Let’s Build Financial Flexibility

Give Yourself Room to Flex

You can learn how to manage your money wisely and still make room for the things you enjoy. Building a strong financial foundation includes being intentional about financial flexibility. Once you begin practicing healthy financial habits, your daily decisions will be more aligned with building a life you love.

Financial flexibility means having the freedom to choose where and when to use your resources. It doesn’t mean you have millions in the bank, rather you have the knowledge of how to optimize your cashflow to accomplish your goals.Once you understand how to exchange skills for income, you can improve the control you have on your cashflow.

Know Your Strengths

Invest the time to think about the skills you’ve already developed. Identify the experiences that you enjoyed the most. Your skills and interests play a big role in helping you develop financial flexibility and resilience.

• Make a list of your top strengths
• Include the tools or resources you need to do them
• Create a summary of your experience with each one
• Calculate how much time is required to do each and how much you could get paid (cost analysis)
• Prioritize skills that require the lowest cost/time-commitment and greatest potential for income

Your skills can be used for a quick income boost for a one-time expense or goal. They can also be used to create additional income streams to help pay off debts or grow into a business. By investing in your skills and interests you build financial flexibility to do more of what you want to do. You take them with you wherever you want to go.

Build Equity Not Liability

Equity means ownership and options. Equity begins in childhood when you receive gifts from your parents or relatives. Those gifts were 100% yours. You could enjoy them, care for them or wear them out. The choice was yours. As kids, most of us didn’t think about selling our toys, books or clothes for money, but the option was there. That is actually one of the best ways to teach kids about ownership and options.

Choose wisely the quality and longevity of your belongings. Rather than filling your life with stuff, slowly add functional, multi-purpose pieces – from clothing to furniture. Only purchase what you can afford at the time. Even if you take advantage of a 0% offer, make sure you can pay it off early if necessary – like if you need to sell it.

When you choose to sell something, use a trusted sales platforms that you have tested out. Avoid using pawn shops that involve paying a sales person, that significantly reduces your profit. The best option is selling directly to another person. The same goes for purchasing as well. If you know what you’re looking for, yard sales and estate sales can be incredible sources for high quality furnishings, tools and equipment.

Build equity by snowballing your purchases. You start with a car, house or other asset that has the potential for leverage. For example, use your car to do deliveries or ride-sharing. Save up your earnings from that to trade up for a little bit better car. Get a roommate or rent out your home while you’re out of town. Save up your earnings to improve your space, pay down your mortgage or use for a large deposit on a piece of land or house of your won. Use any other asset, like a mower, sewing machine or garden, to bring in additional income to grow your side gig.

Instead of going big and taking on large amounts of debts, take time to carefully curate the life you want. Take time to explore and experiment. Fail on a small scale and grow from there.Give yourself opportunities and options by building financial flexibility.

Want to learn more about financial flexibility?

Schedule a free 15-minute coaching session to learn more about our 1:1 Financial Zen Coaching program. We provide positive, practical guidance to improve financial wellness. Let us know how we can help you build financial flexibility at coach@myfinzen.com.

Join the Financial Zen community for more insights and resources: