If You Bookmark One Piece Of Money Advice Make It This One

Over here at The Money Manual we recently held an Instagram contest with our friend over at @forbetterorworth to seek out the most helpful money tip that has actually worked for someone in our community. The winner, Leo Jean-Louis (@leo.jeanlouis), is a 31-year old born in Haiti and currently living in Florida. His tip is definitely something to bookmark, both because it’s inspirational and effective for anyone on a debt free journey.  His advice for anyone who doesn’t know where to start when it comes to their finances?

My best money managing tip for folks is to start with a vision for yourself/family. Where do you want to be financially a year from now? Three years, five years, 20 years from now? By starting with the end in mind, you can then start to backtrack to see what you need to do over the course of the months/years leading to that point. Do you need to budget to get to that point? Save more? Invest more? Learn more about financial literacy? Let’s use exercising as an example. Instead of exercising just to exercise, start with an end goal in mind like being able to run a 5k or marathon, then you can backtrack and tailor your exercises specifically to that goal. The other cool thing about this money management tip is that you can see if your current behavior/habits align with where you want to end up. Then make the necessary changes. Hope this helps someone!

Jean-Louis is more than familiar with affirmations like this. The debt freedom coach paid off $224,000 of debt in just two-and-a-half years. “When we started our debt free journey, it seemed nearly impossible that we would be able to pay off $211,000,” he shared with us. “But when we started with the end in mind, it was an absolute game changer for us. The ‘end’ for us was buying back our freedom, living life on our own terms, building generational wealth, retiring early. Once we figured out what our end goal was, we back tracked and saw that the biggest thing standing in our way was our debt. So we decided to do something about it.” We challenge everyone one a debt freedom journey to do this exercise and let us know how it goes! Feature Illustration: Laura Caseley For The Money Manual