The Vault with Financielle - UNLOCKED: Goal Setting – How to Track Your Way to a 2026 Glow Up

Episode Date: December 29, 2025

Send us a textWe’re finally at the goal-setting part of the journey — and this isn’t about overwhelming yourself with huge targets you forget by February. It’s about building goals that fit into your monthly routine so you actually hit them.In this episode, Laura talks about:Why we all love a fresh start but lose motivation fastWhy most goals never get reached (too vague, too many, no plan)How tracking progress creates healthy dopamineWhy micro tracking leads to macro resultsWhy 2026 is about long-term, sustainable glow ups, not overnight onesThe power of seeing your progress visually with debt, net worth and goal trackersLaura also shares some of her own goals for 2026; from investing more intentionally (LISA, S&S ISA, JISA) to getting the mortgage down and building a lifestyle where saving, spending, investing and giving all work together.Takeaways:Your 2026 glow up is trackable.Tracking is the difference between wishing and doing.Next week, we’ll be modelling some of the Financielle community’s goals and showing how to turn them into realistic, achievable plans.If you’re enjoying the Unlocked series, subscribe to The Vault, leave us a review, and tell us how you’re resetting and rebuilding in the comments or the Financielle App community.#moneystory #goalsetting #Financielle #TheVaultUnlocked #moneygoalsConnect with our Partners*🫶 Get life insurance with our friends at Lifesearch. Speak to a female advisor here.🏡 Meet our Financielle approved Mortgage Brokers.💸 Get cashback that reduces your mortgage interest with Sprive (£5 extra for you using code: FINANC)*The above are tracked links, which tells our partners we sent you and may in future result in a payment or benefit to our site.The Vault is an entertaining yet thought provoking podcast that answers our community’s dilemmas and confessions surrounding women and money.Visit https://www.financielle.com to download our app.Watch the podcast on YouTube.Follow Financielle for more:▶︎ TikTok▶︎ InstagramAbout Financielle:Financielle is a female focussed finance app helping women to take back control of their money, ditch debt, increase savings and invest in their future.Recorded and Produced by Liverpool Podcast Studios▶︎ Web ▶︎ Instagram▶︎ LinkedIn

Welcome to The Vault Unlocked. I'm Laura from Financial and we are already on episode four of the Vault Unlocked series at the end of 2025. I'm settling in for this one. I'm getting comfy on my office chair. Really excited about this one because I feel like this is the one that we are building up to. We are finally at the goal setting part of our journey and we have done a lot of groundwork. We have been reflecting. We have been getting. ready with our budgets starting with really strong foundations we've been thinking about sinking funds and putting our big girl pants on and you know really trying to get control and be sensible and be strong and methodical about how we're going to change our money mentality change change

our lives actually with how we're managing our money and I'm really excited now to jump into this one I guess this is kind of like part one and part two because part one of goal setting is going be we're going to go all the way through it. I'm going to share some of mine. And then you have kindly sent some of your goals. And so in part two, which is the final, it's not part two. It's part two of this one, but it's episode five of this mini series is going to be delving into your goals. And we're going to deconstruct some and have a little workshop and think it through. And I'm really excited about that one. So first, we're going to kick off with, um, with, with setting. goals when it comes to money and our lives and I really don't want big goals to overwhelm us

because if they do they're kind of too big an elephant to eat and it just means that it overwhelms us it feels impossible it feels beyond our reach we can take a big audacious goal and that's okay it can be big i didn't say it couldn't be but we can break it down and more importantly we can try and fit it into our monthly routines to make sure not only that we actually hit them, but that the practice and the mythology and the steps that we take become a habit, become just the way we managed money, the way we do things. I've often talked about this at financial. When you're in a beginning stage and you're in survive and you're having to learn to have a really lean budget and to watch what you spend and to cut back on things that aren't

essential, to go without, to have delayed gratification. We are learning something. We are developing as individuals. We are learning a skill set that really is going to set us up for the rest of our life, because if we can do that in the early stages, when you have money, when you have cash, when you have excess cash in your budget and you're putting it towards things that grow, you will see your wealth absolutely transform. And yes, time is needed for this and this isn't overnight thing. But when you learn the early day stuff, like the stuff that it changes you as a person, it makes you appreciate things way more. It brings gratitude. It actually shows what's important in our life. It really does. Because aside from like a couple of tough moments, you realize

you can survive. You can change certain elements of your life and not miss them. And and actually thrive and maybe be more grateful, maybe, yeah, just be more at ease with who you are. You've not got this mask. You're not hiding behind the things that you buy or the way that you spend money. You know, you just learn so, so much and I'm so, so passionate about bringing that alive in you and encouraging that. Don't be afraid of a big goal. We're not going to set our sights low, we can be audacious, but we're going to make it not as overwhelming. And this time of year, you know, if you're listening to this live, it is accelerating towards the back end of the year, early, January is literally upon us. And it is such a big, big time to have a

fresh start. But one of the big problems is many of us lose motivation by February. We have all good intentions. We get our nice new stationery, which I am here for as well. You know, I've got a new book and pen it's going to happen. I'm going to copy or write down four days worth of notes and then it'll be an old book and I want a new one like I get it. But we get all excited and then we want to achieve everything in the first few weeks and then motivation wanes and February's here and suddenly we've fallen off the wagon or we can't remember what it is that we set out to do or we went too hard and there's like lots of different reasons why you know we don't hit our goals. You can just reflect on on yourself and being human and what it's like sometimes it's a bit too vague you know

arrow save someone says I want to be better with money well how do you mean you know again let's go through what we've been through let's go reflect why are you bad with money what specifically do you need to change what goals you want to hit by when how do you want to achieve that what are the steps like sometimes the breaking down of it is a bit boring and it's just nicer to say the big thing which is oh I'd like to be better with money but you do need to have we've talked about smart goals before in the, you know, maybe there's earlier episodes on this. I can't remember. We've definitely touched on it in lots of different elements of the vault.

But there can't be too many different goals at once. It can't be too vague. It can't not have a plan. Like that's a double negative if I've ever heard one. But it needs to have an underlying plan to support it. And actually just one thing I've said there are too many. Like one thing that we're really passionate about with the playbook is that you really focus on one goal at a time.

It's only once you advance through all the stages. is and you've got your methodology down, that you can start to point your excess cash to a variety of goals. But even then, like, it only really works if you ask, if some of it's automated and you still have that one thing, that one thing that you're passionate about, where you then move more quickly. So there's lots of reasons why people set goals and we don't hit them.

I think as humans, we definitely love tracking progress. It's something so innate in our nature, you know, whether it's tracking steps walked or whether it's tracking calories if you're on a fitness journey it might be miles run it might be gym sessions done it might be um what else could it be it might be what else do we like to track girls it could be books read i've seen that before um you guys love the no spend days like tracking you no spend days there's lots of different habits that it definitely helps to track them and connect with the journey and build up a bit of momentum and so tracking is definitely something that helps when it comes to goals

and it's one of the reasons really why I love the, you know, the trackers in the app because the power of seeing your goal progress visually is so helpful. I mean, we've got a couple of different trackers. My favourite is the debt. It's not my favorite. I was going to say a favorite. They're all my favorites. They're all my children. The debt tracker, you know, there's so many goal trackers, which makes sense, you know, we put in a total. For example, in my app, I have a junior ICER tracker for each of my children and I like to put their picture on and to see the goal I'd set and the date by which I want to set it and there's pictures. And I like tracking that progress, but I was much more excited about paying off debt and having that debt tracker in and celebrating

it is not a thing to be ashamed of, but a thing to tackle and a thing to be proud of and a thing to, you know, celebrate progress of. So the debt tracker is, is fab and obviously it's a free tool in the app so please make sure that you are using it and getting those debts in there and built you know we're then like to build a plan to to overpay them um but my favorite is the net worth tracker and the reason it's my favorite is it was something that came to mind when I first thought about financial and and developed it past the the Instagram and I was just saying to my husband I was like I can see it I can see this like nowhere has a net worth tracker where you can vision

and aesthetically see um not just your net worth in terms of like monetary value and not even the wonderful diversification of that and we came you know that means having like it balanced to having it spread across different asset types and stuff um and that later became the asset donut actually that was a thing we added later but actually it's the progress the linear progress over time when you log it every month because there's so much happening on a macro level all the time, you know, on a big, big level things we can't control. The economies are changing, interest rates are changing,

stock markets are going up and down, interest rates change, the bills change and so our budgets are squeezed and so sometimes the access is down. There's so much going on that is out of our control that we just kind of have to ride the waves of and navigate, but there is so much in our control. And so over time, if you are budgeting to create in excess in your budget and with that money you are either saving or paying off debt or buying

property or investing and I'm being very very generic when I'm saying these things your net worth will go up over time it just it just does there's a whole load of caveats that you all know by listening to our podcast that that we would include on that which especially with investing your capital's at risk can go down as well as up um that you know house prices and none of us can guarantee that it's going to go up in value necessarily could go down as well. But generally, if you are overpaying that mortgage or just paying it down normally, you are paying off a debt, but the assets hopefully will at least remain similar, if not the same. And so even with all these ifs and buts and maybes, we see a massive trend over time of the net worth of our community go up.

And it's so impressive to see, you know, we see it on an individual scale. We see like individual net worth going up. but we see this whole, you know, consolidated, huge, big, fat community net worth that just increases every single month by you building up savings overpaying debt and investing. And that visual tracker, there have been moments, you know, I used, I didn't have a physical graph, although I did used to build it into a graph, but I used to track my net worth in a spreadsheet. And so it wasn't as visual. It was literally just numbers mainly, and once in a while I'd build the graph.

but I used to feel like I had nothing. I was like, what am I doing this for? Why am I budgeting? And I've just got nothing. But what was actually happening was two things. One, I was putting money into sinking funds, which was again a game changer, as I shared last week. And it brought me closer to my goals in a steady way

because I was able to pay for these big ticket items with pots of money that I had rather than putting things on a credit card or borrowing money to do so or financing something. But also every time I was doing my automated investing via my paycheck or whether I was doing my extra investing or whether I was saving money for a house deposit, it kind of all added up to slowly but surely it was going somewhere positive because it was increasing my net worth. I just couldn't see it until I put it in the graph.

And I have, I think, you know, I'm just so proud of like the months and months and months of data that I have in the app, I think we're probably at 48 months now, given the apps like over four of mine and my family's work and efforts and it's a pretty graph and what I love is that there could be another person in our community who earns way more than us and has way more and has a similar looking graph and there could be someone that doesn't have a lot and that might have started at a negative net worth but theirs is going to have gone up as well it's very rare that you would see a net worth graph in the financial community if you are you know going through the steps and obviously there are some exceptions, but to not see it go up.

So this visual progress of any goal that we hit, and most goals that we talk about at Falunschel, obviously, are linked to things that would increase our net worth and our wider well-being as well. Then we can track the progress. So have a look at the debt trackers, have a look at the goal trackers, embrace the net worth tracker. It really is just a visual representation of all the hard work that you're doing.

I think that for me, 2026 can really be the year of long-term, sustainable money glow-ups, not overnight ones. I have no interest in someone going cold turkey or cutting back everything in their life. I just don't think generally it's sustainable. I think once we've got the basics down, it is fun to go hard a couple of months here and there, and I've been there and done that and you get very excited. And I think when you know that it's not forever or it's for a defined period in time, then you can go hard.

And I'm really into my fitness. and I do like training blocks and breaking things down and there might be something where I'm leaning into one specific thing and everything else. Nothing else matters apart from making sure that you do that bit really well and it does mean sacrifice and it does mean commitment. It does mean, you know, getting up when you don't want to and it means missing out on things sometimes.

It means eating particular foods that give you energy but might not be as sexy or interesting or nice, but it involves going to bed earlier sometimes, but all these things are just so similar in the fitness and health world and in the finance world where when you are trying to hit a goal, if you want to be super intentional about something and one specific thing,

usually rather than trying to do, you know, spin a million plates, that's where you can build intensity, but into something that over a longer period of time is becoming routine. So like I said, you can go all in on something for a particular block or a particular period.

Is it a one paycheck? Is it a month? Is it a two week period? That's why we do our no spend challenges sometimes. So we might do our paying off debt like I'm going to go absolutely crazy this month but then you might ease off a different month but generally we still have consistent principles which are managing money well and making sure we spend less than we make making sure everything's in the budget and the budget is big enough

and fab enough to allow us to do the things we want to do but also to hit our goals and and I just think you could really I want you to sit and think about the 2026 sustainable money goals that you are going to think about that you might set for yourself. Is it that you're finally taking back control of money? And by that, we still need to be specific. But are you going to commit to the playbook? Are you going to say for once and for all, I'm going to do it and I'm going to follow the steps

and I'm not going to twist them or tweak them too much to kind of suit me? You know, there are people, and you'll be listening now. You'll think you're doing the playbook. You will. And you'll say, I'm really good bit. like I've done the budget and like I'm sticking to it and I've got my little pots and then you stop there and then you go right so I'm overpaying a bit of debt and I'll say oh have you got an emergency fund no I'm not got an emergency fund well you're not doing the steps

you're not doing it properly you're not committing to it so you want to take control of your money but you're not in control because one thing happens and you're going to go backwards and you're going to go back again and then you'll blame the plan or you'll blame the system or you'll blame something else when really you were too keynote and you were too going for the pain off debt and you didn't build the savings um you know i always find that people have like blindness when it comes to certain financial choices you know someone could be really struggling to balance the budget and have a 30,000 pound car in finance and it's not proportionate to their lifestyle they were sold a monthly payment they were they were not really thinking about the long-term

consequences of a you know 2030 grand car and they don't want to get rid of that car because they like it and that's all right that's okay i'm not judging but don't come at me and say that you've got a proper plan because if you then say oh the plan doesn't work and i've got quite got enough money i'm not paying off debt enough quickly enough like i'm just not moving all this is happening and you kind of go oh okay we'll get rid of the car then people don't want it and so it can't it can be a goal that's something like i want to take back control of my money like i'm finally going to do it this year but are you going to commit to the plan are you going to say so i'm going to pull up for this plan for the next six months and i'm going to see what it'll do to

my life. Other people, like, you might finally say, I have been, all right, I've been coasting, but I play around with finance. And Klarna is kind of like my little dealer friend in the corner that keeps coming back and keeps appearing at the checkout and keeps tempting me. And I just say, oh, you know, it just, for one-offs for Christmas, for this big purchase, I would never do it for the purchases. Is this going to be the year that you say? My goal is to become debt-free and I will never touch debt again. I'll never outside of a mortgage. I am never going to do it. I am going to be consumer debt-free for the rest of my life once. I've done it once. That's a goal. That's powerful. That will set yourself up to be financially successful. It really,

really will. But is this the year that you're going to do it? Is this year that you're going to go never again? I promise you, no one that set a goal like that has regretted it. No one. And if you have set a goal like that and regretted it and DM me and tell me and tell me why let me have a chat let me have a coffee because I've never had anyone say that that was a bad idea and you know what if you really don't like being debt free just take out a credit card later like prove me wrong I'm here for it because that is a goal it might be you know starting the journey towards buying your first home um a friend of mine on on the BBC she's recently moved into her first ever rented apartment on her own like she's been married she's separated she's never lived on her own and she's in like

peak girlhood like i just love this for her and that's a big step for her and the next journey for her is going to be trying to buy a property in london and she's just an inspiration and that's what i'm excited about that that is a goal and it might not be one that she'll hit this year but she's going to be on the way to it and so like pick this big goal that you want and it might be something for down the line it might be something for this year but pick it and then have a little think about working backwards and how you can how you can break it up and again we're going to lean into some of those in the in the next episode so we don't want to you know go too close to it know that the playbook is the key the playbook is what I'm always going to come back to if you're

listening to the vault I'm not going to say anything else than following the financial playbook you can obviously find it in the app we do have a digital course which I'll link in the show notes but that is what we follow and that is what helped has helped hundreds of thousands of people pay off debt build wealth grow their network be financially it will. So, yeah, I want to see some really big, juicy, exciting, life-changing goals from you. I want you to tell us, if you are listening to this, voice note, the Instagram at Financial, DM us on Instagram. If you want to do a long chat and a long email and you feel like you'll get it off your chest, email the vault at financial dot com, tell me your goals, what are you

going to do by when how are you going to do it tell me the date that you want us to come back at you and say did you do it this is not scalable by the way so imagine if thousands of you do this right now i don't care the team will get through it we'll split it all up we can be your accountability buddies and more importantly the community can be what i have seen you guys achieve in that community honestly i could cry like it it's the the range of different i'm going to upset i'm not going to upset I'm not going to upset, but the range of different things that you have been able to do, the children that you have been able to have through IVF, the relationships you've been able to leave because you have taken control and you've taken

steps and you want to start your life because we've only got one of them. And you also recognize habits in yourself that are not healthy and unpick those. And that's really vulnerable. that's super, super vulnerable to be able to do and to have the confidence to do that. There's a variety of different things that you share and you just don't know who else you're helping because that community is so, so big

and there are so many people that just look, they do not type, they do not share, but they're watching, they're reading and you're inspiring them. When you share a win, when you share a goal, when you share a vulnerability, someone is listening and you just do not know the impact that you are having on someone.

So tell me the goals. that's your instruction. I want to know about them. I'm going to share a little bit about my for 2026. I know that Carl doesn't listen to the fault, so it's a good job, but I do think we have generally a collaborative, I say collaborative, which is so similar. We're very aligned on what's important to us. We're very aligned on what's in our plans, because we talk about it often. it's something that keeps us close together that keeps us on track and and it's it is fun it's good it's exciting and it went so so bear that in mind if you're in a couple and if you're not in a couple and you've got an amazing exciting goal that's why I want you to share it I want you to

share it with a family family member a friend get you make yourself accountable get some accountability but but sharing the delight of an exciting goal don't be embarrassed don't be um afraid or to be too vulnerable and again that's why community is there um but yeah i've not shared these with him but specifically but the kind of stuff that we're working to already um i'm going to go first with like there's like three things i want to lean into one of them is i want to make sure that we build the lifestyle that we want and because i was thinking about this the other day it's not like I don't believe there's a dream job I don't believe there's like a passion or a calling

and I think too often people chase that and TikTok and Instagram are quite difficult places I think because they portray like they portray a lifestyle actually but they portray a job or a you know a way of life and that can get you a bit skewed and so I don't necessarily mean or I'm going to be very specific about what I mean

about the lifestyle that I want and it's not aesthetic and it's not clean and it's not structured and it's not all in a planner but it's building on what Carl and I do do now now I work for myself at Fine Shell obviously I've got my BBC commitments but I do them if I want to do them if I don't want to do them I don't have to do them um the lifestyle that i want involves like me being able to um do what i'm good at and express what i might express myself help people in the way that i do whether it's through this podcast whether it's through the community and through the app or whether it's you know on on tv um and it's on

my terms and other than that i am all about family i um my friend sus is amazing i call her like the social secretary because if she did not plan things in in my life and my calendar, I don't think I would do anything fun. Um, you know, between Carl and Sue's put their, and Holly, Holly is very good at this as well, but between those individuals, if they did not plan things in my life, I would be in pajamas with my kids in front of the TV. And you know, I would still be really, really happy, happy. I say that like, I'm even watching things. They're like, I'm, like, I'm not. I'm just in my kitchen and I'm with them. And that brings me joy. Um, but the lifestyle I want is a really good.

combination of a good amount of work that's for me and that's my brain and that's like being able to do the things I want to do. It's being with family and and having, you're building a lifestyle that means I can be around them. So I am from home a lot of the time. I do decline a lot of trips and decline a lot of work things that take me too far too often. It has to be the right thing for financial and if it's not an absolute game changer for financial and for the community, like I will just not do it. But I want to be able to be with friends when I want to and I want to be able to enjoy that social side of life. And more recently, you know, I want to be fit and well. I, um, after having Ali, um, a couple of years ago, I had gone from like being

and like a moderate athlete in my like teens to, you know, having children and living a busy life and being a little bit fit, doing a run here and there, but not being super active. And honestly having Ali, how old do I have been like maybe a 36? I had Aver at 23. Like I felt, I'm going to say it old. I want to mean is everything hurt. I was tired going upstairs. My joints were so. My recovery took a lot longer. And then I started to learn and delve back into the world of fitness. And with like a bit of a snowball, I just started to learn and learn and apply that. And then that's a an awesome bubble for me, which is literally connected to longevity. I am the fittest now that I have ever been. I wish I knew some of the things I knew now when I was in my 20s because I would

have loved to have been this active in my 20s, but I wasn't. But what I've then done is it's important to me to work out. It's important to me to work out sometimes twice a day. And so I am building a lifestyle that allows me to do that. And I've been very, I think, vulnerable sharing my specific experience because some of you listening to this may sit and go, it's okay if you're on your business or it's all right for you, you know, you're in a couple, like I have to go and schlep out and do a long week in a city or I'm away from my kids and, and it's, this is obviously I'm doing me. So please do, you know, take, take that into consideration because I'm not about to

preach you and go, you could do this too. Like, this is just talking about me, but the lifestyle for me that I want involves working. It involves earning an income that's befitting of my needs. So I've got a particular budget. I've got a particular lifestyle that involves, you know, travel and it involves giving. It involves spending. It involves saving. It involves investing. And it didn't, it wasn't always all of that, but that's where I've worked towards. And so I think we did this like a long time ago we've built your dream life it was something that we did with farenceld during COVID but it's thinking about that 10 20 30 year visualization not like the immediate right now and really

trying to work back from that you can have a big amazing goal which is you know to to build a life like that for example and you're not you you may be a million miles from that or you might be quite close to it or you might be like medium but you have to have a plan to get there and I think when I reflect back, that's exactly what, you know, Carl and I have been able to do and are still on the journey to doing. You know, we still don't have the exact lifestyle we want. We're still working towards it. But we're definitely prioritising, you know, the things that are important to us. And so what I will then do to, you know, what I've not defined specifically the lifestyle that I want, I've kind of give you a hint towards it. And like I said,

it doesn't involve a new car and it doesn't involve a house upgrade and it doesn't involve a new kitchen that looks a particular way that it involves things that bring me joy and so for example if fitness brings me joy interiors may bring you joy and that's okay that's exactly what this process is about because if you genuinely get joy from that or you get joy from cooking or you get joy from trips or you get joy from giving and giving in quite a serious way. The wonderful thing about this whole methodology is the budget is the key to that. So you can't say that you want one thing over here, but then do something different over there. It's really, really important that your budget reflects what your goals are.

And so that's what I'm going to be giving some real thought to after this podcast. I've shared with you like the start and what I'm thinking. And I do think our budget reflects a little bit of that. But, you know, we're about to take some time off. The two of us will have a little sit down and go, right, okay, that's like, okay, it's a little bit fluffy, I'm going to be honest. But show me in the money. Show me the money.

Show me the budget that is starting to build that life. I think on a more specific level, I think the budget's in a good place for spending. And I think it's in a good place for where our savings are at. and I think our work balance is good. I think, you know, we could always do a little bit more or pull back a little bit here and there. But I do want to give some thought to work while we're off as well. But the two specific money goals that then come out of that for us.

One of them is leaning into our investing in a more aggressive way. We want to make our money work hard for us and for our kids. And the key for this for lots of people is time. And so if you put things off until later, you run out of time, which is one of the best elements of, you know, compound interest and making things grow. And so if you are on a debt-free journey right now and investing is important for you, you know, one, you could be doing your default investing via your employer and stuff. But the longer that you are messing around and surviving, the longer that you mess around

with credit, the further away that dream of like active investing and doing lots more with your money is. So really bear that in mind, you know, we want to lean into it. I think we've been quite passive. We've done our defaults. We've topped up here and there. but I want our budget this year to be intentional about investing. I've got a LISA that I want to try and max out every year.

We've both got stocks and shares, Isis that we'd love to make a good dent into per year as well. Where we have been intentional, it has worked. So this year we have had continued our 21 before 21. So we have a goal to save 21,000 pounds in an ICA for each child by the time they're 21. And we have been able to, luckily, this year, do that consistently. Last year, we had a massive hit to our income and massive change in our lifestyle for a period of time. And we navigated that and it wasn't as automated.

This year has been a lot more steady, a lot more simple, a lot more straightforward. And so we have been able to consistently do that. Had I not decided to do that two, three years ago, or had we not decided to do that, that would still be an idea on a board or a goal on a list. but what it is I literally lifted the goal from the nice aesthetic notebook and we put it in the budget and if it's in the budget happens it's not a if and when now granted it is in the access section so those people that know the financial budget method you know the the paying into extra investing and extra saving and extra overpayments of debt goes in the excess

section at the bottom of the budget it's not up high so it's still always a choice but I've just been copying it over and redoing it every month. We've never not done it. So I can sit there this year and go, we absolutely smashed doing that goal. And it was because it became part of our budgeting process. It became kind of like a bill, if you like. It was just accepted. So I'm going to by building the lifestyle that I want, which, you know, means that we can support ourselves. It does involve growing, go and grow investments. So I'm going to lean into our investing. And I will take that LISA and the stocks and shares isa targets and I will sit with Carl and go, okay, how could this form part of our automated budget in the excess section, not kind of

like a, ooh, what should we do? And the other thing that I actually think would be amazing for us is to really lean into overpaying our mortgage, but by default. So obviously, like we did a partnership earlier in the few weeks ago with Sprive. This is not a sponsored pod, with them, but I use Sprive now. So when I am doing shopping that I'm doing already, I do it by Sprive and the cashback that I get, I apply to our mortgage and call does the same on his. And it may still work. There's a code that if you sign up for Sprive, it's F-I-N-A-N-C, so finance, F-I-N-C. If you sign up to Sprive with our code and you make your first purchase, you may still get a £5 contribution towards your mortgage.

but I think it's this concept of keeping the mortgage front and center and wanting to pay it down. It's so tempting, you know, to look at right move and see what comes up and think about what else you'd like to do. And so often people come to me and say, I want to remortgage and I want to do an extension. I want to do this and or remortgage to pay off some credit card debt. And that mortgage is such a high figure for so many of us that we want it to go down, not up. and those people that are in their 50s and above that I speak to that are mortgage free they just act and feel and they're just a little different that's where we want to be it really really is and so every time we get half tempted to maybe think about an upgrade here

or there or we definitely don't think about remorgeting and um taking money at anything like that but oh like if we ever get tempted to stretch we go no no we want that thing gone we don't want to add more we want to take off and so I do feel in a really good place with that one and we do only lean into investing personally as a priority it's just a choice of ours we do feel quite stable we feel quite secure but I'd love that mortgage to go down I think our mortgage is around like the two 90s maybe two make is it 293 I wonder what it is I have a little looking a bit but but I want it gone like I'm over it and our mortgage payment is a huge chunk of our budget and if we didn't have that you know how much money we could send to investing um so that is going to form part of our

like it's non-budgeted for the moment again the beauty of the budget is every single month we can change our mind we can say oh we've got a bonus we're going to put that on the mortgage um it's one of the reasons in grow like you said you can be a bit more flexible with multiple goals I know that if you pick one and go for it, you do it. And, but I do find when you in Grow, there's so much benefit to balance and to diversification. And just because you've learned so much across the stages, it's just your way of life.

So yes, that's, those are what we're thinking about goals. And that's where we will make sure that every month in 2026, our budget will reflect those goals. Are we living the lifestyle we want to live? are we working hard as we want to work? Are we traveling as much as we want to travel? Are we giving as much? Giving is a big part of our budget as well.

And it's something that like every month we're very proud of being able to decide that. That's the lifestyle I want, the lifestyle where I could help someone if they need it. So having that like lovely combination of wants, does the lifestyle that I want, does my budget support that? Because if it doesn't, if the two are not aligned, then not only I'm not going to get anywhere and I'm going to feel like my goal. but I'm not going to feel good either. So that's going to be the magic. So for you, you have homework. You need to think about your goal and you need to think about your plan to support it.

And you need to think about whether your budget and your partner's budget if you have a partner and are your goals the same and do your budgets both point towards this. Are you trying to do too much? Are you kind of going a bit half-heartedly and not doing enough? Have a little think about that. But make sure that your 2026 globe is trackable, that it can go super. and you can point towards it and say this is the progress that I'm making because tracking really is the difference between wishing and doing it's it's it can

it can take you so much quicker and so much further than kind of not being as specific and as I said in next week's episode we're going to be modelling some of our community's goals and showing how we would practically do them I well I'll be doing it but I'm also thinking of the girls in my head and going what would Holly be saying and what would the girls be saying? So check into that one. But otherwise, remember what I said? Message me your girls.

Tell what you're going to do. As we always say in the vault, it is just a chat around lifestyle and money. We are not giving financial advice. Have a great rest of the day. Speak to next week.