In this episode, we discuss the importance of thinking about three options for yourself so you can give yourself more clarity in life.
Full Transcript
Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, with your host Joe Bautista. In this podcast, my goal is to give you quick lessons on how to grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually so you can have better careers, better relationships, and better personal finances.
I’m also the author of the book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to Get Better Every Day”. In this book, I wrote down over 30 tips to help you grow in those four cornerstones. I’m also the founder of Grow With Joe, where I combine self-development coaching and financial planning for Latino Professionals.
In today’s episode, we’re are going to talk about how I help people make decisions. There are an infinite amount of outcomes that could happen, and if we did everything right, there is no guaranteed that we will get the outcome that we desire. So what I like to do with clients is give them three different outcomes and let them choose what is best for them.
For example with retirement, based on a client’s current situation, I can show them what retirement will look like at age 62, which is the earliest that someone can take social security in most cases, then at age 70 which is the age your social society benefit caps out, and then at age 66 which is the middle of the two. When clients see these different options, they can make more informed decisions about their future.
If they are ahead of schedule for their retirement goals, they might be more satisfied with retirement at age 62, or it might motivate them to save more so they can retire earlier. Or if they might like their job and enjoy that they will have more money in retirement at age 70. Or they might be satisfied with something in the middle. When I present these numbers, they are not guaranteed but they serve a benchmark for what is possible.
Once you know what is possible, then it can help you understand which choices you should make in life. I found that a lot of people don’t really know what choices they should make to improve their future. If you want to retire early, you’re going to start saving more now or create a business that you can sell in the future that will give you the amount you need.
You can do this in other parts of your life. If you want a house, I can do projections where someone buys a 350k home, 400k home, and a $450k home, and project the estimated costs associated with each one. Then you can decide what home is best for you, but also realize what you’re giving up as well because a dollar spent on a home is a dollar that can’t be spent somewhere else.
During my senior year in high school, I was accepted into a private school, Gonzaga, a public state school, University of Oregon, and I looked at the Marines. Based on what was saved up which was nothing and what public and private school cost, I realized the best decision financially for me was to join the Marines. It turned out for the best financially me too. I have two bachelor degrees paid for and I’m about to get my MBA paid for as well. I saw that I didn’t want student loan debt to weigh me down and I’m glad I made the choice to join the Marines.
So if you’re having trouble coming up with a solution or how you should proceed forward with your life, think of three different options that you can choose from. Then go to a professional ask them which of the option you should choose from. This helps the person you’re asking advice from because they don’t have to spend that much time thinking of a solution, they can look at the three options and see which one is the best one, or they can come up with a fourth option based on the information you provided. The key thing is that you have to spend a little bit of time planning.
You have to remember that one-minute planning will save you ten minutes with execution since you know where to go and how to make things happen instead of just trying to figure things out as you go. I can be bad at planning because I can go straight into execution without much major planning and then I end up having to backtrack and end up losing money, time, or both. I’m okay with losing money up to a certain threshold but losing out on time is something that I have little tolerance for.
By figuring out the three options, it can save you a lot of time. And for the most part, you can spend an infinite about of time planning out every little detail and you just end up planning things out more than you have to and you still end up on losing time. Plus whatever decision you make, you’ll end up being okay with for the most part but if it doesn’t work out, at least you have two other options available to you. Like with retirement, maybe you can have the option to retire for six months, and then you decide that you want to work again and so you go back to work. If you make a decision, you’re really not stuck with that decision for the rest of your life. You can make a different one.
This technique can also be helpful at work. If you go up to your supervisor or if you’re a boss, you can provide three solutions for a project at work, and then as a group, you can decide what is the best option to choose from. It makes things a lot easier to deal with instead of trying to figure out what the plan should be without any options on the table.
That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, to help you make a decision life, come up with three different options like in Goldilocks and the three bears and pick the option that is the right one for you. Then when you go to someone, then they can help you make a more informed decision. This will help you save time, and time is something that we should strive to save because we can never make another dollar again. Life is about making trying to make the most correct decisions and to minimize your bad decisions. If you can have more good decisions than bad ones, then most likely you can live a good life. So here is a helpful tip to help you make better decisions with your life.
To get a free copy of my book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and just pay for shipping and handling.
I have a quiz on my website that grades your inner circle, so if you want to find out if your inner circle is an A, B, C, D, or F, you can take that quiz at growwithjoe.me/quiz
I’m also trying to do a feedback Friday episode, so if you have a question that you would like to have my answer on the air, just e-mail me at [email protected]
I’m also on Instagram at Grow With Joe and Facebook just look up Grow With Joe
If you’re on iTunes, don’t forget to give me a five-star rating if you liked this episode.
Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
*Music outro
