Reflecting on the past year and intentionally preparing for the new year can be transformative for your family and finances. Wade and Catherine discuss the power of gratitude, decluttering, and setting purposeful goals to start the new year strong. By adopting practices like the “six-month purge” and aligning priorities with the family, they emphasize the importance of releasing what’s no longer serving you—whether physical clutter, overscheduled commitments, or financial habits. As they share insights about tracking progress and using resources wisely, they invite you to embrace the new year with intentionality, gratitude, and a focus on creating a life of greater clarity and abundance.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
- Reflecting on the past year is crucial for growth.
- Purging unnecessary items can lead to emotional clarity.
- Intentional planning helps in achieving financial goals.
- Family dynamics play a significant role in financial success.
- Gratitude can enhance overall well-being and perspective.
- Saying no to certain commitments opens up opportunities.
- Tracking financial habits is essential for improvement.
- Creating space in life allows for new opportunities.
- Involve children in financial discussions to teach responsibility.
- Focus on what you want to expand in your life.
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New Year, New You
Reflecting on the Past Year
I am here for another episode of the show. It is Christmas. Merry Christmas. I have my beautiful wife, Catherine, with me.
Merry Christmas, everybody.
We are excited to share with you some of our thoughts related to wrapping up a year successfully and starting a new year successfully. New year, new you. We do have a few things that we like to do on a regular basis to clean up for the year. There are some patterns that we’ve developed in our household and some successes that we think will be helpful for you guys. We’re going to chat about that. Hopefully, you’ll gain a ton of insights and things you can apply in your own family dynamic that will help you accelerate results in the new year.
Let’s do it.
What’s on your mind?
I’m really stoked about this episode because I’m a planner. I’ve always been a planner. My mom said that of all her six kids, I had the most organized sock drawer. I like cleanliness and organization. I feel like a lot of accelerating our wealth is effective planning and then we can be the best that we can be. I really am intentional, we both are, in that last week of the year. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
We want to challenge you guys to dive in. What were some of the highs and lows? Maybe get out your gratitude journal. Let’s start that high vibration. What are we grateful for? What are some of our wins from 2024? Do a lot of reflection. It’s okay to take time. I saw something that said nature teaches us in the winter as nature isn’t as productive. We don’t have any pretty flowers yet.
As nature is resting, it’s okay for our own bodies, minds, and spirits to rest a little bit. I love that time to journal, go through my closets if I haven’t already, and do some decluttering. We’ve got maybe some new things from parents, grandparents, and Santa. If you guys have been good, Santa came to your house. We’re focusing on baby Jesus. I know a lot of us are Christians too, but as we’ve gotten and received a few gifts, let’s look through purging our old clothes and toys and teaching our kids to do the same.
“A lot of accelerating our wealth is effective planning and then we can be the best that we can be.” ~Catherine Reed
What I love is planning. Get out that calendar. What are the vacations going to be? How much money do we have that we can allocate for those vacations? What about the doctor’s appointments? We’ve got birthdays. We love celebrating birthdays around here, all eight of us. It’s like, “Let’s make sure we set time aside and money aside,” as we’re talking about money here. We’re intentional about it all.
Let’s get a little more specific about this. You mentioned purging some things and cleaning out some clothes and some toys. We all know we’re naturally hoarders as human beings. We want stuff. We like to accumulate stuff. Oftentimes, we forget about the step of releasing things from our lives. I’m going to move this into an emotional piece. Our bodies take on emotion. We take on the stresses of life. Oftentimes, we’re accumulating all of this negativity that sometimes we’re not releasing effectively.
I coach people as they make a step in their lives to take on this project of getting their financial life in order. As a natural byproduct of that, they’re in a space of newness. As they get their financial life in order, closets start to get cleaned out. I get these stories all the time. They’re like, “I don’t know why I’m telling you this, but I felt inclined that I needed to clean out my closet, my garage, or my yard this week.” I’m like, “That’s normal.” When we establish newness, there’s a motivation to clean up other areas of our life and get those in good order. There are some patterns we’ve developed, and this comes from some mentors we had, Oliver and Rachel DeMille. They talked to us in one of their books and some of their trainings about the six-month purge. Can you talk to our audience about that?
Yeah. There’s Leadership Education. We’re a homeschool family, but anyone can have a leadership education. In the second book that they wrote, Oliver and Rachel DeMille talk about the six-month purge as well as the six-month no. Those two go hand in hand. In that book, Leadership Education, I will revisit those couple of pages again and again because it specifically walks you through. It gives me permission that it’s okay to let it go. In fact, we need to let it go.
The six-month no is, “We have soccer, cross country flag, football, and a play. We have too much on the schedule. Kids, what is one activity that you’re most excited about? What are the clothes that you are most likely wearing?” Both items and things as well as maybe commitments. There’s been this trend where people are being more intentional. They’re like, “Is that for me?” I have found that as I declutter and purge, we’re going through our closets and there are clothes, toys, and maybe even some papers. All the kids have done their leaf rubbings with crayons. We have all this artwork. Let’s go through some of the paperwork and artwork. We can purge through that as well.
We have a habit in our family that for any new item we get, we need to let go of an item and give it to Goodwill. For any new toys that come in, the kids need to look at their inventory of toys and say, “What are you going to give away to somebody else so that we have room for this?” There’s been this idea of minimalism in our society in the past couple of years. It has been more popular to clean up your spaces and keep things clean.
Intentional Planning for the New Year
What we know is that when we have fewer things in our lives, there’s less drag. Think of it as if you’re driving your car and you have a big branch that was tied to your car. You’re dragging that around. What if you could release that and accelerate? We want to get rid of things like that at the end of the year. We acknowledge the good things we have and get rid of some of the things that have not been serving us so that we can have space open up. This is what’s called the law of the vacuum. When you open up space by freeing yourself of unnecessary items around your house, it will either be filled in with new items that are appropriate or that space will open up to do other things.
Think about the activities that you guys are doing with your kids. I know we have a lot going on at times. In a prior episode, I mentioned how busy we were and we realized we were too busy. We said yes to so many things that we had to say no to other things that we would want to do. Since we already committed to those extracurricular activities, we were stuck. We didn’t want to give those up because we’d already paid for them. The kids were enjoying them, but we realized we had to give up some other things. Here’s a principle. When you say yes to something, you automatically say no to something else.
We talk about that a lot and we teach our kids that. That’s important to teach our children. In fact, sometimes, I’ll be like, “We should do this activity,” whether it be play, soccer, or some extracurricular activity, and then they pray about it. They think about it and they’re like, “Maybe next year,” or,” Maybe next semester.” The kids will be the ones to tell me, “Let’s wait to do soccer. I want to have a more simple Saturday.”
As I’m thinking about this, the circumstances of our lives are largely a function of our own choices. We often blame other people or other circumstances for what’s going on but really, it’s us. It’s what we’ve chosen to do with our lives in relation to the circumstances surrounding us that cause us to be in the situation that we have. That’s one of the things we invite you guys to do and think about. It is, “How am I involved in what’s going on in my life? How is it my responsibility? What has been occurring that I don’t like?” and also the things that you do like about your life.
If there are things that you don’t like, let’s purge those. Let’s find a way to get that out. It doesn’t always have to happen instantly. It might take weeks, possibly months given whatever the circumstance is. You can release all things that are not serving you. Maybe it’s an extra vehicle. In fact, we’re in the process of deciding we have one too many vehicles in our household. We’re going to release one of those vehicles, which will free up insurance costs, maintenance costs, and gasoline costs.
Also room in our driveway. We all feel good about it.
We’re going to say no to that so we can say yes to something else. Having more cashflow in our life, we can decide to store that in our bank account for a while and may decide to redeploy that somewhere.
We can invest that somewhere. We have options.
We’ll have control over it. As you prepare for the new year, Christmas is a great time to step back and be grateful. Look at the beautiful things in our life, the gift of, in our view, God’s gift of life and the gift of raw materials in this world. We get to go out and decide how to refine those materials into something meaningful and useful to create a society that is cohesive and allows us to create such interesting experiences. The homes we live in, the technology we use, and the places we can travel to through such rapid means like airplanes, trains, and automobiles. We’re so blessed.
As you begin the new year, I really want you guys to be in a place where you can truly accelerate for 2025. Get rid of that old stuff that’s dragging you back. Take true inventory of what’s going on in your life and in your household. What are the things that you can easily let go of? What are the things you could sell to free up cash?
Maybe you have an extra vehicle like we do. You can get rid of that and use that for something else. Maybe you need to downsize. If you have too big of a home or too expensive of a vehicle and you realize that’s straining your cashflow and you don’t have enough control over that, you’ve got to release those things. Get something simpler so you have more cashflow you can control, which brings peace of mind and opportunities.
No one gets successful financially or wealthy without having cash to make investments. Our invitation is don’t let the world tell you what to do with your money. You decide. Be proactive with how you approach your life, particularly as we move into a new year. It’s a really nice fresh time to be thinking about that and making plans for your future.
Part of the planning process is financial planning. You have a year that you could look back over and see how your spending was this 2024 on average and look at the next year. Is anything going to change? Do you have an increase in your income that’s likely to come in that you can use differently than you did last time you got an increase in your income? Is there a system that you can follow?
I have those things for you guys. There are some resources. My Personal Finance Essentials course that I launched has some training about that. My free budgeting tool called the Spending Planner and Tracker, you get that free on my website. You can take a look at some of your basic awareness financially. I have a free tool called the Moneywise Assessment that’s also on the website.
“When you say yes to something, you automatically say no to something else.” ~Wade Reed
As you plan for your future, you’ve got to have some historical analysis and you have to be willing to track. If you’re not willing to track your financial life, you’re unlikely to have the positive results you’re looking for. It’s like in businesses. Any business you work for, whether it’s your own or someone else’s, there are always tracking mechanisms. Those tracking mechanisms help create accountability for achieving the goals that are intended to be achieved.
Family Dynamics and Financial Planning
A weekly mastermind, and we mentioned that in the last episode, is a chance for you as partners if you’re married to sit down and make sure you’re on the same page about the goals of your family. A family is legitimately a partnership. It’s a legal partnership. We ought to treat it in a similar way to businesses. It’s not that we’re so rigid and so forth the way businesses are, but there’s healthy, good communication happening. You can bring that down to your children and let them be employees of the family, so to speak. They can be involved in the conversations and what’s important to them so that as a family unit, you guys are moving in the right direction as a family.
That requires decisions related to the financial resources that you have, how you’re going to spend that money, how much you’re going to be saving, and how much you want to be able to invest, which may include investing in education. Our kids are at the stage where they’re starting to consider college, trade schools, or starting businesses. What family resources are available to help them get off on the right foot? Do you even have any? If you do, what will be the impact of making that decision to use that money for that one thing? If you say yes to something, you’re saying no to something else. Do you have any parting comments?
“What you focus on expands. Focus on being grateful for the year and being abundant.” ~Catherine Reed
We hope you guys have a great holiday break. I know some of you guys might have kids or grandkids that are off school. Enjoy that time together. Make that gingerbread. Decorate that gingerbread house. Make cookies if you haven’t had a chance to do that. Take this time to be still, meditate, and plan. Think about, “What are my wins? What are the highs and the lows of this year?”
Celebrate this year even if it was a really hard year. Focus on gratitude. What you focus on expands. I love that so much. I say that to my kids every day. As we focus on gratitude, being grateful for the year, and being abundant in this time of planning for a new year, new you, how can you be even better spiritually, physically, financially, and emotionally? How can we take care of ourselves and our bank accounts? Teach our children to work and we work hard. There are all of these good principles. Let’s be the best that we can be this 2025.
Get out there, do some planning, and make it fun. We’ll see you in the next one and we’ll see you in the new year.
Episode Resources
○ Referenced for “The Six-Month Purge” and “The Six-Month ‘No'”
Courses and Tools
○ Wade’s course designed to help with financial planning and management
- Spending Tracker and Planner: a free budgeting tool
- Moneywise Assessment: a free tool for basic financial awareness
Seminars and Mentors
○ Mentors who influenced Wade and Catherine’s approach to education and intentional living.
Key Topics
00:00 Reflecting on the Past Year
05:45 Intentional Planning for the New Year
10:51 Family Dynamics and Financial Planning
About Catherine Reed
Known for her love of planning and her focus on gratitude, Catherine inspires others to simplify their lives, prioritize what matters most, and cultivate a home filled with love and purpose. Together with Wade, she resides in Kaysville, Utah, where they enjoy family adventures, celebrating milestones, and building a legacy of abundance and joy.