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Good morning. This is Laura.

Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.

Today's tip is to figure out what it costs to be you. How much money is required to fund your life and your family's life in the way you'd like to live it. When you know this, you can make smarter choices about your finances and know what you need to aim for if there's a way you'd like to live in the future.

Today's tip comes from Bobby Rebell, a certified financial planner and author of the book

Launching Financial Grownups. Bobby was a guest on my other podcast, Best of Both Worlds.

And she suggested people ask this question, what does it cost to be you?

In other words, what do you spend across all purposes and categories to lead your life?

Rent, child care, vacations, dog walking, gym membership, makeup, groceries,

insurance premiums, and everything else. Now, I know on some level that this is just getting at the

old-fashioned concept of a budget. People who are wise with their money

tend to know exactly what is coming in and what is going out. But I think this question,

what does it cost to be you, is a slightly better way to frame this matter, because it can be

more aspirational as well. Let's say you've figured out

what it costs to be you. You have added up all your expenses and recurring payments and 401k

contributions and so forth. The good news is that this amount is slightly less than what you and any other adult household members bring in after taxes.

Excellent.

However, you and these other adult household members would like to start traveling internationally with your kids to see the world before everyone moves out.

Ideally, what it costs to be you in the future will be higher, because you're hoping that you, as an entity, includes two international family trips per year. So you price this out, add on whatever the taxes would be to gross it up, and now you have a

different number. This is what it costs to be ideal future you. To live the life you'd like,

you need to bring in this new number between the two of you. So you can start looking for ways to make

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