The Financial Playbook — Vol. 1

I am an athletic person, mainly doing karate, fencing, and sometimes tennis. Back in the day, I played a lot of soccer (until I accumulated a bunch of injuries). I have to also LOVE competing, no matter how often I lose. When I step onto the court, mat, or the piste (that’s the fencing strip), I have a game plan in mind.

Pictured (not me): Fencers, both of whom have a game plan!

If you’re an athlete as well, chances are you have a game plan for how you train and for matchday. You need to if you expect to win, and often. When you’re going grocery shopping, outside of the occasional impulse purchase every now and then, you carry a grocery list, don’t you?

The Financial Playbook

All this to say is that for any major activity, you need a game plan, especially when it comes to your money. It’s the key to your financial health… as well as meeting any personal goals you may have or easily reaching those milestones of adulthood (house, marriage, family, retirement, etc).

So the question now is, what should your game plan be? As with any sport, you need a game plan that employs both offense and defense. You need to protect yourself while you rush for the end zone (pardon the football analogy). I am gonna lay it all out right now in this (mini) financial playbook for winning with money.

For Offense

In this financial playbook, this is how you’ll play offense:

• Retirement Investing (401k/IRA, 457, 403b, etc)
• Investment (inside of a brokerage)
• Career advancement
• Home Ownership

Like in football, you need offensive plays!

For Defense

While you’re going for the win, you’ll need to cover your ass. This is how you’ll do it:

• Emergency fund
• “Consumption” with cash
• Life Insurance (term preferred, of course)
• Estate planning (wills, inheritance, funeral, etc)

And like football, you need defensive plays!

I won’t go into the details in this post (it would be too long if I did) but this is the general game plan you should take when it comes to your personal finances. Why? Because it’s simple, easy to do, and it works. Unless you’re uber rich, you likely shouldn’t stray from this plan. In due time, I’ll write about why you should do each step and the implications of complicating this strategy. Here, I’ll give you one hint. See: retail investors who bought in GME hoping for a quick buck during this recent Gamestop craze.

Sorry… this one’s not going to the moon :’(

With that, welcome to the first series of this blog, The Financial Playbook. Hopefully this takes off (doesn’t even have to go to the moon). What are your thoughts on the game plan I’ve layout? Have you done things differently? How? Let me know in the comments!