things and pick one financial goal to focus on! Which brings me to the next point:

Identify Your “One Thing”

Identify the thing to do in your finances that would make everything else easier or irrelevant. This is from Gary Keller’s book, The One Thing. This book carries a similar message to what I wrote above: multi-tasking is actually holding you back from making progress on your goals. Using the question “What is the one thing, such that by doing it, everything else would become easier or irrelevant?” can help you further cull your goals and make space in your finances to get focused. 

Turn Your Goal Into a System

How will you stay on track with your goal? When setting your financial goal, consider how you’ll turn it into action items, and how you’ll complete those action items. Will you set up a time to make progress each week? Will you find a money buddy to work in tandem with? Will you create a special routine for yourself around checking in with your finances daily? 

Carving out regular time to devote effort and attention to your goal is one fo the best ways to actually achieve it. So when setting a goal, keep in mind how likely you are to be able to do this, and how you’ll set up a system for success. If you’d like to work on a financial goal with my guidance, set up a free Financial Self Care Consultation. Click here or below to schedule:

 

This post was originally published in 2022. 

By |2023-01-18T13:42:48-08:00January 18th, 2023|Categories: Financial Clarity, Money Mindset|Tags: , , , , , |0 Comments
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Want to Enjoy Your Life? Fund It.

The irony of financial goal setting is that we can get so wrapped up in our big-picture idea of financial success, that we forget to lean into enjoying our lives too. This is a snag that I see many people get stuck on. We focus on purchasing a home or funding our retirement. These financial priorities are great, but they sometimes overshadow something that also takes a bit of cash – having fun!

The Importance of Fun

It seems a bit silly to make a serious case for the importance of enjoying your life, but a lot of us (including me) need that reminder! Right now I’m reading The Power of Fun: How to Feel Alive Again by Catherine Price. One of my favorite concepts from this book so far has been Price’s conviction that the moments we are having true fun are the moments we feel most alive.

When it really comes down to it, isn’t that what most of us want anyway? To feel alive in a positive, joyful way? Yes, there’s certainly a lot to be said for achieving goals and getting things done. And, I believe that oftentimes we want to do those things in service to our pursuit of aliveness.

When Fun Costs Money

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you might be surprised to see me recommending that you spend money on “fun.” That might even seem contradictory to another concept I like to write about, teasing out your wants from your needs. I particularly like to emphasize the point of finding your “enough,” and of meeting your needs and wants creatively and inexpensively.

Actually, that does apply here. The thing is, being on top of your finances is not about being so frugal that you don’t have any enjoyment in your life. There may be a point where you realize that you truly want something that you know will bring a lot of joy, but also cost money. When you’re setting your financial goals, you can prepare for this and take it into account!

This might be a longterm savings goal, like a trip overseas, or it might be a purchase, like a musical instrument. These things do cost money, but they’re worth it. Including them in your financial planning is an important of remembering to enjoy your life!

Fun Up Your Finances

So, how do we integrate fun into our finances, exactly? My suggestion would be to keep fun in the front of your mind whenever you’re setting new financial goals for yourself. Here are a couple articles of mine on the subject that you might enjoy:

If you enjoyed this article, you’ll probably also enjoy being on my newsletter! Along with weekly blog updates, you’ll also receive my special monthly tailored newsletter. Click below to join us, it’s a good place to be.

By |2022-05-23T11:42:05-07:00May 23rd, 2022|Categories: Money Mindset, Personal Savings, Personal Spending|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , |0 Comments
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4 Quick Tips to Get Your Finances Back on Track

Post tax-season, a lot of us are looking to do better on our finances. Maybe you got a big tax bill and are now wondering where your earnings went. Perhaps you were a little less organized than you would have liked.

Whatever the case, mid-points like this are great times to give your finances a makeover! Here are my top 4 tips for getting your finances on track again, whether that’s in your business, or your personal finances.

Review Your Goals

After a big financial event like tax season, the financial goals you set earlier in the year deserve a revisit. Check in with them and ask yourself if they still fit. If not, give your goals a nice update! Make sure what you’re aiming towards is relevant to you. You can check out my article on doing a mid-year review of your finances right here.

If you don’t have any financial goals, now is the time to set them. Harness whatever financial fervor tax season (or whatever other financial situation brought you to this post) has instilled in you.

What are your ideal financial conditions? Dream them up, write them down, and come up with a plan. If you need some pointers, here’s my article “4 Strategies for Setting Doable Financial Goals.”

Set Up a Weekly Money Check-In

So much of creating the life you want is about habits. One of the best habits to adopt, in my opinion, is regular “money time”. Find time each week to check in with your finances. Start with a short chunk, to make it feel more manageable. Fifteen to thirty minutes should suffice.

Use this time to check in with your expenses, upcoming bills, IOU’s, and more as needed. Here are my suggestions on what to look for during your weekly money check-in.

Make a Plan to Stay on Top of Your Books

Especially if organization was an issue this tax round and you run a business, making a plan to stay organized until next tax time is a great thing to do right now. Ask yourself what you need to be able to do this.

Do you need to work with a bookkeeper? Do you need to get some training on how to do your bookkeeping yourself? Identify your needs and take some steps to set yourself on the right path.

Find a Money Buddy

It’s my personal belief that anything can go better when you have an accountability buddy. Find someone in your circle who has a financial goal they’re working on too, and join forces! This might be a fellow business owner, or someone from your church, or another mom from a play group.

“Why You Need a Money Buddy”

Once you’ve found your money buddy, establish the terms of your accountability partnership. How often do you want to meet? How do you want to do check ins? Do you want to learn about finances together, or just trade tips on goals?

These 4 tips will help set you on the right path. If you’re a small business owner looking for more ideas, you might like my free eBook, the Cash Flow Reboot Guide: A Guide to Thriving in Uncertain Times. Click below and get your free copy.

By |2022-05-12T14:30:34-07:00May 12th, 2022|Categories: Financial Clarity, Money Mindset, Personal Savings, Personal Spending, Small Business|Tags: , , , , , , , , |0 Comments
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My #1 System for Achieving Financial Goals

You reach your goals if you work on them regularly. Things happen one day, one week, one month at a time. So, it might come as no surprise to you that my #1 system for achieving financial goals is making regular time for financial self care. I’ve seen this work with many clients and know that in personal experience, this is what works best for me. This approach is backed by many achievement experts, like Gary Keller. In The One Thing, he suggests setting a single goal and then suggests scheduling focused time to work on it into your calendar and protecting it.

Make financial self care a habit! I frequently suggest checking in with your finances on a weekly basis, but another time interval might work well for you too. Since we’re thinking about self care, consider your weekly financial check-in a part of your overall self care routine. Just like you manage your time and your physical health with self care, your money is a resource to manage and use to your best advantage. Use your regular “money time” to work towards your financial goal. 

Here are a couple suggestions of things to do:

  • check in on your spending for the month to see where you’re at with your spending plan
  • check in with your financial goal for the month
  • talk to your money mentor or your partner
  • spend time learning about finances
  • do any finance-related admin work you need (paying off bills, sending off IOU’s, billing clients, etc.)

Most importantly, make sure this time is enjoyable so you can keep coming back to it every week. Try to limit the amount of time you spend, so that you finish off your money time by completing a task. I suggest starting with twenty or thirty minutes and slowly increasing the amount as your finances become more interesting for you to work with. Pro tip: when you end on a high note, it’s easier to keep the habit going. And don’t forget to reward yourself for sticking with this habit!

If you liked this article, you’ll probably like my free e-Book, 9 Secrets to Financial Self Care. Click here to download.

By |2022-01-28T13:23:15-08:00January 27th, 2022|Categories: Financial Clarity, Money Mindset|Tags: , , , , , , , , |0 Comments
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4 Strategies for Setting Doable Financial Goals

If you set financial goals that are way out of your reach, you’re setting yourself up for defeat and disappointment. Rather than curtail your progress with emotional roadblocks, try simplifying your financial goal-setting for this year. These four strategies can help you create goals that are meaningful, motivating, and realistically achievable.

Check in With Your Values

Check in with your values before setting goals. Your business, your finances, and your goals should enable you to have enough of the things you value in your life to feel satisfied. Basing your goals on your values will also give you a clear way to connect with your “money why” and stay motivated when you’re working towards them. 

Set One Goal

Set one goal, not a dozen. This will make it easier to manage and complete the goal. James Clear is a great thinker around goal setting, and brings up the psychological concept of goal competition. “…Your goals are competing with one another for your time and attention. Whenever you chase a new goal, you have to pull focus and energy from your other pursuits….What often looks like a problem of goal setting is actually a problem of goal selection.”

When you cull your goals down to one, you’re able to direct all your focus and effort towards this one goal. Of course, I’m speaking about the general realm of your finances. In reality you’ll of course still have a full and complex life – all the more reason to simplify things and pick one financial goal to focus on! Which brings me to the next point:

Identify Your “One Thing”

Identify the thing to do in your finances that would make everything else easier or irrelevant. This is from Gary Keller’s book, The One Thing. This book carries a similar message to what I wrote above: multi-tasking is actually holding you back from making progress on your goals. Using the question “What is the one thing, such that by doing it, everything else would become easier or irrelevant?” can help you further cull your goals and make space in your finances to get focused. 

Turn Your Goal Into a System

How will you stay on track with your goal? When setting your financial goal, consider how you’ll turn it into action items, and how you’ll complete those action items. Will you set up a time to make progress each week? Will you find a money buddy to work in tandem with? Will you create a special routine for yourself around checking in with your finances daily? 

Carving out regular time to devote effort and attention to your goal is one fo the best ways to actually achieve it. So when setting a goal, keep in mind how likely you are to be able to do this, and how you’ll set up a system for success. If you’d like to work on a financial goal with my guidance, set up a free Financial Self Care Consultation.

☮

Angela

By |2022-01-19T14:45:56-08:00January 19th, 2022|Categories: Financial Clarity, Money Mindset|Tags: , , , , , |0 Comments
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How to Set Financial Goals for the Next Quarter

 

April marks 1/3 of the way through the second quarter of 2021. How are your goals doing? Whether you typically set goals for the whole year, or in twelve-week increments, taking some time to check in with your goals and set new, more relevant ones, is a good idea. 

What Do You Need to Succeed?

When setting any goals for your business, it’s important to consider what you need to succeed. If you’re at a point where you’re unsure about that, I suggest doing a business check-in first. If you’re working on the personal side of your finances, this process can easily be re-shaped to fit that, too. Feel like you’ve got a good picture of your current financial strengths and needs? You can go ahead with the goal-setting.

When setting a goal concerning your finances, here are a couple tips. First, set one goal, not a dozen. This will make it easier to manage and complete the goal. Second, identify the thing to do in your business finances that would make everything else easier or irrelevant. This advice is from the book, The One Thing – you can read my book review here. In a small business or personal finance context, this could look like setting up a money system, finding a good bookkeeper to work with on a regular basis, or building a money team. We’ll talk more about potential goals below, but the important thing is to set your sights on the thing that would make the biggest difference to you.

Create Good Habits

One potentially life-changing goal you could set for 2021 is to go through the year with good money habits. When I say “money habits,” I mean checking in with your finances on a weekly basis. The more aware you are of where you stand financially, the better. I’ve written about the stressful weight that feeling vague about numbers can create for business owners. If you look at your records every week, this won’t be an issue for you! In fact, you’ll be better able to make financial decisions, because you’ll be more aware of the information you need. If you need more ideas about what to look for during your weekly check-in, read my articles on knowing what your numbers are telling you and creating more revenue.

Prioritize Financial Self Care

I whole-heartedly believe that your finances are the key to self-care in your life. If you’re having trouble thinking of a goal to set in the realm of your finances, why not try prioritizing financial self care? That will look different for everybody, depending on your habits, values, and intentions. For more goal ideas in this realm, check out my article on simple ways to infuse for financial self care into your routine.

I hope these ideas have given you some thoughts on what the best goal is for you and your business. In my private work with clients, we do a lot to make sure they meet their goals. If this sounds like it might be helpful for you, you can reserve a space in my private coaching program, 4 Week Money Refresh, through April 30th!

 

☮

Angela

Image: Gift Habeshaw

By |2021-04-26T10:22:56-07:00April 26th, 2021|Categories: Money Mindset, Small Business, solopreneurs|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |0 Comments
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Why You Should Always Base your Financial Goals on Your Values

I’m not a big fan of making money for no reason. When we have an abstract number in our head about how much we want to make, this can be distracting and counterproductive at best, and leave us feeling empty at worst. Financial goals shouldn’t be based on round, nice-sounding numbers that carry an air of success. They should be based on what we actually want to get out of life!

Your Values = Your Satisfaction

The way I see it, your values are pretty simple. The more you incorporate the things you value into your life, the more satisfied you are. In other blog posts, I’ve written about Vicki Robin’s concept of enough, and Lynn Twist’s ideas of sufficiency. Having enough, feeling sufficient and satisfied – isn’t that what most of us really want out of life? Your business, your finances, and your goals should enable you to have enough of the things you value in your life to feel satisfied.

For more thoughts on identifying your values, I suggest reading “What’s Your Money Why?”

Stay the Course

This is much easier said than done! We live in a world where we are met with many different distractions that make us feel insufficient. This can be especially difficult for business owners, because we can get caught up comparing our incomes and lifestyles to others, instead of staying focused on what we want for ourselves.

Creating goals that are based on your values helps you maintain your focus on your own ideas of success. It can help you avoid anxious behaviors like overworking and over-saving.

Assign a Number

Rather than falling for some number that “sounds like success,” it’s important to assign a number to your goals and dreams.

For example, you take time to really analyze your values and your dreams. You decide that what you want is more fun in your life, specifically through taking an aerial silks class (or whatever intentional choice you might make to increase your value of fun). You would then assign a number to that dream by calculating how much a class and any necessary supplies would cost, plus any other associated expenses you might want to be aware of. That gives you a dollar value that can help inform your financial goals.

I go more in depth on this process in my free e-Book, Reach Your Life Goals: A Business Owner’s Guide, which you can download by filling in the pop-up window here.

What it comes down to is that your financial goals should be intentional reflections of what you want to create in your life – otherwise, do you really want to achieve them? For more thoughts on this topic, check out my Facebook Live video, part of Financial Self Care Friday. And if you would like to work with an accountability partner and guide to identify your values and shape your finances around them, check out 4 Week Money Refresh, a package of 4 private 1 hour personal financial coaching sessions on early bird sale through April 15th!

Happy goal setting!

☮

Angela

Image: Tyler Nix

By |2021-04-09T12:11:21-07:00April 9th, 2021|Categories: Financial Clarity|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , |0 Comments
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3 Simple Tips to Infuse Financial Self Care Into Your Routine

When you first decide you want to put effort and intention into your finances, it can be hard to know where to start. Especially as a business owner, you already wear many hats. You have a lot to do, and whatever you add to your plate needs to be simple. I’ve got you covered. Here are three ideas for infusing some financial self care into your work routine.

Organize Your Passwords

If you want to look at your accounts regularly, organize your passwords for easier access! I am a huge advocate for looking at your numbers on a weekly basis. The more you’re checked in with where you and your business are at financially, the better. Taking some time to do this step will simplify the process of working on your finances, and take away some of the hesitation.

Find a Financial Education Resource You Love

…and then stick with it! Whether it’s a podcast, a book, or a YouTube channel, financial education comes in all formats these days. Find a person or resource who really resonates with you. Then, dive deep into what they have to say, and try to integrate that into your life. If you want some guidance around finding sound financial advice, read my guides on some things to look for and how to steer clear of the not-so-helpful stuff.  You can also check out my favorite educational resources. Here’s a list of some of my faves from other sites, and a list of my best educational blog posts.

List Some Action Items

You know your business and personal finances best. Chances are, there are probably already some to-do list items in the realm of your finances. Try jogging your memory for those and writing them down. Perhaps you’ve always wanted to try creating a money map for yourself. Maybe you want to automate all your bill payments. Identify those action items and write them down somewhere you can revisit them.

Next, strategize. How can you get these done? What resources or assistance do you need to do so? Can you divide the tasks into bite-size chunks and work on them piece by piece? Your financial wellbeing is something you can handle – sometimes it just takes some strategy and awareness.

9 Secrets to Financial Self Care Book Cover

I hope you’ve enjoyed these quick tips for financial self care. You might also be interested in downloading my free e-Book, 9 Secrets to Financial Self Care. In this e-Book, I go in-depth into 9 different steps you can take to build a solid financial self care routine for yourself. Try it out by clicking the link above!

☮

Angela

Image by Siora Photography

By |2021-04-08T14:00:54-07:00December 23rd, 2020|Categories: Financial Clarity, Money Mindset|Tags: , , , , , , , , , |0 Comments
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