The True Cost of Happiness: The Real Story Behind Managing Your Money

Chapter 3. The Big Picture: WHAT YOU'RE PLANNING FOR

I always marvel at the ways in which most of us stumble when we try and verbalize what we want to do with our lives. We have ideas: "Spend quality time with family," "See the world," "Make a difference," but the ideas are usually short on specifics. Rarely do we have a plan to live out those goals as soon as we would like to.

This isn't a dress rehearsal—this is your real life! This is your one chance to do the things you care about.

Seeing that big picture—those things we want to achieve—is challenging, especially when we are so focused on our day-to-day lives.

It becomes easy to forget that our dreams are worth accomplishing. In fact, the things we dream about are clues to where our true happiness lies.

Let's clarify your goals and dreams so that we can create a financial plan to support them.

Thinking about What's Important

The most effective exercise I have seen in helping people clarify their goals was created by George Kinder, author of The Seven Stages of Money Maturity (New York: Dell, 2000). George is recognized as the founder of the Life Planning movement. Financial Planning magazine, the gold standard when it comes to publications for the industry, has named him as one of the six "most influential" financial planners in America. The other five have all studied with him! At his Kinder Institute of Life Planning, planners from all over the world learn how to apply Life Planning techniques in their work with their clients.