I’ve been looking forward to a certain Saturday morning in late December for a while. Why? Because I want to know if I can put new windows on my house this year. And I want to know if I can afford some extra landscaping help before my backyard turns into a wildlife preserve. (That’s just not my style.) Oh- and I want a lot more clothes this year. And maybe more of those three day weekends, where I actually leave the city. And I think I need more of this and I want more of that…

So  a couple of Saturdays ago, I finally sat down with my magic crystal ball. I was a bit nervous what I would see in the ball. For extra support, I stayed in my pink fluffy bathrobe, grabbed some of those Christmas cookies my mom made and brewed the best cup of coffee. For extra measure, I poured some eggnog in my cup, instead of milk. Then I called up The Crystal Ball and set to work.

(Lights darken, crystal ball begins to glow, getting brighter and brighter, mists swirl in its depth and begin to part, and I lean forward, peering into the future….)

Two hours later, I had all my answers. Well, I had a lot of answers and I wanted time to think. To feel. To journal.  To digest the future I had just seen. This future seemed to have several scenarios and I was going to have to make some choices. (I am reminded of that saying, “You can have anything you want, but you can’t have everything you want.” Rats.) And it’s true that you can’t change what you can’t see. Now I had “seen” it all. Yes, I would need to make some changes to my oh-so-beautiful plans for the year. So I poured another cup of coffee. With eggnog.

Each year I go through this ritual, and I simply can’t imagine living without a crystal ball. The crystal ball is my annual spending plan.  Some call it a “budget”, but I really hate that word and I don’t even let my money coaching clients use it. It’s a PLAN.  My plan. I create a plan every month to guide me through the month. Wow. It’s truly hard for me to imagine not having this monthly guiding light. But every December I take it to the next level and plan the entire year. I do for myself what I help my clients do.

I think about all the things I really want in the coming year, and all of the things I need. (I really need windows. I really want more travel.) I think about the reality of my life and what large expenses will come regardless of my love of them—car repair, my son’s orthodontist bill. I think about my goals and my dreams for the future.

When I work on my annual spending plan, I have to balance all of my needs and wants against the money I have coming in this year. Oh- that part. But there is a fundamental truth to money that doesn’t change: you simply cannot spend more money then you have coming in. Well, you can by using debt or draining your assets, but in the long run, there is great unhappiness and stress down that road.  So when I create my annual plan, I do indeed compare all of my desired (and undesired- let’s be honest here) outgo, with my projected inflow. 

Working with an annual spending plan is where art meets science. For 15 years I’ve helped people feel more in control of their finances, and hence their life.  It’s certainly true that money is not the most important thing. But I find that when people have a clear plan and have a way to actually follow their plan, they think less about money and can then settle down and focus on what is important in their life. I have definitely found this to be the case in my own life. 

Well, for now, I’m still working on my own annual plan. The crystal ball showed me several futures and now I do indeed need to make some decisions. I need to chart the course for this year. That’s the beauty of the crystal ball. It merely shows possible futures and outcomes. It shows me where I will be financially come next December if I do various things. Nothing is set in stone. I get to ultimately decide which path I will go down. Then I can relax and put some time into my hobbies, my family, my friends, my life.

I love the feeling of being in the driver’s seat of my own life.

How does your money feel about how you carry it? Is money feeling well cared for in a lovely home that has room for all of it? I’m talking about your wallet.

Money is very important in your life, whether you want this to be the case or not. You spend about 40 hours of your life every week working for it! You have many, many places that you need and want to spend it. So does your wallet reflect something as important as this?

I often ask new money coaching clients if I can see their wallet. Many sheepishly drag out something they are not super proud of. It is crammed full of “stuff”, or it is almost empty because it’s what they grabbed that morning.

One issue I find is that people feel very financially scattered, and this carries over into their wallet habits. They carry their debit card in one place and their cash in another. (Is your cash stashed in nooks and crannies of pockets or loose in your purse?) They keep receipts here and there, and somewhere is their checkbook.

If this is the case for you too, then your money is feeling fractured. If you want to honor money, carry it all together. Carry your card in the same place as where you keep your cash and your receipts.

Certainly heading out to a night club may be an exception. Perhaps you only take your license, lipstick and cash. But generally speaking, use the same wallet every day. You may change your purse, but don’t change your wallet. It helps you keep your money life together.

I have a beautiful brown leather wallet. It is just the perfect size—for me. It has room for receipts in one place and cash in another. It carries my cards, and my checks. When I sit down to work on my money, all my receipts are in one place, along with my checks. I’m never hunting for my debit card and nothing ever gets lost. It is very easy.

Your wallet is the literal and figurative home for your money. If you want to honor money (and money is likely to stick around and increase if it feels honored) then consider its current- and most personal- home.

Consider a “wallet makeover” if:

* Your cash is crammed in your pockets or side of your purse
* You’re not sure where all your cash is
* Your debit card roves around
* You carry your checkbook in different places
* Your checkbook get’s rumpled and sometimes torn because it moves around
* Your wallet is not large enough to carry your cash, receipts and card (and checkbook if you write checks)
* You don’t like your wallet and are embarrassed to take it out

I tell clients that one of our first jobs is to help them get their arms around their money and come out of the “money fog”. If you want to get your arms around your own money, then a great place to start is cleaning out your wallet and carrying the same one with you all the time. Money will thank you.

Challenge: Is it time to buy a wallet you truly love? Or is it time to stop playing wallet roulette? Share your thoughts!

Well, it’s January and I am knee-deep in work. Luckily, I’ve also set some time aside to work on my goals for the year. I think the topic of goal setting gets a lot of lip service, but I suspect many of us fall short in actually setting good goals for our businesses.  What about you?

Part of the “gift” of being in business for yourself is that you have control over your work life—and control over the money you earn. Yes, yes. I know it doesn’t always feel that way! Self-employed women can earn less than their salaried counter-parts as we struggle with pricing ourselves right and being visible enough to land customers. But when you look at lists of wealthy women in the United States, you will see a large percentage went into their own business. Oh, the possibility! And what did they all do? Set goals!

Simply put, setting goals is key to earning more money. After all, being self-employed means you are the captain of your own ship. So where, exactly, are you steering your ship? Are you even steering? Or are you simply drifting about, happy that you are not sinking? (Are you pre-occupied with taking on water?) Goal setting is about setting a direction. You may not end up exactly where you thought, but you’ll land someplace really cool if you set the course and actively steer.

Over the years I’ve learned that goal- setting is not an event, but a process. For example, I have a spiral notebook that I carry with me everywhere. The front cover always says “work journal” with the date on it. I use this for to-do lists, ideas, note-taking etc. Not every page is important. But there IS gold in there at times. (Countless times I’ve written down a great idea and then forgotten about it. Later I go back and see it and think, “Wow, what a great idea I had!”) It takes me about six months to fill a notebook. I then put an end date on the cover and file it. I have about 15 of these now in my file cabinet. They are the true history of my business.

Why am I sharing this with you? On the very first page of each notebook I write down my current goals—both personal and professional. I make them “SMART”. (I’ll blog about that later.) Everyday, before I check my email, I open to the first page and read my current goals. I read them three times. Then I go about my day. Whenever I start a new spiral notebook, the first thing I do is re-write the goals into the first page, often changing them, dropping some I’ve accomplished and writing new ones. This makes it a living, breathing process.

 What can you do to make goal setting a process and not an event?

I’ve been busy creating my 2009 income and spending plan for next year, for the Women’s Earning Institute. I do this work with clients all the time, and know first hand how powerful it is. (Don’t think for a minute that I don’t practice what I preach!) An annual income and spending plan process incorporates looking back at what worked and didn’t work, dreaming about your future, goal setting, running scenarios, looking at costs and getting realistic, all in one!

This is also about opening up to more prosperity in your life. The law of attraction, which so many people talk about, demands that we be specific in what we are trying to attract to us. So give yourself something specific to focus on! Exactly how much money do you plan on making in 2009?

The first thing I did was take a good hard look at this year’s plan. I looked at what I planned for my various income streams for 2008. Some things went exactly according to plan. I planned how much money I was going to make in my private money coaching practice, and it came in just about as planned. I planned my business support groups income, and there were no surprises there either. (Though knowing what the plan was for the year kept me focused on keeping my groups full!) But some of my income streams didn’t pan out. As some of you know, I’ve killed some programs. And I’ve launched programs that were never in my original plan for 2008. Back in July I took a good hard look at my 2008 plan and made some serious adjustments in some of my plans. What a relief to be able to adjust!

These past weeks I’ve been debating my income streams for 2009. (I’ll talk about expenses in my next post.) I’ve gone to a coffee shop on more than one occasion with a calculator, notebook and hardcopy printout of my 2008 plan and actuals. Then I’ve listed out what I WANT to do in 2009. For example, I want to continue seeing private clients. I want to continue my groups. Then I listed out my other income streams: the rate-setting toolkit, live seminars, other product ideas, my 12 week (3 month) teleclass program, etc.

I kept asking myself: how do I want to spend my time? What makes me happiest? What do I want to do more of this year? What do I want to do less of? And how can I open up and stay open to more prosperity and abundance? I’ve done a lot of journaling in the last month!

Then I played with my trusty calculator and started running various scenarios. How many rate-setting tool kits do I plan to sell this year? I wrote down the total amount that I want the toolkits to generate. How many women do I want in my 3 month overcoming underearning teleclasses? How much money would this be? How many times will I offer live seminars on rate-setting and at what price point?

You get the point. It feels expansive and, truthfully, a bit overwhelming at the moment. I am planning some things that I know I’ll need help with. (Remember, I’ll talk about expenses in my next post.) But I am in charge of my life and my business. I have to decide what direction I want to go in. This is about living a conscious life. I’m not going to wander into 2009 without a good plan! Oh no. Of course, plans change and need to be adjusted. That is life. But a good plan will take you far. As for me, planning has taken me a long way!

When my local barista (someone who makes coffee- I’m in Seattle!) greets me with, “Hey, haven’t seen you in a while. How are you surviving this economic crisis?!” You know everyone is worried.

Let me share a few things that will help you.

First, stay out of the money fog. This is the worst time to be foggy. Keep your business account balanced and stay on top of paying bills. I know this is hard if you are worried about money. But if you spend more time on money, you will likely make some different decisions about how you are spending your business money. Make sure you always know what your balance is. No one ever benefited from free-floating anxiety. Get clear.

Second, look at your expenses. I took a hard look at my business expenses recently. I went through them all line by line and lowered a few. (You can scan your QuickBooks register or go through your on-line banking, line by line.) I don’t throw the baby out with the bath water, though. Some things I need to keep putting money into to keep growing, such as professional development and support. But some things can wait. I decided against a business trip/conference I really wanted to attend. And some tasks I can do myself. It’s hard, because I would prefer to delegate more tasks to my assistant. But there are a few tasks I have temporarily taken back to keep my business expenses down.

Third, tighten your cancellation policy. Simply put, I have been reminding all my clients about my cancellation policy. My clients know I will enforce it if they cancel at the last minute, so guess what—they show up or give me plenty of notice. (I’ll do a whole post on how to do this one next week.)

Fourth, stay curious. I say to myself, “I’m curious if anyone will be interested in this program.” “I wonder what will happen.” I stay curious, as opposed to worried. When worry comes up, I replace it with curiosity. I know that sounds simple, but it helps. Stay curious.

Fifth, remain grateful. Last Tuesday I went in early, grabbed a notebook and went to a café before seeing clients. I sat there and created a gratitude list. I listed out all the things I was grateful for in my business and career. It really made me think. It wasn’t easy at first and I started with small things. But by the end, I felt a whole lot better.

We will get through this difficult time. So hang on.

I am so jazzed about the Virtual Earn Your Worth program that I can barely stand it. I simply love teaching women how to earn their worth. And for me, this is about spending time in the inner circle—you’ve all heard the circle analogy from coaches. The inner circle is full of things you love, you are good at AND make you money. Then the next circle may have things you are good at but don’t love. Then the outer circles are full of those things that you aren’t good at, don’t love, and don’t make you money. Emptying your own trash probably fits there. (If you are a coach out there, chime in and help me explain the circles.)

For me, the key to being successfully self-employed has been to slowly delegate the outer circles. For example: web development. I simply hate it. And besides, I can’t really do it. So as soon as I was able, I hired a web developer. And I hired an assistant (gotta love having a virtual assistant—oh yes!) to help me keep moving towards spending more time in my inner circle. The trick has been delegating to her some of the things that I COULD do, but simply don’t love doing. Could I submit articles to article data-bases around the internet? Yes, I could do that. But is it a good use of my time? Besides, I don’t want to do that!

Teaching the Virtual Earn Your Worth Program is definitely in the inner circle. But even then, my assistant has helped with many tasks. She helps me place the members into their accountability mastermind groups, as well as deal with the shopping cart and registration. And my web developer developed the forum that the members use to communicate between our 90 minute phone training calls. So even though this program sits in my inner circle, there are piece of it in the outer circles. Those I delegate.

The key is to spend your time at the intersection of what makes you good money and what you love doing. If you get clear on this, then over time you can delegate those tasks that are in the outer circles. It is true that this takes money. Delegation costs. But could you make more money if you freed up some of your time?