Draw a horizontal (x) axis and mark time out in months.Select an 18 by 12-inch or 36 by 24-inch piece of lined graph paper.Practice Step 5: Graph Your Income and Expenses Seeing your spending and income in visual form will encourage you to: This graph will track your progress toward financial independence. Now that you’ve evaluated your monthly expenses, you’ll learn how to track them and your income with a hand-drawn or digital graph. Step 5: Graphing Your Income and Expenses Use a “0” if you got fulfillment proportional to what you spent and think your spending should stay the same.Use a “+” if you got fulfillment proportional to what you spent and think you should spend more.Use a “-” if you didn’t get fulfillment proportional to what you spent and should spend less.If I didn’t have to work for money, would I spend more, less, or the same life energy on these purchases?.Is spending this amount of life energy consistent with my values and purpose?.Is the amount of happiness and contentment I got from these purchases worth the life energy I spent?.Using your monthly tabulation from Step 3, ask the following questions for each subcategory and category of spending: Practice Step 4: Evaluate Monthly Spending We’ll explore some questions to help you define each of these things for yourself. Fulfillment is a deep sense of satisfaction, contentment, or happiness that you get from working toward and recognizing achievements.

To do this, think about the fulfilling ways you spend your life energy. In order to align your time and spending with these criteria, you need to identify and get acquainted with your values, purpose and dreams.

But this isn’t always the case, hence why people stay in jobs they dislike. We feel fulfilled when our behavior is in line with these criteria. Our values, purpose, and dreams should dictate how we spend our time and life energy, or money. You’ll use this as the basis for Step 4: deciding whether your spending aligns with these benchmarks. To assess whether you’re living the life you want, you need to explore your values, purpose, and dreams. Step 4: Aligning Spending With Your Values, Purpose, and Dreams Error is any unaccounted money gained or lost for the month. Calculate your savings for the month: (Income - Expenses) +/- total error.For each subcategory and category, calculate the amount of life energy you spent by dividing the total by your real hourly wage. Then, sort each expense for the past month into your subcategories. Create a spreadsheet, budgeting tool, or Google Sheet to list different categories and subcategories.

Your money your life vicki robin