Avery Breyer is a multiple best-selling author, freelance writer, and real estate investor who is passionate about helping people take control of their money and create the life they want.
We were lucky to be joined by Avery on our podcast as she shared her story of eliminating debt and paying off her mortgage in 5 years. During our time together, Avery explained how she gained over a million dollars in real estate investments and talked about how she is reaping the benefits of achieving financial freedom. Avery reminds us to live simply, be conservative, and live within our means. She also encourages us to understand how our money is going to help us come up with a plan to achieve our financial goals.
To do so, Avery suggests the following:
The most important step in understanding your finances is to understand where your money is going. Until you know what you're spending your money on, it's impossible to come up with a workable plan for reaching your financial goals.
In a nutshell, you need to track all your expenses: what you spend, where it's going, and how much income you have. Do this exercise over a long enough period to get a good sense of what your habits are. When you go through this process, you gain a lot of clarity on whether cutting back on spending is even an option and you start to understand how much is left over. Knowing this allows you to formulate a plan to get to where you need to be.
Your financial plan should also include your long-term goals for retirement. Do the math to figure out how much you're going to need in retirement and determine ways to build up assets and investments that will help fund your retirement.
Once you have a plan in place, you need to take the steps to generate the income you need to fund this plan. To fund any plan, you're going to need money. Do you earn enough already or do you need to upgrade your skills and start a side hustle? It’s important to take the time to to think through each of these factors.
For more information on this topic, listen to the Where Money Meets Soul podcast Episode 4: A Plan for Paying Off Debt with Avery Breyer.
*Podcast transcription edited for your reading pleasure.*
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