This week, we’re talking about The Four Stages of Your Financial Life.

In your financial life there are 15, yes count’em, 15 things that you need to do. 15 sounds daunting, doesn’t it? If you write them all down that’s not a quick post-it note, it is a full blown and hardy list. That’s why I’ve broken up your financial life into four stages for you to accomplish those 15 things in. Because how much nicer of a number does four sound than 15.

Your financial life starts between the age of 18 to 22 and goes all the way until you retire around the age of 67-ish. In your financial life, you are going to work through four different stages. I like to call those: Survivin’, Drivin’, Arrivin’ and Thrivin’ (yes, I know those rhymed). Within each of those four stages I have broken up those 15 things you need to accomplish appropriately in each. When you have completed the designated set of “to-do’s” in each category, you can move onto the next the stage.

Before we dive into all you need to get done, we’re going to do a little self-evaluation. If you’ve been following my blog or podcast for a while you know I’m big on the self-evaluation. It gives us a starting point. A great inside to not only where you are in your financial life, but it will tell us the stage you’re in and whether there are things you need to catch up on or plan for. In this episode I will break down each stage and the tasks they include for you to successfully, at your own pace, make it to the next stage of your financial life.

You may be sitting there reading this and asking yourself, “How long does it take to make it through each stage?” Excellent question. It will be different for each individual, and that’s the beautiful thing about it. It may take a fresh college graduate who started a respectable salaried job right after school only two or three years to get out of survivin’. While it may take someone who has restarted their financial life 10 years to accomplish all the tasks in the first stage. This is where the 15 things come into role as: goals. Goals are apart of why I created these stages, to help focus on individual tasks to be accomplished. If you aren’t setting and working towards a goal(s), then you could be survivin’ for the rest of your life. You don’t want that, and I don’t want that. Focus on working towards your goals. The more your focus on them, the sooner you’ll make it through to the next.

I’ll be here to help you through each and every stage along the way.