This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - 003 / Family Planning - Living Life By Design, Not By Default

Episode Date: January 29, 2020

In this episode, Nicole breaks down how to create a mechanism to have a productive conversation around your family goals. Using the successful business plan she and her husband developed in their professional careers, they turned the concept into a family plan they could implement at home as well! Where are some opportunities for you and your partner to think differently about where your money is going? Having a conversation ahead of time can help you to identify and redirect your money, and your efforts in a more meaningful and strategic way. What are your goals on a personal and professional level, and how can you best support each other? Nicole gives tips on how to prepare, what to bring to the table for your collaborative discussion...and how to have a little fun while you’re at it. It is so impactful when we invite one another to be on our team, to be each other’s biggest supporter. Growing our partnerships and redefining how we show up as women is one of the most important things we can be doing. This is Woman’s Work. Learn more about what we are up to outside of this podcast at NicoleKalil.com

Hello, friends. I am Nicole Khalil, and together we are going to redefine what it actually means to be doing woman's work. In today's episode, we're going to focus on what I call homework. This is basically all the stuff that we do outside of our normal jobs. And I want to hone in on family planning. This is a concept that Jay and I developed for our family many years back. And we took really what was working for us in developing our business plans and helping other people to execute on their business plans. And we tried to take the concept and apply it to our family. We wanted to take what was working for us professionally and figure out how we could implement it personally. And so I'm going to share forward with you our learnings in hopes that it

can be as impactful and frankly as fun as it is for us. What is important to know about family planning is it can really be done whenever. At this point in time, we are in a rhythm. So we typically do our big family planning meeting at the end of each year so that we can discuss the year that's coming up. So we met in early December on a Friday in December 2019 to focus on our family goals for 2020. And then we meet on a quarterly basis to review, check in, make sure that we're on track, or see if any adjustments need to be made. But you can start this at any point in time. It doesn't need to be on the calendar year. Logistically, what you're going to want to do is just pick a day or a half day where the two of you can be together. So for Jay and I, we blocked

out a Friday in December. We called my in-laws and asked if they'd be available to watch JJ for the night. And we booked a little staycation here in Boston. We stayed in a hotel like 10 miles from our house. But for us, it was important to get away for two reasons. Number one, to eliminate distraction, but also so that we felt like we were doing something special and that we knew that we were going to have some fun. Early on, I think we did this in like half days, maybe, you know, three or four hours. And then we would go out to dinner afterwards to celebrate. However you want to schedule it for you, it is great. I would just encourage you to make sure

you have a good amount of time with limited distractions and that you do something fun afterwards to celebrate and so that you can spend a little time together after you've done the heavy lifting or the work about talking about your family plan. We don't want this to be all work and no play, right? Okay. So logistically pick your day. Second, have some fun with it. And then third, I think it's so important that you have an agenda to follow. And as part of that agenda, you might find that you have a little bit of pre-work. There's some stuff that individually you need to put together to bring to the table so that you can make your time together as efficient and as effective as possible. Let me give you an example of some of the pre-work items that I always have on our list. First, bringing any professional goals with you to your family planning meeting will be so invaluable. So when I say professional

goals, this could be your business plan. It could be a promotion that you're working towards. It could be achievements or results that you're trying to achieve at work. Whatever it is, bring it with you individually and be prepared to discuss it, even if it's not fully baked yet, right? So for Jay and I, this means bringing our business plans to our family planning meeting. And we're almost never 100% done with our business plans by the time we show up, but at least 80% of the way there so that we can share with each other what we're working on and what's important to us professionally. A second thing to think about from a pre-work perspective is to have someone, whether it's you or your spouse, whoever manages the household finances, to bring some information to your planning meeting. This could be your current

budget. It could be something around your spending habits or just your personal finances in general. And the purpose of this is to have a collaborative discussion about where you're spending your money. Are you spending it in the right places? Are there any places you want to scale back? Or is there any areas where you're spending money frivolously? So in order to have that conversation, you kind of need to bring your current budget or your current tracking of your personal finances with you. So whoever sort of need to bring your current budget or your current tracking of your personal finances with you. So whoever sort of handles that in your household, make sure that they bring that or they get that together as part of the pre-work. Another thing you always want to think about from a

pre-work perspective are any individual personal goals that either of you might have. So this could be fitness goals, or health goals, or education goals, or whatever is exciting for you personally, or from a self-development standpoint in the coming year. I'll give you an example. For me, I made the commitment to read 60 books in 2020. I honestly have no idea what I was thinking. But now that I've made the commitment, I got to figure it out. That was an important thing for me to bring to our family planning meeting, to have a conversation with Jay and engage him in possibly watching a little bit less TV or reading before bed or whatever so that he just knew what I was trying to accomplish.

And so he could support and understand when he saw me reading at pretty much all times whenever I could. So the first three things from a pre-work perspective are your professional goals, your current budget, and any personal goals you might have as individuals. And then finally, you might want to think through and look through your agenda and just, is there anything unique to your family or specific to your family that you want to add to the agenda? Having a well-thought out agenda as you walk into your family planning meeting will just make it that much more effective. And it'll also help you feel like you're not missing anything or that you're on track and you sort of know what you're doing.

Okay. So that's the pre-work part. Let's talk about your actual agenda for the day. I'm going to share with you our agenda and you can take what you like and throw out the rest. And it does not have to be done in this order. It can really be done in any order that seems right for you. The reason we do it in this order is because we like to try to do what I call the heavy lifting first. The stuff that's going to require brain power or where our attention to detail may need to be at its highest. And so we focus on like our finances and calendar and things like that early on in the day so that we have the mental capacity and energy to do it. And then we kind of reserve more of the conversational fun stuff for later on. Okay. Agenda item number one for family planning day

is your personal finances. And then bullet point number one under that agenda item is reviewing your budget. And I'm putting budget in air quotes over here because there was a point in time where I was super high attention to detail on our finances. Like I tracked everything to the penny. Some would say that I was a little bit anal, but I just thought I was being very diligent. As we've gotten busier and I've gotten a little bit of a better handle on things, our budget is a little bit more general now. So we'll have a conversation of what money is coming in, what money is going out. Is there a delta? Should there be a delta? And we're just kind of talking generally about our personal budget and the situation that we are currently in.

We also talk about our current spending. And this is an area where we really dig a little bit deeper. Okay. In our household, I manage our daily finances. Like I pay our bills and handle the finances as it relates to our household. My husband is a financial advisor. And so he's more than capable of doing these things. But I think for the same reason that attorneys are told not to represent themselves or doctors don't perform surgery on family members. We decided a while back that we would have somebody else be our financial advisor. We picked somebody great who we knew could be neutral and could really listen to both of our perspectives and could be a resource for us,

but also notice our blind spots or pay attention to where we might not be thinking about our opportunities. So again, we have a financial advisor and I kind of manage the day-to-day finances. So I am responsible from a pre-work perspective and going over our budget and current spending. So what I do is I highlight the areas where I think we might be able to have an impact on our current spending. Places where I think we might be able to have an impact on our current spending. Places where I think we might be spending frivolously or places we spent money on back in the day, but it doesn't really serve us now. Or just opportunities, things where I feel like if we could be a little bit more mindful, we wouldn't spend as much money in these areas.

Now, I want to make a point here that I think is really important. I do not come to this meeting to tell Jay that he needs to spend less money. I'm not wagging my finger. I'm not trying to tell my partner what to do. And whoever it is who does the finances needs to come from the place of having a conversation. This is a judgment-free zone. We want to be collaborative. We want to have a discussion. And we want to hear and share each other's perspectives on where the money is going. And so we put our heads together and we identify a few areas where we think we might be able to make a difference. And so the next bullet point under personal finances is where are your opportunities? Where can you be doing something differently? Where can you spend less or invest more?

So I'll give you a couple examples that popped up for us. A few years back, Jay asked, do we really need to belong to three wine clubs? I mean, I feel like the obvious answer was absolutely. But, you know, after some discussion and me being open to another way of seeing things, he encouraged and convinced me to scale back. And that was a very easy and smart decision. More recently, in our last planning meeting, we were talking about how much money we've been spending at Amazon. I mean, it's so easy. You think of something, you pick up your phone, you click it, it's at your door the next day. And it was almost too easy. We were ordering things that we didn't really need or ordering

things that we might have already had. And it was just kind of feeling like we were a little out of control. And so Jay had the idea, which I thought was brilliant. Every time we think we need to order something on Amazon, we put it in our cart and then we click the save for later button. Jay's suggestion was that on Friday nights, and I promise we have way more fun than just this on Friday nights, but on Friday nights, we know we're together. We're typically a little bit tired by the end of our week. And so we sort of just hang out together. And so one of the things that we're going to do while we're sitting on the couch is open our Amazon cart together. And then all the things that we save for later will be sitting in there.

And each Friday, we'll have a conversation about what we need or what we don't need or if we need to buy that this month or next month or whatever the case may be. But it's more conversational. Now, just for the record, in case anybody's thinking this, I do not need to ask Jay for permission to spend money and neither does he. That's not what this is about. This is about us being more collaborative and having a little bit of accountability with each other so that we're not spending money like morons. So I'll give you an example of one thing that recently came out of that. We were going through our Amazon cart and in there were microfiber cloths. Jay had put that in there.

And on one hand, I'm super excited that he wants to clean something. But on the other hand, I was like, what is this? And he goes, oh, I need that. And I forget what it was for, to clean something, let's just say. And I said, dude, we have like 20 of those in the laundry room. And so that was a thing that we didn't order that we would have in the past just because we had created that mechanism for conversation. And I mean, it's not a lot of money, but those little things add up a ton over time. Okay, so where can you be spending less? Or what are some opportunities for you and your family to think differently about where your money is going? The next bullet point under personal finances is our plan to increase our savings, where we're going to invest more.

Now, some years this conversation is easier than others, but we always have it no matter what. Because hopefully in our earlier conversation, we've identified some places where we can save money, where we are not spending it as much. And so we want to redirect those dollars to actual meaningful and strategic savings. So we have some guidance from our financial advisor. And Jay obviously has a lot of opinions on this, as do I. But we always walk out with one or two areas where we are going to focus on. Maybe for you, this is putting a few more dollars away for retirement. Or maybe it's making sure your emergency fund, having three to six months of your expenses each month set aside in a savings account. So if, God forbid, something were to

happen, you know you have a backup. Whatever it is for you, having a plan and having a strategy around where that money that you're now saving from your earlier conversation is going to be redirected. So I'll give you one example that Jay and I talked about recently that we're putting our money towards. We're going to take a small portion of the money that we sort of found through our conversation and we're going to direct it towards our vacation fund. Every year we like to go on a couple of big vacations. And what happens is we go, we have a ton of fun, but we didn't plan effectively for them ahead of time. And so I'm sort of, you know, dealing with the credit cards and all of that

after the fact. And it's not that I regret our vacation. It just takes the shine off of it a little bit, if you get what I mean. And so I wanted to make sure that we were planning ahead of time for our vacations so that when we go, we know what we have to spend and we're not recovering from our vacations after the fact. So that's an example of something that we decided where an area where we're going to save more strategically, more diligently in 2020. All right. The next bullet point item under personal finances is any big ticket or big budget items that you have in the coming year or the coming quarter or whatever timeframe that you're looking at. So this could be home improvement projects. It could be a big vacation you want to

go on. It could be saving to buy a home or saving to buy a vacation home or whatever. Whatever is exciting for you, but that is a big ticket item. It's so important you have a conversation about how you're going to save for that, where you're going to save item. It's so important you have a conversation about how you're going to save for that, where you're going to save for that. And by the way, if this is not your area of expertise or you have questions, I would highly encourage you to talk to a great financial advisor. Okay. The last thing that falls under the personal finances agenda item is charitable giving. We have a conversation about where as a family we want to be giving of our time and of our money. And we talk about what's important to us and is the charity that we're currently working with the right fit for us or is there something

different or do we want to divvy up our time or our money? We basically just have this conversation so that we are purposeful and that we're focusing our energy and efforts where we think we're going to be able to have the greatest impact. And I think it's just a good conversation. Okay. I spent a lot of time on personal finances because I think it's super important. They say the number one cause of divorce is money. And I know that it can create a ton of friction and stress within a family. And so this particular agenda item has been really, really impactful for Jay and I. He's a little bit more risk-taking and aggressive, and I'm way more conservative. And so us creating an environment to have this dialogue has made a huge difference in our marriage and how connected we feel with our finances and outside of our

finances throughout the year. Okay. Big agenda item number two is your professional goals. This is where you're going to share with each other what you're focused on professionally at work over the next year. So underneath that are sharing your goals, the results or achievements that you're focused on and trying to accomplish. It could be promotion opportunities or just your business goals or work outcomes that you're really excited about and that you know will make a big difference for you at work, but also at home. We also talk about any investments

we need to make professionally. This can be both of time and or money. So an example on the time side, is there a certification or credentialization that you need to work on? Is there a day of the week that you feel like it would make a huge difference if you got in the office earlier or if you were able to stay later? And then are there any financial investments

you need to make? This might be more the case for entrepreneurs or business owners, but having a conversation if there are any financial investments that are big for you in the coming year, just so your partner knows about that. Obviously, that's not coming from your personal finances. It's coming from your business finances. But still having your partner understand what you're up to is super important.

And then a follow-up question to those conversations is, do any of these help or affect our personal finances? So of course, if you're working towards a promotion and that promotion comes with a big pay raise, that is obviously going to affect your personal finances. And having a conversation around that. Or if you need to make a huge business investment and you kind of need to scale back a little bit on the amount of money you're contributing to the household, then that is definitely a conversation that needs to be had. So looking at what's coming up for you professionally and also just having a conversation how it may impact your personal finances. And then here's the big question.

Where can we help each other professionally? And this is where you have a conversation about how you can support each other, how you can be each other's cheerleaders, how you can have better dialogue when you walk in the door at the end of the day than, how was your day, honey? To actually be able to ask, how did that meeting go? Or where are you at on this goal? Or even knowing what's important to your partner day in, day out. It's so exciting. And it helps feel like you've got somebody else on your team. And then lastly, under professional goals, is just having a plan or a conversation about what you want to do if there is any surplus income that comes out of your professional life

over the year. So this could be bonuses, it could be commissions, it could be profit from your business, whatever the case may be, just having a conversation if and when we get any surplus outside of our normal month-to-month contributions to the household, what do we want to do with it? I'm going to give you the formula Jay and I came up with because it's worked really well for us. Whenever we have a bonus, we follow this formula. And so then we don't have to have that conversation any and every time there is extra money. It's already decided upon ahead of time, which eliminates frustration, disagreements, arguments, all that fun stuff. So what we do is we first and foremost pay our taxes. So that might come out of your paycheck. When you get your bonus or commission, that's great.

If that happens, if it doesn't, make sure you pay your taxes first. So let's use the example of, let's say there is a surplus of $3,000 in the year. We would take $1,000 and we would pay taxes. And then we would take the remaining $2,000 and we would divvy it up. $1,000 would go into our savings account. And the other $1,000, we give ourselves permission to blow. We literally, we take that $1,000 and we divvy it up into thirds. So a third goes into our travel fund, a third goes into Jay's spending account, and a third goes into my spending account. This is, by the way, something we did many years back that has been a big game changer for us and frankly, a marriage saver, I think. We, every month, have a small amount of money that goes out of our joint personal checking

account and goes into separate individual spending accounts. So Jay has his spending account. I have mine. And that's where we buy the fun stuff that we might feel a little bit guilty if we're coming out of our personal finances, but we don't because it's coming out of our permissioned spending account. So if Jay wants to buy another pair of sneakers or a new custom suit or whatever it is that he wants to do, he would do it out of that account. If I want to buy a cool purse or great heels or whatever it is, I would do it out of my account. And that way, when we see each other buying those things, there's no resentment. I can be happy for him and he can be happy for me because we're spending our spending money. Okay. So that is agenda item number two, which is going over your professional goals.

Agenda item number three is your family calendar. We literally open up our calendars. He has his up. I have mine. And we talk through it. First and foremost, we have a conversation about what's working and what's not working about our current schedule. Do either of you feel like you're not having

enough family time or you want to have one day a week where you have dinner together as a family, or there are times where you want to be able to work out in the morning or vice versa? Whatever it is, having a conversation about your current schedule and what's working and not working for you. I'll give you an example that came up, I think, two or three years ago for Jay and I. We are very committed and focused on having an equal partnership or as close to equal as we can get it. And one of the things that was really bothering me, and frankly, it was causing some resentment, was that I was picking up and dropping off JJ from school a few more times than he was each week. And he didn't know, by the way, that this was bothering

me. This was all me, all in my head. And so I brought it to the table during this conversation because I had an easy format to bring it up in. And we went back and forth and talked through it and like how we would make adjustments and what we would do with the time and where Jay might need to reorganize some things in his schedule. But he was on the same page with me and he was willing to have the conversation and we, I was willing to talk through it. And I let my resentment go before we had this conversation so that I could have it from like a helpful and neutral place. But we were able to figure out how to make it so that we have equal drop-offs and pickups during the week. So, you know, we both have the opportunity to get started earlier in the day

on some days. And we both have the opportunity to work a little later in the day on some days. So that really works for us. Okay, so what's working, what's not working in your current schedule? Have that conversation. Then the next thing we do is we plan our vacations, our family vacations and the vacations for just the two of us. So we have found that it's super important that the two of us get away with just each other at least once a quarter. That might not be your recipe for success, but please plan to have some time for just the two of you. It's awesome. You get to reconnect. And I mean, Jay and I look at each other and we're like, I forgot how much I liked you. I forgot how much I spend, love spending time with just you. It's

such a great thing. I wish we could even do it more than we do. But if you don't plan it out, if you don't book the weekends, it's probably not going to happen. You'll talk about it, but you'll never do it. At least that's what was true for us before we started doing it this way. And then, of course, we plan our family vacations. And we really come from a place of where would we go? What will we do where Where all of us will have a great time and we'll all feel like this is the right vacation for us. Okay. The next thing that we talk about is any professional or individual personal travel we might have. And we go through the calendar and block out the dates. So Jay has a business trip these dates. I have business travel these dates. We have a friend's trip here,

or he's going to a game out of town here, whatever it is. And we go through and we block out the calendar. So each of us know where we might need to cover for the other. And it's all planned out. And we try to do this at least three months, if not six months ahead. And then we, again, are meeting quarterly. And each quarter, we look out at least a quarter, if not another six months ahead. So we're always looking ahead. And then finally, I think this is really important. As we're going through the dates, we keep a little notepad off to the side and we write down any of the dates where we may need some support or coverage. So if you have a nanny or a great babysitter or, or parents that will help

out, making sure that you write down the list of dates that you know, at this point, you're going to need some help. And so for us, we're very lucky. We have super supportive parents on both sides. We send those dates to my in-laws and to my parents and we ask them, are you available? Are you willing? Is it too much? And then we hear back from them and we know ahead of time that we're going to have the coverage or we might not and we need to figure something else out or potentially move something around. So again, being super diligent and prepared ahead of time. Okay, that's family planning. At this point, we typically take a break. Our brains are fried. We've had lunch because any business meeting without a meal should really be called an email, in my opinion. But we've had lunch, we've hung out, we've been there for hours,

and now we need a break. So we'll go and we'll get ready or go for a walk or whatever it is that will help you feel a little bit refreshed. And then we go out to dinner. And at dinner, we have our conversation about agenda item number four, which is our relationship goals. Who do we want to be for each other? What are we proud of in our relationship currently? How can we better take care of each other? This is a big one for me. And ladies, I hope you do this. I hope this resonates with you. This is a good opportunity for you to ask for help where and when you need it. So I am not very good at it. I never have been very good at asking for help. I'm supposed to have it all figured out and be able to do it all perfectly and all that fun stuff. So asking for help is not really in my nature. And so this

conversation about how can we better take care of each other is an environment that's set up for me to say, I could really use some help or support in these areas. And by the way, it doesn't necessarily mean that Jay has to be the one to support me. Sometimes we brainstorm on how I can get the help that I need from other resources. This could be things like having somebody come and clean your house or, you know, using one of those meal services or hiring somebody to watch your children after school, even when you're home one day a week or whatever the case may be. I'm sure you can come up with things, but have that conversation about how you can better take care of each other. And ladies, this is a good time for you to ask for

the help that you might need and your partner too. But I'm just really encouraging you because I know we as women tend to not be very good in this space. And then is there anything that we need to work on individually or together in our relationship? I'm going to share a very personal example that happened a few years back. We had this conversation and I was just in a really tough spot. I'm not really sure why, even to this day. I just, a lot was changing with work. I was feeling abnormal amounts of pressure and overwhelmed. And it was creating a little bit of distance in our marriage. And it just, we had the conversation, you know, should we go to marriage counseling or couples therapy?

And we were talking through it. And I said to Jay, you know, I think this is something that needs to start with me. I think I need to go and get the help that I need and the support that I need. And then when I do that, we might decide to come together and go seek, you know, support together. But I feel like I need to do this first. So I went and saw a therapist. And by the way, I have zero shame about this. It was the best decision I could have made, and it was the support that I needed.

And frankly, almost everybody I know sees a therapist. In the professional world, we call them executive coaches. But you know what I mean. Everybody's getting some sort of support and some sort of therapy in their lives. And so that was an example of where I needed to work on something individually that was impacting us together. And on the other side of it, a year later, we didn't end up going to marriage counseling. And we were able to really reconnect and make it a priority.

But I knew I needed to do some work for myself. Okay. Agenda item number five. And this can be done at dinner or potentially the next day. So Jay and I spent the night. We went to massages in the morning, which was awesome. And then we talked about agenda item number five, which is our family goals. For us, there are two major things that fall in this category that I want to focus on. Number one, who do we want to be as parents? What do we want to focus on? There are so many things that are going to contribute to who JJ becomes as a human. It's going to be friends and school and social media and so many outside influences that we

really can't control. But what we can control is what we focus on as her parents. And so we have this conversation and it looks something like this. If we could only influence JJ into becoming three to five things, what would be the most important characteristics, values, or ways of being that would be important to us? And so we've had this conversation every year. And what stayed consistent is we want JJ to be confident. Shocking, I know. But yes, we want her to be confident. We also want her to be kind. And we want her to be brave. And this most recent year, we added we want her to be hardworking. And so as we've come together, and we throw out a bunch of words and then we just sort of narrow it down. But as we come together and make these decisions, it helps us as parents to be aligned and also to where to focus our energy.

So when we talk about confidence all the time and we really acknowledge her and congratulate her when she does things that she's a little afraid of doing, that when she's brave. We ask her, like, how are you kind today? And we talk about the value of being kind and thinking about others. And we focus on the efforts that she's putting in more than the results. We want her to know that she can control what she puts into something more than she can control what comes out of it. And so we really want to focus on that effort. So having this conversation for your family, if you have kids. If you don't have kids, if you're in a really committed relationship and you think you want to have kids, you may want to have this conversation for the future or just skip it. And then the second thing we talk about under family goals are any sports

or activities that we want to make sure that JJ is involved in. Now we know what she likes, but she's six. So, you know, she'll have more input and contribution into this conversation in the future. But for us, we sort of talk about what we're going to do in the coming year with JJ. And our sort of rule of thumb in our household is no more than two activities at a time. And if we're doing two activities, Jay sort of takes the lead on one, and I sort of take the lead on the other. And we might both show up to a game or to an event, but for the most part, we don't have the time to be driving her all around town. And so we just sort of streamline it in that way. Okay. Agenda item number six would be any miscellaneous topics that I didn't cover. So

again, as part of your pre-work, you're going to have this agenda, but then is there any topics that are unique or specific to your family that you want to add to the list. And that, my friends, is our agenda for family planning. What's super important is that you follow up with each other within 30 to 60 days because through this conversation, you're going to find there are some tasks that come out, like, you know, who's going to call the cable bill and see if we can spend less money there, or who's going to call this person and, you know, hire them to clean the house or whatever the case may be. And here's the deal. All of these tasks should not fall on your plate. You got to divvy them up. So having a little bit of a follow-up meeting to check in and what's

been done and what still needs to be done. And then that follow-up meeting each quarter, if you can swing it at least one other time in the year, you know, to review and update and make any changes is super important. And here's my last thought on this. Growing our partnerships is one of the most important things we can be doing as women. Invite each other to be on your team, be each other's biggest supporters, create partnerships that work for both of you. And of course, if you have any questions about family planning, connect with us on NicoleKhalil.com or on social media and let us know what questions you have and share your experiences with us. And as always, thank you for listening and for letting me share how we can build healthy, purposeful, and supportive partnerships with our spouses and significant others.

Redefining how we show up as women in our relationships is super important work. And this is woman important work. And this is woman's work.