Acknowledgment over judgment.
Overwhelmed when thinking about finances? Suz breaks down her experience reading The One Page Financial Plan by Carl Richards, sharing her biggest takeaways.
You’re listening to Episode 47 of the Music-Preneur Mindset Podcast.
Hello! You’re listening to Episode 47: Book Review: The One Page Financial Plan by Carl Richards.
I’m your host, Suz – a mindset coach helping music professionals grow their creative talents into full-fledged businesses by getting clear on their goals and next steps.
I thought I’d switch things up a bit and start highlighting some books I’ve read that have been game changers for me and share with you my main takeaways of each.
I had wanted to organize a book club of sorts so we could all read together, but logistically I don’t think that’d be feasible given everyone’s different schedule and career demands.
By doing it this way, hopefully you’re inspired to read the book, but if you’re not able to or choose not to you can still learn some important lessons from it.
I also encourage you in these types of episodes more so than others to go back and visit the show notes for additional ‘rock’sources as I like to call them. With this particular review I’ve listed out a few links to some of Carl Richard’s supplemental materials as well as links to purchase the book in all formats if you so choose.
Lastly, these reviews reflect my own personal experience reading the book and I am not affiliated with the authors in any way and do not receive anything for publishing this review. I will be sharing some of Carl Richard’s financial advice as he lays it out in his book and anything you may hear is either paraphrased or quoted when indicated from his book. I am not a financial advisor and you should seek your own advisor for direct financial advice.
That all being said, I welcome you to our first book review!
I came across this book I believe towards the end of 2017, two years after it had come out. I was on a mission before the start of 2018 to get a healthier mindset around money.
I purchased this book, watched a bunch of Suze Orman videos, and downloaded Jen Sincero’s You’re a Badass at Making Money. Later on, I purchased Jesse Mecham’s You Need a Budget, which I’ve mentioned on this podcast many times before.
All of those resources helped me have my best year in business this past year.
However, this book in particular started me on a path to demystify my understanding around money and build my confidence in seeing it as a tool, not something that should or could control me or place value on me.
The One Page Financial Plan very effectively broke down and identified my hangups with and around money and helped me realize I needed to take action. Richards explained finance in a way I could understand it – the chick who begged for a C in Business Finance because I couldn’t bare to see a D on my transcript.
Business Finance was also the only class I ever skipped in college, ironically enough so I could go work a day job for WEA while I finished school. Go figure.
I’m also a slow reader and this book came in at just over 200 pages so I was able to break it up and read it within a work week and start taking action on its advice immediately.
I’ve started to read it again now that I’m set up on the YNAB app and I wanted to make sure I have complete clarity around my finances for the new year. The second time around there are 3 main takeaways from this book that jumped out at me that I’ll share with you now.
First, the mindset principles laid out in this book, and in Mecham’s You Need a Budget, are almost identical to the principles I operate from when managing my time through time-blocking: Plan for uncertainty and stop worrying about being right.
When I discuss time management I always remind people not to schedule every hour of the day because then you don’t leave room for life happening. If every 15-minute increment is scheduled and then you sit behind an accident on the highway or a call runs over, your entire day is thrown off.
In the 2019 Rock/Star Life Planner there’s a gigantic emphasis on reflection and checking in on your goals and progress each and every week.
Similarly, when it comes to mapping out a plan for your finances, Richards suggests not to get too stuck in planning out every detail and encourages you to tweak and alter your plan as needed when there is a shift in your priorities – which is what I recommend when mapping out your time blocks as well.
When we focus so much on trying to be “right” about the future, knowing full well we can’t, we fall into “perfection paralysis” and we never take any real action towards clearly identifying our goal(s), let alone reaching them.
If we can’t predict the future then why should we bother with all of this planning?
Again, just as I explain in my Planner, Richards explains that it’s not about predicting the future but rather choosing something to work towards so we can break it down and identify what steps we need to take today to try and get there.
That’s why reflection is so important. We create a goal for ourselves and then as we collect more data over time we’re able to assess if the goal is changing or the way we will get there is changing or if we need to give the goal up altogether and find a new goal.
You’re never going to know the answer until you take action and you can’t take action until you have some sense of where you’d like to be heading.
He says on page 12, “Your goal is not to create a ‘one-page financial plan for the rest of your life.’ Creating a financial plan is a process. My wife and I will look at our plan often – whenever we need to make a big decision, it will be there to guide us but I’m sure we will be adjusting it often. And as we adjust our goals, we’ll pull out a new Sharpie and card.”
I know how much we hate having to make so many decisions, but as he just said, having a plan allows you to make decisions more easily as the plan makes them for you. The decision either aligns with your values and goals or it doesn’t. Just as in time blocking – something is worth your time if it falls into one of your priority blocks or it doesn’t.
I also know that when it comes to goal setting people don’t want to be “wrong” about a goal because they don’t want to be back at the drawing board trying to figure out another goal if it turns out that they need or want to pivot course.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. That’s why our WHY is always so important and it’s no different with your finances. Richards also attests that knowing your why, why money is important to you and why you want/need to have it – will enable you to identify your goal(s) more easily.
Knowing our why gives us structure, something to lean against and catch us when we get stuck or need to reevaluate things. Goal setting isn’t that hard when you know WHY you’re doing something. Our why shines a light on our goals just like our goals shine a light on our next steps.
When you take time to think about things more deeply and find alignment in that thinking your next steps will reveal themselves.
For example, in Richards’ book one of his clients wanted to take time to start a family – that was their WHY – they wanted to put away money so that they could take time off work and start a family without feeling like their future was in jeopardy.
So, one of their goals obviously was to save up x amount of money to be able to live x amount of months without working. The obvious next steps to come from that goal would be to assess how much they need each month to live as they start a family and then assess how much they can reasonably put away each month before they can take time off of work.
Make sense?
My free download for this week is a worksheet that walks you through this exact exercise that Richards lays out in his book – start with what you value {what’s your WHY} and then start creating some goals. Be sure to visit the show notes – www.therockstaradvocate.com/ep47 to download it. If your goals change, always go back to you WHY and new goals will be easier to create.
The second big takeaway that I got from reading the book was that this doesn’t have to be rocket science. Carl Richards is also a columnist for the New York Times, providing weekly doodles that have a way of breaking down seemingly complex matters into simple, digestible illustrations. You can also follow him on Instagram to see them as well.
Throughout the book he literally illustrates his points through Sharpie-drawn graphs and figures. As creatives many of us are visual learners and I found this extremely helpful.
It breaks down finances into common sense. For example he has a graph with 2 axes your values and what you spend your money on. The line on the graph represents happiness and it increases positively on the graph meaning the more you spend your money on what you value the happier you are.
Simple enough, right? But we don’t always think of that when we fall for those impulse buys that we think will bring us happiness but we end up regretting or simply feeling nothing towards it later on as it doesn’t represent what we truly value.
When we can break things down into simple, black and white figures we can make better decisions and reduce our anxiety around money and the power we let it have over us. This book helped me realize that I’m not too dumb or too inexperienced with finances to be able to have control over where my money goes and why.
The last takeaway I’ll share also goes hand-in-hand with how I treat my business as a whole – it has to do with competition.
Richards shares many times throughout the book that we all fall prey to sizing ourselves up against our neighbors — and in many cases these “neighbors” live on Instagram and Twitter. The ones you look at to see what they’re buying, how they’re running their career, who they’re working with, etc.
I know you’ve been there! We all have. It happens. But when we allow what others are doing to dictate what we do, especially with our finances, we get ourselves into a lot of trouble.
Ever notice how one of your friends gets married and then it’s like wedding fever and they all start getting married? Or having kids? Or buying a house? Society has a greater influence on us than we may care to admit. It’s important to stop and consider WHY you are making certain choices to see if they are, in fact, your choices.
We also follow the pack when we’re afraid of being wrong, which I touched upon earlier. This fear of being wrong and the need to do it right – we look to others to lead our decisions so that if it doesn’t go right we can blame them, right?
All too often I see musicians release albums, invest in expensive video equipment or pitch to 100 blogs without once stopping to think about what makes sense for their career at this point in time. They are simply following what they see others do, what they feel is expected of them.
And I get it, it’s a hard road to navigate and you’re doing your best but often times we avoid decisions and default to whatever seems most popular because we’re afraid of getting it wrong if we build our own path. Richards says on page 7, “Irrational decisions and bad calls about money aren’t, ‘failures’; they’re just what happens when emotional creatures have to make decisions about the future with limited information.”
Meaning you’re not always going to follow the plan or get it right. You’re human!
Accept that and don’t let it keep you from trying. I could go on, but I want you to read the book so I’ll end my love letter to Carl Richards here.
In closing, dealing with money is not much different than dealing with any other area of your business. It takes self-awareness, courage to be fully aligned with your desires and values, and the willingness to get it wrong, learn from it, and keep going.
I thank you for listening and I hope you enjoyed this book review. Let me know what you think in the show notes comments or shoot me an email! Should I do more of these? Would you do a book club? Is there a book you recommend? Full disclosure I’m only interested in non-fiction books for these purposes.
Head on over to www.therockstaradvocate.com/ep47 and let me know your thoughts! And while you’re there be sure to check out the additional ‘rock’sources and download my freebie – My One Page Financial Plan worksheet.
If you’re looking to figure out your next steps, find time to balance everything on your plate, or work on building your money mindset, let’s talk!
Email me at anytime: suz@therockstaradvocate.com
Until next time, Rockstar! Have a wonderful week and I hope to see you back here next week so we can get grounded to get rising! Take care.
Key Highlights
- How I came across this book
- What Financial Management has in common with Time Management
- How you can create your own One Page Plan
- Why doodles help
- The trap of comparison paralysis
Links/Rocksources
- Theme music brought to you by DC-based Indie/Pop band Sub-Radio
- More podcast episodes can be found here
- You can download a copy of the episode’s transcript here
- Grab Carl Richard’s The One Page Financial Plan here
- Learn more from Carl Richards on his website Behavior Gap here
- Look at what Carl Richard’s own One Page Plan looks like here
- Follow Carl on Instagram @BehaviorGap
Download this template to create your own One Page Financial Plan based on Carl Richard’s practices!
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