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<p>The start of a new season is good a time for kicking off new commitments in the spirit of betterment.</p><p>Which makes it an ideal moment to consider pressing reset on your finances. When you cultivate, implement and refine meaningful and sustainable money practices, you not only improve your finances, but the confidence you build can lead to transformation in other areas of your life.</p><p>To achieve this new level of financial wellness, I suggest incorporating values-based budgeting into your current money practice. How? First, reflect on your values — the beliefs and principles that drive behaviors and attitudes — to determine your life and financial goals. A values-based budget is, then, a personal saving and spending plan aligned to what matters to you the most.</p><p>It's basically an extension of you. And, like you, values are dynamic; they expand as we evolve and grow more self-aware. A values-based budget leaves room for you — and your finances — to grow over time.</p><img src="https://www.lifeandmoney.citi.com/rcs/lifeandmoney/storage/public/Young-woman-at-cafe-using-laptop.jpg" alt="Young woman at cafe using laptop" class="right_image" /><h2>Start with your 'why'</h2><p>What's important to you at this stage in life? And how can you make sure that your budget lines up to best support those goals? Sticking to a values-based budget can become second nature once you're clear about what you want out of life. The subsequent purchases and experiences will all work in service of your vision.</p><p>But nailing down your values can be a challenge on the first try, especially if you've never contemplated what brings meaning and joy to your life, let alone your finances.</p><p>If you struggle with identifying your values, try this exercise: Visualize your ideal day. Paint the picture of the type of work you do, your preferred work culture, where you're living, your support network, your hobbies and how you engage in self-care.</p><p>An app like <a href="https://www.clasp.app/about.html">Clasp</a> can help you make sense of how you feel about money, your emotional triggers, and your most influential financial role models — all necessary pre-work to help you think more critically about how to match your money with your values.</p><h2>Reevaluate your costs</h2><p>Once you home in on your core values, you'll be able to reevaluate your fixed and variables costs with a new, more precise lens.</p><p>You may realize, for instance, that you could save a couple hundred dollars of your take-home pay every month on a need like housing because you don't care about living in a designer zip code. Or you may opt to sell your car and take public transportation if you live in a transit-friendly city and value eco-friendly living. It may even dawn on you that you could trim the fat on your grocery bill without sacrificing your need for quality cuts, produce, or ingredients if you decide to shop by menu, with a list, or on a weekly basis to avoid food waste, duplicate purchases or impulse buys.</p><p>With this approach, you could use any freed-up money to create other values-based short-term and long-term saving and spending goals such as a rainy-day fund, investing, quarterly travel, paying for a personal chef or a cleaning service.</p><p>Similarly, you may notice that variable or mutable costs like monthly magazine subscriptions, streaming services, unused data plans or eating out are wasting money. Instead, earmark those funds to enroll in personal development classes, host monthly dinner parties, build a website around your freelance services or dip your toe into the world of investing. Once you define goals and values, your budget can shift to support those things.</p><h2>End with your 'how'</h2><p>Now that you've figured out why you want to adjust your spending and savings, find the right resource or guide to help you stick with it.</p><p>Tools like an old-school spreadsheet and the latest budget app play important supporting roles in building an authentic, values-based relationship with your money. They provide the "how" — the system or structure — for tracking expenses, staying organized and keeping yourself accountable across months and years.</p><p>But doing the opposite — focusing on the how before the why — essentially treats the acts of saving and spending as isolated and transactional moves rather than the relational and contextual ones that they are.</p><h2>Help, I'm fancy and so are my values!</h2><p>Values-based budgets can serve as a key structure in any comprehensive financial wellness plan. Practiced responsibly, values-based saving and spending can spare you feelings of shame, confusion and anxiety that might otherwise emerge at the end of the month when you discover you have little in the way of savings or memorable purchases to show for your earnings.</p><p>Regrettably, in inexperienced hands, there's also a chance that values-based budgeting can lead to poor money management in the name of living your most aligned life. You may justify the purchase of a pricey retreat with credit because you're focused on self-improvement or take out a personal loan in order to buy high-end music equipment because you want to explore your creative side.</p><p>In 10 years, I'll be 50 years old. If my 50s promise to be anything like the last two decades, I'll have new goals and values. And along the way, I'll have a budget that allows me to embrace and experience it all.</p>

Make Room for What Matters with Values-Based Budgeting

<p>Self-care may be equated with doing things to recharge, like exercising and getting rest, but two other aspects of life can benefit from some TLC too: your home and your finances.</p><p>Focusing time and energy on these areas can help you feel more comfortable and secure, and ultimately happier — and all it takes are a few updates or habit changes. Read on for tips on how to refresh your home and establish a healthy money mindset.</p><h3 class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 24pt; background: white;">Build an estate planning team<o:p></o:p></h3><p>One way to protect your wealth is to <a href="https://www.lifeandmoney.citi.com/lam/articles/money/family/personal-financial-planning-for-families">create a plan</a> and an estate planning team. You'll need at least three pros:<o:p></o:p></p><ul type="disc"><li>A financial advisor who will manage your estate's finances, making recommendations and funding investment, retirement and trust accounts.  <o:p></o:p></li><li>An estate-planning attorney who will guide you in choosing the best options for maintaining your estate after death or in the event of incapacity.  <o:p></o:p></li><li>A tax professional who will support the personal representative or executor of an estate with closing responsibilities by setting up an estate account, preparing tax filings and paying the final distributions to beneficiaries.<o:p></o:p></li></ul><img src="https://www.lifeandmoney.citi.com/rcs/lifeandmoney/storage/public/GettyImages-1173619393_web_0.jpg" alt="A young woman taking a break from technology" class="right_image" /><h2 class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 24pt; background: white;">Self-care strategies for your home<o:p></o:p></h2><h3>Liven up your space<o:p></o:p></h3><p>A fresh coat of paint or a new accent piece can be an easy, wallet-friendly way to give your home — and your mood — a boost. Color psychology has shown that the shades we choose in our homes impact our emotions, feelings and actions, so be strategic.<o:p></o:p></p><h3>Become a plant parent<o:p></o:p></h3><p>Houseplants not only beautify our rooms and potentially improve air quality but, according to studies, they may also deliver <a href="https://www.lifeandmoney.citi.com/lam/articles/well-being/well-being/wellness-benefits-of-houseplants">health benefits</a> like reducing stress, increasing productivity and improving memory retention and concentration. If you're new to plant care, you may want to choose low-maintenance greenery like a snake plant or pothos. Anyone with animals at home should look for pet-safe options like a Boston fern or a ponytail palm.<o:p></o:p></p><h3>Sort and declutter <o:p></o:p></h3><p>Taking stock of your stuff is a feel-good activity; it's satisfying to purge all the items you no longer need. Even better, it's also a chance to return borrowed items to owners, donate to charity or make extra money reselling the unwanted clothes clogging up your closets.</p><p> </p><p> — <em>With additional reporting from Life and Money by Citi editors.</em></p>

Self-Care Tips for Your Money and Home

<p>A home should be a retreat from the noise and stress of the outside world.</p><p>So, what to do when the distractions of life and everyday clutter start to encroach on the spaces where we're meant to feel the most relaxed? One way to cultivate an environment that promotes presence of mind is to look East.</p><p>Timeless and aesthetically focused, Japanese design has long influenced Western architecture; it's seen in the early 20<sup>th</sup>-century Bauhaus movement and the work of American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, among others. And the design concepts that attracted those visionaries are having a moment again.</p><p>Etsy named the Japanese concept <em>wabi-sabi — </em>taking pride in imperfection and accepting impermanence — a top design trend of 2018. <em>Japandi, </em>a combination of Japanese and Scandinavian design, is a trending hashtag.</p><p>Proponents of Japanese design principles say that incorporating them into your own home can make you <a href="https://www.lifeandmoney.citi.com/lam/home">feel less stressed</a>. Whether your aesthetic is shabby chic, midcentury modern or California coastal, there are ideas and aspects of Japanese design that you can consider adding to your home and your routine.</p><img src="https://www.lifeandmoney.citi.com/rcs/lifeandmoney/storage/public/30922214_1834724263497204_101085671673823232_n(1).jpg" alt="japanese ceramic bowl on table" class="right_image" /><h2>Add the outdoors</h2><p>Wooden furniture, branches as décor, <a href="https://www.lifeandmoney.citi.com/lam/articles/well-being/well-being/wellness-benefits-of-houseplants">houseplants and other natural elements</a> are essential aspects of <em>ryokan</em> design, Aasgaard says. There should also be plenty of windows to allow for a full view of nature. In the home, bringing in elements of the outdoors can be as simple as adding hardwood accessories in the kitchen. Or, incorporate driftwood, natural wooden sculptures or even a branch-based floral design into a room.</p><p>In Japan, the art of creating floral displays is called <em>ikebana</em>. The practice treats floral arrangements as more than just decorative elements — the designs go far beyond a hastily arranged burst of blooms. It's a thoughtful process, allowing the designer to meditate on nature, explains Hones. Incorporating a similar daily or weekly ritual, such as collecting and arranging seasonal flowers, branches or leaves, can provide the same meditative pause in your own hectic life.</p><h2>Let in light</h2><p><em>Shoji</em> screens — sliding frame doors covered in white paper — are emblematic of Japanese design. And while they serve a practical purpose to easily divide a room, they are also designed to enhance light and shadows in a room, allowing the shifting dynamic of the light to become a star player in an interior.</p><p>To apply this principle in your home, treat screens, drapery or shutters not merely as window covers but as devices for playing around with how the light falls in the room, and how that light makes you feel.</p><p>Mirrors, too, can be a key element in maximizing light, says Hones, who advises clients to add mirrors next to windows, to reflect outside greenery and allow even more sun and natural elements to enter the home. "Light sources should be dimmable and well-spaced, and use candles or lanterns to add to the glow of the space," Hones says. If you are incorporating sconces, consider the shadow or patterns they cast as an additional design element.</p><img src="https://www.lifeandmoney.citi.com/rcs/lifeandmoney/storage/public/18808751_1459120784152583_1112840423123976192_n(1).jpg" alt="cup of japanese green tea on marble surface" class="right_image" /><h2>Get undone</h2><p><em>Wabi-sabi</em> is a liberating design philosophy in that it revels in imperfection. Earthen materials such as mugs, plates and vases are commonly seen as having elements of <em>wabi-sabi. </em>If chipped or worn with age, these pieces are regarded as beautiful for having withstood the test of time.</p><p>Japanese design values craftsmanship over mass production. Owning fewer things that are made well, and, most importantly, that make you happy when you use them is far more important than buying new goods every few years, shares Asako Ueno, chief curator at Anzu, an online Japanese design shop based in Brooklyn, NY.</p><h2>Love what you have</h2><p>Do you have a friend who went on a decluttering streak, only holding onto items that <em>sparked joy</em>? While the phrase comes from Japanese author Marie Kondo's bestselling book <em>The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up</em><em>, </em>the sentiment is strictly rooted in Japanese design principles, namely that the things you use should also be the things you love — merging the beautiful and the practical.</p><p>"Japanese design philosophy is rooted in the concept that everything you own has energy, or <em>chi</em>," explains Hones. As an experiment, Hones suggests tuning into some of your furniture: How does your dining room table make you feel? What sort of meals did you have or conversations did you enjoy there? Learning to tap into the energy of your possessions can help you cull the things that you feel are bringing you down and remove them.</p><h2>Play with negative space</h2><p>In Japanese design, less is more, and sometimes, in a traditional <em>tatami </em>room (a space covered in straw mat flooring), the best furniture design is none at all. The concept of negative space, called <em>ma</em>, is a key element in Japanese homes. "When a room is empty, with only a few objects that take our energy, we are able to focus on what's most important," Hones explains.</p><p>While it may not be feasible to have a room devoid of furniture, minimizing the amount of furniture in each room (or putting away items when you're done using them) may help make you feel like you have less physical — and mental — clutter, too.</p><p>"When I do it, I imagine sweeping the clutter from my mind and starting the day anew," says Hones. For her, the simple task is just as meditative as it is practical. Which, after all, is the essence of Japanese design.</p>

Zen Den: Japanese Design to De-Stress Your Space

<p>Looking to create more balance, focus and consistency in your life?</p><p>It starts with establishing — and sticking to — solid routines to begin and end your day.</p><p>Taking steps at the outset of each day to feel energized, inspired and rested will help you focus on the tasks ahead. And, making time at the end of the day to wind down, calm your mind and body to set you up for a good night's sleep.</p><p>But how do you actually design a routine that works? Instead of going on about the importance of routines, let's make them. And I have some printable resources below that can help, too.</p><p>What do my current routines say about me? For one thing, I have de-prioritized grooming tasks like hair styling and makeup; I find no joy in them and have therefore removed them from my routines. I also prioritize a financial check-in each day, and knock off communications like social networking early so they don't bog me down later.</p><p>If you're like me, you may find success with visual reminders of your goals posted around your home. Having a physical piece of paper posted in key areas of your home where you will be performing your AM and PM routines will be a massive help as you take steps to make these new tasks into a habit that no longer requires thinking or reminders.</p><p>Can you use a habit app for this? Absolutely and I use one myself. However, having an image as a reminder — like a printable task list — will increase the likelihood you will complete your habits that make up the routine. Instead of having to reach for your phone and open an app, this printable will be staring you in the face demanding to be taken seriously.</p><p>Whatever tasks make your list, <strong><a href="https://www.anorganizedlife.info/am/pmroutineworksheet">this handy printable</a></strong> can help you design your routines.</p><img src="https://www.lifeandmoney.citi.com/rcs/lifeandmoney/storage/public/Woman drinking coffee and reading book on bed.jpg" alt="Woman drinking coffee and reading book on bed" class="right_image" /><h2>Draft your routine</h2><p>Start with elimination. Taking an honest look (without judgement) at what doesn't work for you and your life is key to designing — and maintaining —<a href="https://www.lifeandmoney.citi.com/lam/articles/well-being/family/how-to-increase-productivity-in-a-family"> solid routines</a>.</p><p>When my daughter was born, my morning routine was pared down to one task: showering. Skin care, yoga, meditation and even social media was on pause in those early newborn months. Routines are about nourishing yourself, not trying to conform to someone else's ideal of what self-care is.</p><p>Now it's time to look at what you do want to incorporate. Choosing items to fit into your morning and evening routines is like shopping at your favorite store: Everything fits and is perfect for you. What would make you feel ready for the day and the best version of yourself? Ten extra minutes for a relaxing shower? Meditation? A budgeting check in (that's a priority for me)?</p><p>Looking to the end of the day, what will help you wind down and relax? For me that is as simple as turning my phone to silent, signaling to my brain that it's time to sleep. For you it could light stretching or a calming cup of tea.</p><p>It's ultimately about defining what well-being means for you  and prioritizing it. </p><h2>Time block it to rock it</h2><p>You've figured out the essentials of your routines (that's a big deal!). Now, figure out how much time you're going to allocate to each and assess your schedule as a whole. Enter: Time Blocking. </p><p>Time Blocking is high on my list of favorite things — <a href="https://www.lifeandmoney.citi.com/lam/articles/money/managing-money/how-to-set-up-a-values-based-financial-plan">right under budgeting</a>. It's assigning a block of time to complete a group of tasks that are similar in nature.</p><p>Add up the amount of time you're going to need for both your routines, then find slots in your schedule. I reverse engineer this. Answer:</p><p>1. What time do you normally wake up/go to bed?</p><p>2. How long do you need to complete your routine?</p><p>If you need an hour to complete your morning routine, then you will either need to wake up earlier or shift the next time block forward. For most, shifting the next time block forward is hard to do, so my suggestion is to try and wake up earlier. Don't hate me, I promise this will help.</p><h2>Make it happen</h2><p>Developing routines that work for you will take time, but if you build it into your schedule they will become second nature, especially when you're reaping the benefits.</p><p>Just be honest with yourself and revisit your plan often to ensure that you're maximizing your routines. Developing routines that work perfectly for you and your life will ultimately improve every area of your life. You will feel energized, focused, organized and ready to tackle big goals.</p>

The Secret to a Solid AM/PM Routine? It's Printables

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