A Winning Recipe-3 Key Ingrediants to a "mouth-watering" Spending Plan

Valentines Day reminds me of baking cookies in the shape of hearts. You know the kind, sugar cookies that you roll out and then cut with different size heart shapes. Then you frost and decorate each one with those special sprinkles. Does thinking about that make your mouth water? It does mine.

I want to share with you 3 Key Ingredients to a “mouth watering” spending plan. Imagine if your budget could make your mouth water when you think of it. OK, that may be going just a little too far!! But what if your spending plan could work as simple as making sugar cookies? I bet you would be more likely to keep to the plan.

Key ingredient #1 to a winning recipe -Sweets
A cookie would not be a cookie if it didn’t have sugar and that special flavoring. It would lack taste. You would probably just leave those types of cookies in the cookie jar and never eat them.

Maybe your spending plan is being left in the “cookie jar” too. To make your spending plan a winning recipe you need to tie your budget to the things that are valuable in your life.

Play in the “kitchen” with me now. Get a piece of paper and a pen and draw 5 hearts of different sizes, maybe put one inside the other. Whatever works for you. In each circle write down at least one value, person, idea, dream or aspiration that is important and exciting to you. When you’re done you should have identified at least 5 things that are significant and compelling in your life.

Go ahead now and write those things on a 3x5 card and carry them around with you. Place a card on your mirror, in your card, or on the refrigerator so you can be reminded of how key these things are to you.

We will come back to these things later in the recipe.