Uh Thanks everybody for being here. Um This is three steps to achieving your career and money goals. My name is River. Nice. I'll tell you a little bit about me. Uh So my name is River. My pronouns are they them?So please refer to me as they instead of she or he, I am the owner and financial planner of the intentional financial, which is an independent firm based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the United States. I have helped over 100 clients and counting with their financial goals.

So let's get into it. I want to tell you about a friend of mine. This friend always says when I win the lottery. So, you know, uh yeah, I'll be able to afford a vacation once I win the lottery. Uh Yeah, I could buy that dream home once I win the lottery. And the one that gets me the most is, oh, adoption fees are so expensive, but I'll be able to afford it once I win the lottery. Oh, now the mega millions jackpot in the US last week was $516 million. And my friend won that they could retire. Buy a bunch of houses, adopt as many kids as they wanted. The odds of winning mega millions, however, are one in 302 million. Not great odds. My friend's odds specifically are zero. My friend doesn't even play the lottery. So how are they expecting to win it? Why are they putting their whole life on hold waiting for something that's not just improbable but impossible. They think a winning lottery ticket is gonna fall from this guy. So what I want to teach you is how to actually think through your goals and make them happen instead of just waiting for something that's probably never going to happen. First step is to figure out what you want. So some of you put your goals in the chat, which I really appreciate. But I want you to get more specific than that. I don't want to just hear more money, less work.

I wanna know all the details of the thing that you want. So let me tell you about my friend Ashley. She came to me last week and she said, river, I want a better job. I'm not happy with what I'm doing. I need a better situation. So I asked her a bunch of questions. I said, well, what is the type of work that you wanna be doing? I found that we as humans have a need to contribute. So we all have needs for shelter and safety and food and water and human connection. But we also have a need to contribute something to the world we live in. And I think that's why it can be so fulfilling or so unfulfilling to be at a job that either is aligned with what you want to do or is not aligned. If we have a need to contribute, then we have a need to contribute something that feels right to us. So first thing I asked, Ashley is what type of work would help you feel fulfilled? I also asked her, what hours do you wanna work? Do you like the 9 to 5 Monday through Friday type schedule or do you want something a little less conventional or do you want a lot more flexibility than a set schedule? But offered, I also asked her who do you want to be working with? I think her big problem based on what she was telling me last week is that a lot of her teammates are not necessarily the most honest or don't really hold themselves accountable to the deadlines that they set and the promises they make to the team.

And it's been very frustrating for her to try to operate within that team culture. And so we talked a lot about who are the type of people that she wants to work with and what type of culture does she want to be in on the day to day. I also asked her where she physically wants to be. Does she want to go into an office? Does she wanna work remote? Does she want to be here in Philly or does she want to move somewhere else? And of course, I think there are very few of us who are willing to work without compensation. And so I asked her, well, how much money do you want to make? And how much money are you actually qualified to make? Given your current skill set and experience and finally, compensation is not limited to just money. I asked her, what other benefits would you want from a job? Do you want paid time off? Do you need health insurance? As a lot of us in the United States need through work, what other benefits are important to you as part of a work compensation package? So Ashley and I sat down and came up with what her dream job actually looks like. So instead of just saying that her job, we got really specific. So Ashley knows that she's the back end engineer. She wants to keep doing that work. But she told me that her passion is making sure that systems are scalable.

So whatever she wants to be doing, she wants to make sure that she has the time and um budget built into the project to make sure that it's gonna be scalable in the future. She wants to work no more than 40 hours per week and she does like the typical 9 to 5 schedule because then it means that she and I can meet up for half hour afterwards and she can see her boyfriend on the weekends. Um She also needs a team culture of honesty and accountability. Like I said, we talked a lot about why she's unhappy with her current team and what she would look for in a new team. But she also would love a team culture of flexibility so that if a deadline needs to get pushed back or somebody calls in sick, it's not the end of the world, people are able to still be people and have their lives and do their best. And there's not too much rigidity in how the team operates. She also wants to make sure that the job is safe for LGBT Q folks. So Ashley is transgender and she wants to make sure that wherever she works, she's never going to be harassed or discriminated against or even get weird looks from people.

She wants to know that this is a place that I can be myself, actually really liked remote work during the pandemic. And so she liked to continue working remotely from home. She found that not having a commute has been really helpful for her day to day stress levels. She found that she can get a lot of work done at home. And so she wants to be able to have that option moving forward when we talked about what level of salary she would be eligible for and what would make her able to do to live the life that she wants to live right now s save some money for the future. We talked about a salary of at least $90,000 and it's important to her that there be room for raises and promotions in the team. And then we talked about all the benefits that are important to her. So definitely health insurance is important as somebody in the United States, we usually get our health insurance through work, also dental and vision insurance to help round out her health package. She also wants to have life insurance and disability insurance because she and her boyfriend are thinking about getting married and starting a family.

And so she wants to make sure that she has some protection that if she were unable to work or if the worst were to happen to her, that her family would be protected. She also wants to have a 401k with a match from the employer here in the US. That's our retirement savings accounts. And oftentimes an employer will allow us access to a retirement savings account and will contribute some money into that account for us as long as we're contributing ourselves. So Ashley wants to work for a place that values her long term future and can show that they value that by providing the account and putting some money into it for her. She also wants at least three weeks paid time off. And additional parental leave for when she and her boyfriend do start their family. And she also wants to have the opportunity for bonuses if she performs well and the company performs well. So this is a much clearer picture than just I want a better job. I want more work for less pay. We can actually get specific about what it is that she's looking for and what she wants to be compensated if she were to find a job that matches what she wants.

Now, my client Jen came to me last month and started working with me because she wanted to buy a house. So just like Ashley, I had a bunch of questions for her to figure out more specifically what it is she wants. I asked her, what type of house do you want a house or a condo? An apartment? Um Do you want it to be, uh, here in Philly, we have row homes where the houses are all pushed up against each other or do you want a detached home with a big yard? What is it that you're looking for? I also asked her, where do you want to live? Do you want to live in a city in a suburb? A more rural area? Do you want to be here on the east coast of the United States or do you want to be somewhere else in the world? Very important to what you can afford? I asked, who do you want to buy the house with? Do you have a partner that you're buying the house with? Are you buying it by yourself? Do you have a group of four best friends and you're all gonna buy the house together? All of those present very different financial scenarios. And I asked her what home features are necessary.

So some things about a house you can change if um you know it and once you move in, you can renovate and knock down a wall here, renovate a kitchen there. But some things are not gonna be changeable, like whether there's room for a big yard or um whether there's a basement. Um So I asked her to figure out what are the necessary features of a home and then what else would also be great in a home? What are the bonuses that would make this home feel like it's the one for you, even if it's not necessary to be a deal breaker. And once we figured out what uh uh the house looked like, we figured out how much the houses typically cost. Um So looking in your desired area, looking at the types of houses and size of houses that you're interested in can help us get a sense of how much it costs and whether that's gonna be affordable. So Jen figured out for her dream home, she wants a single family house. She does want a whole house, but not necessarily a duplex or anything too big. She just wants a house that is hers. She wants to live here in Philadelphia. She wants to buy the house by herself. So she doesn't have a co buyer, which means that she's going to have to save up all the money on her own. She figured out some of the necessary features that she needs in order to consider a house.

Uh So it must have at least two bedrooms, it must have lots of natural light, kind of hard to change what cardinal direction the house is facing in once you buy it. So she wants one that's facing maybe south southeast so that she can get that nice uh morning sunshine in uh for her own happiness and she wants to not have to make any major repairs in the first year of owning the house. She wants it to be ready to move in and live in right away. Some of the bonus features that would be great if she could get them would be to have the house close to public transportation. She does have a car, but it is kind of a pain to find parking in the city so she can just leave the car at home and take public transportation to most of the places she needs to go that would make her happy. She would also love a house with central air conditioning here in Philly. The houses are kind of old by United States standards and So not all of the houses have central air conditioning and she would love to have it for these hot summer months if possible. So Jen and I did some research, we use the website Zillow and we asked around in Philadelphia and we realized that a house that meets these qualifications would typically cost around $250,000 here.

So now she's got a more specific goal, she knows what she's looking for and how much it's likely to cost. So the next step for my ladies is to figure out what it will take to get what they want. So they know what they want, but what's it gonna take to get there? So, Ashley and I talked about what she's gonna need to land her dream job. First thing is the relevant job skills. She needs to make sure that she's actually qualified for the job that she wants to do. Then she needs a resume that's gonna show that she has those job skills. Next, she needs a list of companies that she is interested in working for. And notice here. I said a list of companies and not a list of current job postings. I think that you can create opportunities at the places that you're interested in if you have a skills and passion that are going to be useful to them. So I don't want her to limit herself to just current job postings. I want her to get into what types of companies do you want to work for? What specific companies do you want to work for so that she can start to find existing opportunities or try to create her own opportunities. She's also going to need interview skills to actually convince somebody to hire her. Jen needs very different things than what Ashley needs.

Jen is gonna need a good credit score. Uh, here in the United States, you need to have a good credit score in order to qualify for a mortgage, which is the loan that helps you pay for the house. She's going to need a down payment or the money that she has to pay upfront for the house, which is usually a percentage of the home price and then the loan of the mortgage would cover the rest of the price of the house. She's also gonna need an emergency fund. So I don't want her to use up all of the cash that she has available on that down payment and then have no money left. If the hot water heater breaks in the second week of owning the house, I wanna make sure that she's still got some cash set aside in case anything does go wrong in that first year. Jen's also going to need the ability to pay her monthly mortgage payment. So when she takes out that big mortgage loan, she's going to need to make sure that in her monthly budget with the income level that she has currently that she's able to actually make that payment every month without too much stress or strain on her finances. And Jen's also gonna need a good realtor to help her find that dream home. So she needs a realtor that is very familiar with her area and has worked with first time home buyers before step three is to actually take action.

So a good plan doesn't get you anywhere if you don't actually follow it. So Ashley now has a dream job action plan. Something she's already started is growing her job related skills and she did that by taking on new responsibilities at her current job. Her next step is to update her resume to show that she's got these skills. Then she needs to research potential companies, which she's doing at the conference this week. Um Something that she can also do is look at job boards. Uh I really like the people first jobs board, uh which is a list of tech companies that prioritize their employees well being and work life balance and she is talking to other people in her field to figure out which companies may be a good fit. So there's the networking sessions this week, there's the open sessions to learn about particular employers. And so she's taking those opportunities to scope out and research where she might want to work when she knows where she wants to work. Then she needs to actually send in applications for that job. And when she does that, she can practice answering some interview questions with a friend or a mentor to make sure that she's prepared for the interview process. Jen's action plan for her dream home, obviously different than Ashley's.

So first thing she needs to do is improve her credit score to make sure that she's gonna be able to qualify for a mortgage. So something she could do with that credit score would be to pay off her credit card debt over a specific period of time. Hopefully soon she could consider closing newer lines of credit to help increase the average age of her credit accounts. She could request a credit line increase for each credit card so that the amount of credit she is using is lower overall and she can talk to a financial planner like me to make those decisions, she can set savings goals and this is important to actually make sure that you set aside enough money to buy the house that you want to buy.

So I recommend for first time home buyers in the US to set aside 10% of the house price to cover the down payment and the closing costs that come along with buying a house. So if the house cost $250,000 then she needs to set aside $25,000. We also talked about how much she should set aside for an emergency fund and decided that 2% of the price of the house would be enough for the first year. And so that's another $5000. Now, Jen already has $6000 saved for her down payment. So she needs to have 30,000 and she currently has six. Then she needs to save another $24,000. And now she's got a specific goal. She can work towards Jen. Also needs to create a budget and that's going to help her put a predetermined amount of money into her savings account every month, starting out to hit that $30,000 savings goal. And the budget is also gonna help her figure out whether she can afford that monthly mortgage payment.

So we're gonna use a mortgage calculator to look at if the amount of mortgage is $225,000 and the interest rate is 3.2% what is the actual monthly minimum payment? And then if we plug that into the budget, we can see whether she can afford it with all the other bills that she has. And now these ladies just need to follow through on these action plans. So some things I recommend to follow through are to seek support. It is very hard to make a big life change on your own. And so both these ladies decided that they're going to talk to their friends for emotional support. They need somebody to vent you when things are not going well and somebody to celebrate with when things do work out. Ashley is currently looking for a mentor for job hunting and interviewing advice. So there's the networking opportunities this week and she's using that to try to find somebody who can help her think through this next step. Jen's going to find a good realtor who is well versed in Philadelphia and the specific neighborhoods that she's interested in and who, like I said, works with first time home buyers. The next piece of advice is to set deadlines.

So that way you don't just say I'm gonna get to it. I'm gonna get to it or I'm working on it. I'm working on it that very specific deadlines so that you keep moving forward. So Ashley decided she's gonna finish updating her resume by June 14th that gives her four more days and some time this weekend to do. So, she's working on a list of companies that she like to work for and she's going to keep building that list until July 1st and then she's going to stop and actually start applying to jobs. So she told me she's gonna send in at least four applications by July 11th and I'm gonna help hold her accountable to that goal. Jen. On the other hand, set up a meeting with me on June 16th to talk through improving her credit score and make some decisions about what she's gonna do to improve that credit score. She's gonna set aside $1000 every month on the first of the month when she gets paid so that she will reach that goal of $30,000.02 years from now.

And I told both of them don't get discouraged if you don't land the first job that you apply for, if you aren't able to save the full $1000 next month, that doesn't mean you'd give up. That means that you revisit the plan and the action steps and keep moving forward. So listen, I don't normally do this, but I wanna give you all an opportunity to move forward on your own goals. So I'm gonna drop a link in the chat. It's talk with river.com and at that link, you can get access to these slides if you want a refresher or you want to share them with somebody else and you can also schedule a free 30 minute session with me to figure out your own goals. Thanks for coming.