Today we are going over stage six, and tonight we start life training inside the Money Plan Bootcamp. If you haven't signed up yet, what are you waiting for? Go join the Money Plan Bootcamp. It's my five step framework to creating a money plane that you can actually stick to. I'm gonna walk you through it live, step by step, plusers giveaways and prizes and all the things for free. Like why wouldn't you join? Right? Go to budgets made easy.com/boot camp. Now, if you haven't already listened to last week's episodes, I tell you about the Money Success Roadmap and I walk you through the first five stages. So if you haven't listened to those already, listen to those first. Cuz today's episode is the last stage. It is stage six, It's financial freedom. You have paid off debt. Now what? So this is your bigger vision for your life, what you wanna be able to do that you can't do now because of debt. This is where you get to start building the life that you really truly want. So go listen to those other episodes first, 92 through 96 if you haven't already. Now let's dive into stage six. Welcome to the Money Mindset Podcast. Well, you'll find a judgment free zone to help you free yourself from overthinking and the fear of doing things the wrong way. It's time to shed yourself of the mom, guilt, procrastination, and perfectionism so you can start doing the things that you really want to do with your money instead of just working to pay bills. I'm Ashley Patrick, ex detective turned debt free, CEO of my very own business and stay at home mom of three. Not too long ago, my dreams of staying at home with my kids seemed impossible. I thought I'd have to stay miserable in a high stress and demanding job just so I could retire someday. After gaining the confidence in my own ability to manage my family's finances and a simple step by step plan to make it happen, I was able to pay off $45,000 in just 17 months, which then allowed me to finally quit my job, stay at home with my kids, and build a debt free business. Now, my mission is to help moms like you conquer debt and free themselves from the mental load of handling their family's finances. If you're ready to shed the guilt and shame surrounding your past money mistakes and tackle your debt, this is the place for you. Let's get started. All right, in stage six, you are debt free. Now what? You need to have a plan because otherwise you'll still be wandering aimlessly. You'll end up back into debt. You won't know what to do. And this was a problem that my husband and I had, like we knew we wanted to save, but it just didn't have the same weight to it. We didn't have a clear money goal. I didn't have a clear savings goal, and we started overspending again because we had deprived ourselves so much to get there. So I talked about that in episode 96 with paying off debt. So go listen to that if you haven't already. But now you need to create a new plan. You've create, you've achieved this huge milestone in your life and you wanna keep making progress forward and not end up going backwards, right? And so this is where you start saving even more in an even bigger emergency fund. You are being, you're able to just breathe. You want to start planning your estate and your legacy. What do you wanna leave to your children? What do you wanna leave to the world? Being able to give back, being able to quit your job like I did. You know, if you just aren't fulfilled, if you want to move on to something else in your life, if you, if you wanna stay home with your kids for a season, you know, life is all about seasons, right? And so if right now you wanna stay at home with your kids, maybe they need you more. Maybe they're little and they're not in school, or maybe they're in school, but they're having, they're struggling and they need your attention more. You know, you can do those things, even if it's temporary. You're able to build your retirement so that you don't have to rely on your kids or social security once you get to retirement. Like you want to be able to retire someday, right? Like, who wants to, I mean, if you love your job, you wanna keep working into your seventies or eighties, great, Like that's wonderful for you. But what if you get a disability? What if you get hurt? Like a huge percentage of people end up on disability later in life and aren't able to work as long as they actually wanted to. Like, they're not ready to retire, but they're forced to, even though they, that's not what they want, right? And so when you start building that legacy for yourself and that future for yourself, you're able to not really stress about those things. If they happen, they happen. But you have a plan in place. You're able to afford to take care of yourself. I mean, that's what we want, right? We want that independence. So financial freedom is also financial independence. You're able to do what you want. Maybe you wanna take a year and travel the world with your kids. Like I've seen people do that. Like that may really excite you. I don't like to travel that much, so that's not something that I, I necessarily want to do. But you know, my husband and I, we wanna take an RV around the country and see the West coast and see the other parts of our country. And you know, maybe I'll get over my fear of flying and flying over water and all the things to be able to like, we wanna go see Europe and we wanna be able to see all the things around the world where if you have a lot of debt, you can't do that. And so once you are debt free, you've gotta think about what is your next goal. You've gotta create that next vision, otherwise you'll just kind waste your time and your money just aimlessly, right? Like before, before you started managing your money. It's easy to fall back into that if you don't have a clear focus and a clear goal. So you know, now you're able to start building wealth and what does that look like for you? What does wealth look like for you? What does success mean to you? What does that mean? What does that look like? Cause it's not gonna be the same for everybody. And you know, maybe you have a different vision and a different purpose in your life and now you can start to focus on that. You can start working toward achieving that bigger vision, that bigger dream. And so really sit down and think about what that means for you. Now keep in mind if you haven't paid off debt, you are not in this stage, just like all the other stages, you have to finish each stage. Maybe you are already saving for retirement or your kids college, or you have that bigger vision, but you're not debt free. So you're still in stage five, but you're way ahead of the game once you get there, right? So just wanna reiterate that you are only in one stage at a time. Even if you are working on or have already done some things in another stage, in a forward stage, you're still need to finish the things in your stage that you haven't finished yet. So this is the stage for once you are debt free, I want you to create a new five year plan, okay? I want you to set things up on automation for investing your retirement accounts. Or if you're going to have index funds outside of your retirement account, like a brokerage account, I want you to set those things up on automatic drafts and you're able to do that now that you have money, like you're able to do what you want with your own money. It's not going to pay debt and pay for things from the past. I want you to set up your savings on automatic, your college savings. If you're gonna do that for your children, I want you to set things up on automation. So they just haven't, you get, just relax, enjoy your life and set things up where they just run without you. I want you to figure out your estate plan, get a will done, figure out what you want to do with your things. What? And of course this can change. We've changed our will a couple times as our kids have gotten older. We did it when our first was a little over a year, we didn't even have a second child yet. We've changed it again and we're gonna change it again. Like as your kids get older, you're going to change your will, but you still have to have that plan in place. You're a state plan. So sit down with an attorney in your state. I highly recommend seeing an attorney in person, not like an online lawyer, like the, you know, I'm trying to think of what it's called, but you know, it's like a generic will, okay? You're debt free. You are going to build an enormous amount of wealth and you need to protect it legally. So get a lawyer in your state that specializes in estate planning and figure out what makes the most sense for you at the stage of life that you are in. Because of course things will be different depending on your age, your kid's age, what you want, your money, where you want your money to go once you pass. And so that's all gonna look different. You need to find a attorney that as that specializes in estate planning where you live. So that's a big thing. I want you to create that vision. What do you want to do? Create a new goal, a new smart goal for the next five years. And that may look something like where, you know, once I quit my job, my plan or what I have been doing for the past five years is building my business. So I haven't been saving as much in retirement in college funds. I've saved some, but not as much as I'd want because I've been investing in my business. But here, very soon, in the next year as my business grows, I'm going to be able to start doing more of that and, and more than I would if I didn't have the business. And so keep in mind that things will change. There's a season to everything, right? There's a season to your life. So focus on kind of what you wanna do for the next five years. And of course that may change depending on what happens throughout the next five years. But just have a goal, have a vision, because I want you to stay focused on that. It's so incredibly important to have a plan for your life and have a plan for your finances so that you can stay on track because it's so easy to get distracted and just a little percent off. You know, an airplane, when an airplane is flying, if it's just 1% off over the miles, oh my gosh, you're like hundreds of miles away from your destination, right? And so saying goes for your life, if you want to end up in Charlotte, you can't be at 1% off your path, right? You need to be on your path so that you get to where you wanna go. And so if you don't create a new plan and a new vision and stay focused on reaching that destination, and when you do get off track, you're course correcting. You're gonna end up somewhere you really don't want to be, right? So we need to create a new plan. And that is something that, you know, I had to learn the hard way. You know, a lot of our mistakes that we really learn in life, we have to do it. We have to do it ourselves. We can't always learn from other people from their mistakes. Now I have, and I do learn a lot from other people's mistakes as well. But you know, know that you are going to make mistakes and try and learn from my mistake on this and create a new vision once you pay off debt. Cuz we did, we kind of, we did get off track, but we got back on. It took us a while. We didn't make as much progress as we wanted as fast as we did because we did get distracted. We got off track and then, you know, we got pregnant with third baby and decided to stay at home. So that really changed our overall plan and goals as well. And so, you know, create your plan, but have a vision for what you want your life to look like and check in with it through the year and every year. You know, make sure that that's still what you want cuz things change. You may wanna start a business and then your whole life is changed. You may wanna have another kid and your whole life has changed. You know, you may wanna move. You may say, Oh, I wanna move across the country, I wanna move to a different country. You know, things change. You've gotta check in with yourself, you've gotta check in with your partner if you're doing this with a partner. And keep that vision alive. Like keep checking in with yourself and keep checking in with your finances and make sure that where you want to go is where you're headed. And I just can't wait for you to get there because it's just so, I just don't even know how to describe it. A weight is lifted off your shoulders. You're not laying awake at night, stressed about how you're gonna pay for all the things. You know, the kids brought home another field trip form, I gotta go get cash, I have to do this, I gotta pay for school pictures and I gotta pay for the yearbook stuff and then the graduation stuff. And it's always something. And when you have a plan and a vision, you're able to a lot easier say what you want and what you don't want. And so that is just as important as saying what you want is saying what you don't want. So maybe you don't want to help your kids pay for college, some people don't. That's perfectly fine. But knowing that and making a plan for that, preparing your children for that's a whole lot better than surprising it on them this summer before they wanna go to college, right? So, you know, just create that vision, stay on track and create some new goals. Check in with those goals periodically. And of course, if you haven't already, go back and listen to the first episodes with the Money Success Roadmap. And tonight we start the Money Plan Bootcamp live. I hope you join me. We're gonna go through how to create your framework so you can create a realistic plan that works for you, but you have to sign up. So if you wanna watch three plays, if you can't join me live, you still have to sign up to be able to access those. So go to budgets made easy.com/bootcamp and I will see you there. I'll see you tonight. Let me know if you listen to this episode whenever I go live tonight. I love to hear it and I will talk to you soon.