364 - The Finance Formula You Need

Unf*ck Your Biz With Braden

On today's episode of the podcast I'm sharing my finance formula and how to make it work for your personal financial plans.

The Finance Formula is a bonus resource included in our Unf*ck Your Biz alumni membership. I am a very big advocate of people fixing their business before they dive too deep into personal finances so even if you're not a Finance Formula member, you can still learn a lot from this episode on how to implement this to improve your personal finances.
It's hard to strategize how much money to put away for emergency savings or retirement if you don't know how much you're actually making. We need to know our income, revenue, business expenses, profit, tax rate and how much we should be putting away to pay the IRS quarterly. If your business is not really fucked up and you don't think you need this, I would challenge you on that because there probably are some things we need to fix.
To get the most out of the Finance Formula, we need to start with our money mindset
- Ask yourself questions like "What are some of your beliefs about money?"
- Read a money mindset book or two (I recommend Denise Duffield Thomas)
- Get as little or as much woo-woo as you want with it
Learn the bare bones basics about retirement and get up-to-date on retirement plans.
1. Take advantage of 401k match if it is available to you or your spouse through an employment role
2. Max out a Roth IRA
3. Max out 401k if you have one
4. Look into self-employed retirement options
Tackle debt
- I have a lot of feelings on Dave Ramsey, but his most popular teaching is his debt snowball method to help you pay off your debts from smallest to largest by making minimum payments on all your accounts.
- What Dave Ramsey is missing is nuance, customization to our own individual needs, and that's where the Finance Formula comes in.

The best way to look at this is with a hypothetical. Let's say you have four goals:
- Build an emergency fund of $3,000
- Pay your quarterly business taxes
- Start a retirement account
- Pay down, let's say, $3,000 in consumer debt

What order do you prioritize them? How would this change if your consumer debt was a lot higher, like $50,000? There's not really a right and a wrong answer, it's personal for everyone based on so many factors like how old you are, how long you have until you want to retire, what your income looks like, etc.

It's important to get the wheels turning so we can focus on our own individual goals. For more personalized examples of what your Finance Formula might look like, check out today's episode.