Goals – Page 3 – mardihumphreys.com

Common Cents

Photo by Public Domain Pictures from Pexels

This is the time of year we think about buying decorations, fancy food, party clothes, and gifts. So it’s also a good time to think about some financial fundamentals to keep our long-term savings goals on track.

1. Allowance

Treat yo’ self is real, but if it puts us in debt we aren’t doing it right. We can set money aside from every paycheck for splurging. When the mood strikes, we only spend the money we saved for the binge. We can also keep a change jar or piggy bank. Since we pay for most purchases with a card these days this style of saving takes a long time, but delayed gratification is not always a bad thing.

2. Pay with cash

I know this sounds archaic and inconvenient, but that’s kinda the point. If we have to literally pull bills out of our wallets, count them, then hand them over to the cashier at Bath and Body Works, we see and feel how much those buy-three-get-three-free body care items REALLY cost us. There’s just something about handing our hard earned money over to someone else that makes us feel the loss more intensely.

3. Write it down

The point isn’t to change our habits, but to identify them. If we use our debit or credit cards to purchase everything we buy and pay bills online through our banks, we can just look at our queues for a month and see where all our money goes. From this data, we can make decisions regarding what changes we want to make. Too many trips to Starbucks? Maybe it’s time to take coffee from home with us to the office. If Starbucks is a priority, where else could we cut back?

4. Strategic direct deposit

We can usually assign percentages of our paycheck to different accounts. If we have an interest bearing savings account, we can divert a percentage of our wages to it every pay period. We don’t miss that money if we don’t have easy access to it.

5. Be generous

If we’re generous with our time, talent, and treasure, that generosity comes back to us and usually not in the way we expect. Paying for our friend’s lunch doesn’t mean she will pay the next time. It could be that your daughter buys you the sweater you had your eye on at Target. Now is a good time to ask friends and family if they’d like us to donate to their favorite charity as their present this year. If so, we may want to do a little research to ensure our financial gifts go to the group the organization says they’re helping. (E.g., if we donate to an organization that helps people, will our money go to the people or to administrative fees?)

With a little common sense and a bit of self-control, we can reach our savings goals without feeling deprived.

Do you trick yourself into being frugal? Please share some tips in the comments section below.

Just Adjust

Tenacity is when we try something, but if it doesn’t work we try different ways to achieve the same goal. Here’s why and how we should develop tenacity on the job.

Why:

Tenacity is a hard ability to train, so tenacious employees earn the respect of both their managers and peers. Workers willing to do what is necessary for the business to endure downturns are the ones who get to keep their jobs. Successful people are tenacious. Doing hard things and seeing them through to completion gives us confidence. We develop mental toughness and keep going when others quit. Most people expect Plan A to work every time, but how often does that really happen? There are 26 letters in the alphabet. Let’s be unafraid to go back to a failed Plan A and revise it to make a Plan B, Plan C, or however many letters it takes to overcome the setback. Let’s learn how to not make the same mistake twice. Making new mistakes is much more fun.

How:

Perceive failures as experiments: When we think we’ve spent all our energy and ideas on overcoming our obstacle, let’s give it one more try and change the input to achieve a better outcome. Often, the answer lies just beyond what we think we’re capable of.
Set S.M.A.R.T. goals: We’ll filter our responsibilities through them. E.g., if we want to be the team’s SME for JavaScript, how do the tasks on our daily to-do lists get us closer to that goal?
Identify a coworker as a friendly rival. We’ll find someone who is competing for the same promotion or the same client, etc., and use her as the bar against which we measure our work. Does she know Excel better than us? We can take an online class (many are free with a library card) to increase our knowledge. I call competing with someone who is on my team “coopetition.” (Think Group Round during Hollywood Week on American Idol). We strive to outperform this person because we admire her success. We can use this as motivational fuel to course correct when we’re struggling. This study says we succeed when our rival succeeds. We can learn from her mistakes as well as build on her successes.
Jim Rohn said, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” Let’s hang out with tenacious people: professional groups, friends, family, and people with our job title from other companies. We can also read biographies of tenacious people and study what they did.
Tenacious people are comfortable with being uncomfortable. If our fear of failure is holding us back, let’s do something about it. Let’s sift through the symptoms to get to the root. (Journaling may help us see it easier.) Then take baby steps every day to overcome it.

Tenacity comes through practice. The bad news is, this means facing adversity over and over again. The good (?!) news is, life gives us plenty of adversity to practice with.

Please share your story of how you’re developing tenacity in the comments section below.

Funding Your Financial Future

Investing. Just typing the word overwhelms me. I don’t begin to understand the process of how to buy stocks, which bonds to purchase, or what it means to my financial future when the Dow dips. Do you feel the same? I’ve done some research and found a few things you can do to supplement your retirement savings.

Pay loans off quickly

The faster you pay off debt, the sooner you can stash money into a retirement plan. Student loans, car payments, mortgage, credit cards, etc. all keep your money tied up. When you get “free” money: a cash bonus, cash gift for you birthday, tax refund, etc. use it to make an additional payment on your loan. Since you weren’t counting on that money, you won’t miss it.

Invest in your company’s 401k

If your company offers matching contributions, contribute the maximum amount you can afford. It’s free money. Take full advantage of that benefit. Start as early in your employment as possible. If you’re concentrating on paying off debt, make the minimum contribution. When you are debt free, increase your 401k contributions by the monthly amount you were paying your creditor.

Open an Individual Retirement Account (IRA): If you are eligible, this is the traditional route. I thought an IRA was an investment, but it’s actually a savings account with tax breaks attached. It’s unwise to rely solely on a pension and Social Security to fund your retirement. Every day people are celebrating their 100th birthdays. Plan accordingly.

Invest in real estate

If you’re a gambler, you may enjoy real estate crowdfunding. Which is essentially pooling your money with other people’s money to purchase properties that someone else manages and or sells. It’s not a huge return on your investment, but you may like it better than stock trading.

Use a micro-investment app

The concept of rounding up the amount of a purchase to the nearest dollar, then diverting that difference into an investment account is brilliant. Acorns, Stash, Robinhood, and WiseBanyan have figured out how to do it. Using this method of investment won’t provide huge returns, but if you keep spare change in a jar on the kitchen counter, it’s not working for you. You may as well have a little bit of money making you a little bit more money.

Get a side gig

This can be as intense as working retail or as laid back as dog walking. You can work for someone else, like a big box store. You can work for someone else while setting your own schedule, like being a ride share driver. Maybe it’s time to launch your own business, like online guitar lessons. If you have a skill you can monetize, you can put that money in your retirement fund. As an additional benefit, you set yourself up for having a stream of revenue when you retire from full time employment. Exploring your options while working full time sets you up for life beyond the daily grind.

There are numerous ways you can save for retirement. Investing can be as complicated or as easy as you want to make it. The important thing is to do something to financially provide for your future.

What kind of investing do you do? Please share in the comments section.

There’s Nothing Holding Me Back

Do you compare yourself to others? How’s that workin’ out for ya? Most of us have an innate sense of competition. Your teammate reaching his sales goal while you struggle frustrates you. You’re jealous when a coworker receives a promotion and you don’t. But just because someone is winning doesn’t mean you’re losing. You can allow these circumstances to set the bar you pole vault over. Here are four things you can do to be your own competition.

Determine what success means to you. It will look different on you than on those to whom you compare yourself. Use your definition to filter your decisions, actions, and goals. For example, do you want a promotion? If your company thinks customer service is important, make sure you are giving your customers great service. When a customer compliments you on how you treated her, be proactive. Give her your manager’s email address and ask her to send your manager a brief note.

Write down your S.M.A.R.T. goals. It isn’t enough just to think about them. Track them weekly. At the end of the month, ask yourself: What went well? What didn’t? What could I have done differently? What action will I take to improve? This will help you maintain focus. When you get distracted from your goals, you get disoriented. This makes improvement and success both harder and slower to obtain. Develop habits that concentrate on your own path and no one else’s. At the end of the day ask yourself: Am I better today than I was yesterday? Did I stop a negative thought and replace it with a positive action step?

Have a conversation (over coffee, of course). Brainstorm with a confidante who doesn’t have your same job title. Someone outside your industry has a different perspective and sees possibilities you can’t. Even if what they suggest isn’t feasible for you, the point isn’t for them to give you a new business model, it’s to pull you out of the spin cycle in your head so you can think differently about your situation. I had coffee recently with a former coworker I’d not spoken to in about a year. Just by catching up we saw things in each other’s journeys that left us with new ways to approach our jobs.

Take a break. Does social media impact how you think of yourself? There is always going to be someone else with a bigger house, a nicer car, and a more exciting life. If their Instagram posts inspire you to push forward, great. But remember, those people are advertising their values and goals which are not necessarily the same as yours. You can’t generate momentum to reach your goals if your attention is diverted to someone else’s. Don’t compare yourself to other people living their best lives. If scrolling makes you miserable, close the apps for a while.

You are unique. Even with the same job title, you’re different from your coworker. You don’t have the same abilities, resources, obligations, motivations, or challenges. You are your biggest competition.

What adjustments do you make when you realize you’re the only one holding you back? Please share them in the comments section.

You do You

Staying positive is hard. If you don’t intentionally protect your mind, you quickly get stuck in a cycle of negative thinking that can prevent you from achieving your goals. People have a habit of building each other up just to tear each other down in order to feel better about ourselves. When the world chips away at your self-esteem, try a couple of these:

“Don’t forget in the darkness what you learned in the light.” – Joseph Bayly – When you’re faced with a choice, you think about what you should do, deliberate with yourself and maybe a trusted colleague, plan how to proceed, and go. Then you hit a rough patch and second guess your decision. Why are you surprised when trouble brews? I have a T-Shirt with the Harry Potter quote, “I don’t go looking for trouble. Trouble usually finds me.” Just because you encounter resistance doesn’t mean you chose poorly. Obstacles happen so resist giving up too soon. If you keep putting in the work, revise the plan when new information becomes available, and take a step to further the plan every day, you will eventually reach your goal.

Kick Imposter Syndrome to the curb – When you work hard, you deserve every accolade you receive. Stop listening to the voices telling you you’re not ready for your next career step, especially the ones in your head. Make a list of what you’re good at so you can refer to it when you doubt yourself. Need some ideas? What have your friends/coworkers/managers said you’re good at? If you agree, build your list from those. Use this list to come up with affirmations to tell yourself when you get discouraged. Play to your strengths, get good at them, and ignore the haters. Do your thing because what makes you different from everyone else is actually your super power.

Choose to learn from your critics – Criticism stings. Even if you’re expecting it (e.g., during a performance evaluation) and it’s delivered gently, it’s difficult to take the emotion out of the encounter. When you receive criticism (and you will), ask yourself: Is this person objective? Is her criticism constructive? Does she normally encourage as well as criticize? Does she have something to gain (or lose) by telling me this? Do you know more about the situation than she does? Does someone you trust agree with her assessment? If you deem the criticism as valid, then act on it. If not, then ignore it. If ignoring it isn’t an option, calmly prove your case with facts and figures to back it up. Disagreement with someone is an opportunity to learn from each other.

Sometimes we get grumpy slogging through both our expectations and other people’s expectations of us. To protect your mind:

Know yourself
Acknowledge your values and worldview, and respect those different from yours
Treat others the way you want to be treated
You do you.

How do you keep your mindset positive? Please share your tips in the comments section.

What’s it all for?

Captain Herschel L. Smith Photo Credit to the owner

Memorial Day is a holiday dedicated to honor those who died while serving in military service to America. It always reminds me of my Grandpa, Herschel L. Smith. Although, he didn’t die in the line of duty (Thank You, Lord), so I don’t know why Memorial Day makes me think of him. He served as a Captain in the U.S. Army Air Corps and piloted B-24 Liberators during WWII. His plane was shot down over Germany. As the enemy moved in to take his crew captive, he told his men, “We’re going to win the war. We’re just not gonna win it today.” And for the next 11 months they were POWs. He had a purpose: to keep hope alive in his team. Through the filter of winning a war, decision making gets simple; not easy, but straightforward. We benefit from our military personnel’s sacrifices to maintain our freedom. So what are we doing with this privilege? What is my purpose? What is yours?

Make time to find your purpose. Here is an article to help. Finding your purpose may take a while, but it’s a wise investment. Making decisions through the filter of purpose causes wise choices to be more obvious and simplifies the process. For example: If you are in sales (spoiler alert: everyone is in sales), your purpose is to help your customers. You want to provide them with a product or service they need at a price they can afford. When you approach a potential customer with that mindset, your instinct is to ask them what their pain points are. When you learn the obstacles they face, it helps you figure out how to fix their problems with your product or service.

Experiment. Have you always wanted to do something, but never had time: Gourmet cooking? Coding? Story telling? You’ll never just have time. You have to make time. Jump in and take a class. Or, are you really good at something? Get yourself a YouTube channel and teach others what you know. Do you love dogs? Volunteer at your local animal shelter. Do you want to make a difference in a young person’s life? Mentor.

Remember you have more than one. You bring one purpose to your partner. You bring a different purpose to your first child and a different purpose to each subsequent child. You bring a purpose to your mom and a different purpose to your dad and a different purpose to your bestie. You may bring multiple purposes to your job, church, school, intramural team, book club, etc.

It can evolve over time. When our daughter was little, my purpose as a mom was to guide and protect. Now that she’s an adult it’s to encourage and support.

In closing, I salute Captain Herschel L. Smith with some of his favorite words:
By the world I was soon forgotten
No one has mourned for me
as over the world I have wandered
across the boundless sea
So drink to me again boys through the midst of crocodile tears
for when I’m gone no one will mourn
the last of the bombardiers

Please share how your journey to finding your purpose is going in the comments section.

The Blame Game

Ever think about taking shortcuts at work? Sometimes in weekly meetings with my manager I’d think, “It would just be so easy to blame Joe Sixpack and his long smoke breaks for production being down this month.” When in reality, if I’d made 20 more cold calls two weeks ago, we probably could’ve reached our monthly goal. In that moment, I had to decide whether or not I would be accountable. businessdictionary.com defines accountability as: “The obligation of an individual or organization to account for its activities, accept responsibility for them, and to disclose the results in a transparent manner. It also includes the responsibility for money or other entrusted property.”

Why should accountability matter to you?

Because it directly affects your team’s productivity, efficiency, and morale; particularly when there’s a lack of accountability. Productivity wanes because who wants to work hard next to someone who is lazy then listen to excuses for why his work isn’t done? Efficiency decreases because now your team wonders who has what role: “I thought Joe Sixpack was responsible for ordering inventory, but maybe Jane Merlot really is.” Morale declines because trust is gone and everyone feels the need to constantly protect their rears. But should you account for circumstances beyond your control? Let’s say I actually made those 20 additional cold calls two weeks ago and we still didn’t make our monthly goal. Then what? I still have to acknowledge I didn’t accomplish what was expected, but I’d ask my manager what I can do differently to reach this month’s goal.

How do you demonstrate accountability?

When you make a mistake admit it. If you can come up with a way to not make it again, have that plan ready when questioned about it. E.g.: “For inventory, I ordered 4000 widgets when I meant to order 400. I’ll ask Jane to double check my data entry before submitting the next order.” Don’t make promises you know you can’t keep and keep the promises you make. If you can’t come through, let the team know ASAP. Also brief them on what you’re doing to fix the situation. To track your accountability progress, try journaling. Here’s one that only takes five minutes. Or find an accountability partner. You can keep each other honest and on track to reaching your individual goals. Show your manager you’re serious about accountability with updates during your weekly 1:1s. If your manager doesn’t hold weekly meetings with you, write a status report on your own. What did you spend your week doing? Being able to quickly pull up a report detailing all your past projects could save your job during cutbacks. At the very least, this list makes annual performance review prep super easy.

Once your boss realizes you’re someone who knows they make mistakes and is brave enough to own them, fix them, and not repeat them, she’ll keep coming back to you with projects. A reputation for accountability adds value and security to your position.

What do you do to prove accountability to either your manager or your team? Please share in the comments section below.

Is There Something I Should Know?

When my friend found out I got a job with a company she was familiar with, she said, “Wait a minute. Are you smart? Because these guys are like, Big Bang Theory smart.” No pressure.

She’s right. I work with brilliant people. Everyday I’m reminded of how little I know; which is good. It both keeps me humble and forces me to learn new things. Walking into the office in the morning, I’m blissfully ignorant and full of confidence. Walking out of the office in the afternoon, I’m dolefully aware and have a to-learn list. Feeling like I know something when I actually don’t has a name: Unconscious Incompetence. And it’s dangerous. It prevents me from recognizing certain situations as problems, so I’m unaware I need help solving them. It’s the classic stage one of the learning model.

Right about now you’re asking yourself: “How do I know if I’m Unconsciously Incompetent?” You can get clues by using a process. For example, when your manager gives you an assignment, ask:

Q: What is the project?
A: Proofreading a report.
Q: What does she want done?
A: In addition to grammar and spellcheck, look at comma use and sentence fragments. Track any changes.
Q: When is it due?
A: One week from today.
Q: What should the deliverable look like?
A: A 12 page report in the company’s preferred format.

For bigger projects, give your manager regular status reports so she can course correct and ask her for KPIs. This mitigates the danger of misusing data or unintentionally ignoring important information. It decreases the odds you’ll be perceived as underperforming or at the other extreme, overconfident. This process can reveal what you don’t know. If you have much to learn, you now have time to either acquire the skills you need or reach out to a skilled team member for help before the deadline.

How can you proactively combat Unconscious Incompetence?
– Discover your weaknesses: Ask a trusted coworker where he thinks your blind spots are. Ask a friend what she think your strengths and weaknesses are.
–Take a skills test: like Strengths finder 2.0 (look for it at your local library) or you can take a free course on Lynda.com.
–Find out what skills your company values: These will be your learning objectives. For example: If your company is hiring programmers, learn some basic coding (Also from Lynda.com; it doesn’t have to cost money). There’s no point in learning to basketweave if your company doesn’t sell baskets. Learn a skill that will help you keep your (or get a new) job.
–Reflect: Recall a time you realized you didn’t know something. What did you do then? Did you read a book? Take a class? Interview a coworker who was a subject matter expert? Can you repeat that process in this situation?

Realizing you are Unconsciously Incompetent can be embarrassing at first, but it’s crucial for identifying the next step in growing your career, and that’s exciting!

Ever been Unconsciously Incompetent at work? Please share what you did to bridge your knowledge gap in the comments section below.

Dollars and Sense

Our daughter moves to Chicago next month to begin her first full-time job. She’ll earn more money than she’s made in her entire life. There are lessons my husband and I taught her about managing money that I feel good about and lessons I wish we’d known we should teach her, like:

How to use a bank: When our daughter was sixteen years old, my husband helped her open a debit account and linked it to ours. We not only see how much she’s spending, but can also transfer money between our accounts in case of emergencies.

Save your allowance: We struggled to develop a satisfactory allowance plan. One one hand, when she asked for the latest iPhone, we said, “Save your allowance.” On the other, if you get $10 a week just for existing, what does that teach? Some chores you should just do because you’re part of a family: clean your room, put your dishes in the dishwasher, do your own laundry, etc., right?

If you have a car, you have a job: My parents gave her money to buy a car and we paid for insurance, but gas and oil changes were her responsibility and her allowance wasn’t enough to cover those. My husband and I think working either in retail or food service should be mandatory and the earlier in life, the better. Those industries teach excellent customer service lessons. Our daughter got a job at an ice cream shop. We got discounts. 🙂

You need skin in the game: We had a Roth IRA to pay for college. She used it up freshman year. To pay for future years, she had a scholarship, financial awards, and student loans, but these didn’t cover all her expenses. So we made a deal. We’d make up the difference for the next three years. Any classes beyond four years, grad school, and student loans are her responsibility. She also had to work part-time. As a result she figured out how to get her bachelor’s degree in four years, sought free money (e.g. she received a grant for being a vice-president of her campus activities board), and worked; sometimes three jobs at a time. In other words, she learned how to hustle.

Be generous: When you’re comfortable giving money away, it loses its power over you. Growing up she helped us give and serve. Today she is known for her generosity and volunteerism.

Good credit is important: We intentionally avoided helping her get a credit card until her senior year in college. My husband counsels her on what to charge, how to check her balance, and when to pay the bill.

There are a few things I wish we’d done: Taught her how to make a proper budget, forced her to save for a goal (e.g., buying her own car), and avoided student loans. Last week she was at the grocery looking for something over the counter to take for her allergies. She texted me a photo asking if the drug would make her feel better. The package revealed she’d chosen a generic instead of brand name; maybe she learned something after all.

How do you teach your children the value of a dollar? Please share your story in the comments section below.

Scaredy Cat

“I wanna see you be brave.” Sara Bareilles

I want to be brave, but I don’t want to do stuff that scares me. Can’t I just go to Oz and ask the Wizard for courage? We admire courageous people because they fear inaction more than failure. It’s like writing code. I write a script, compile it, build it, and run it. More often than not the program doesn’t run correctly. So I go back into the script, find what needs fixed, run it again, and keep doing that until it’s right. Programmers expect their programs to fail. Each run reveals new data on what’s working and what isn’t. Let’s develop the same attitude toward life. Often when we do something that scares us, it turns out it wasn’t so scary after all and if it was, we prove we can do scary things leading us to freedom and peace of mind. Courage is a skill we can learn. Here are three ways I’m trying.

“Sometimes what you’re most afraid of doing is the very thing that will set you free.” Robert Tew

I take small steps. I aim to do one thing every day that makes me uncomfortable. Are you shy? Offer to onboard your new coworker. It will give you practice talking to a stranger in a familiar setting. Afraid of driving on the highway? Get on early one Saturday morning. Drive one down exit, get off, and take the surface streets home. Next Saturday get on and drive two exits down the road, etc. After a month, try exiting the highway, then getting back on it to go home. After six weeks, try getting on at a busier time of day. After nine weeks, try getting on during rush hour.

“You get in life what you have the courage to ask for.” Nancy D. Solomon

There’s a fine line between planning and procrastinating. The longer I think about a situation, the more bad outcomes I predict. Sound familiar? Pull out of analysis paralysis before negative thoughts like this get stuck in your head: “If I apply for the assistant manager position, and don’t get it, the rest of the team will think I’m a failure.” We assume others think about us more than they actually do. It doesn’t matter what anyone (except you) thinks. Don’t prevent yourself from getting the position.

“With great risk comes great reward.” Thomas Jefferson

What do you need the courage to do? Stand up to a bully? Change jobs? End a dysfunctional relationship? I’m a big fan of journaling. When I get fear out of my head and onto paper (or screen), it loses a bit of power. Here are some writing prompts: What are you afraid of? Why? What is the worst that can happen? What is the best that could happen? Use your answers to develop the framework for an action plan to conquer your fear. When you complete a step in your plan, celebrate! Effort is worth rewarding. It will take time and practice, but if we persist, we can cultivate the courage to achieve whatever we want.

What do you need courage to achieve? Please share your story in the comments section so we can encourage one another.