Know Your Money with Bronwyn Waner and Craig Finch
Know Your Money with Bronwyn Waner and Craig Finch
153. Plan Your Year, Live Your Life
Ready to stop ending the year exhausted and wondering where your leave went? We share a simple, repeatable planning system that starts with joy: put holidays in the diary first, then design work around the life you actually want. From stretching 15 days of leave into memory-rich long weekends, to turning a big dream like a family Disney trip into a two-year, fully funded goal, we unpack the habits that make rest inevitable rather than hypothetical.
We walk through practical tactics for affordable travel in South Africa: choosing bush, berg, or sea based on season, going self-catering or camping to cut costs, and keeping long weekends within a three-hour drive to avoid fatigue and fuel burn. You’ll hear how we use a dedicated holiday account, funded monthly, to remove the “we can’t afford it” barrier, and why your first year might mean fewer days off while you build the fund. We also talk about the strange magic of intentionality—how invitations and opportunities appear once your dates are set and you’re ready to say yes.
Life design doesn’t stop at travel. After locking in rest, we add work targets, weekly rhythms, and the essentials from the wheel of life: health, relationships, finances, and growth. Small systems hold it all together—a family wall calendar to avoid clashes, a quarterly check-in to reset priorities, and a budget bucket for school-holiday extras so cash flow stays calm. Whether you’re planning a local braai weekend or saving for a bucket-list holiday, this approach helps you create a year you recognise and remember.
If this conversation helped you rethink your calendar, subscribe, share it with a friend who needs a break, and leave us a review. Then open your diary, block your first long weekend, and tell us where you’re going.
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www.growthfp.co.za
Hello everybody, welcome to Know Your Money. I'm Bronwan Wayner.
SPEAKER_00:And I'm Craig Finch, and we are from Growth Financial Planning. We hope you enjoy our podcast.
SPEAKER_01:Hello everybody. As the year is closing and the new year is coming quick and fast. One of the things that Craig and I do every single year is before the end of the year we sit down and plan what our year is going to look like. I'm very new to this type of planning, so my structure is not as good as Craig. I think you were on holiday more than you worked this year because of your great planning. So, Craig, can you maybe just give our clients a little bit of insight in how you plan your year and what is important that they can also use the tools they can use?
SPEAKER_00:Ron, thank you. So the planning for it it's multi-there's multi-facets to it. So the you know you look at it, make sure your goals are, and we've spoken about the wheel of life and your goals in every area. And let's just assume that you're going to say, Well, we need to go on holiday with our families or with whoever the special person in your life, and how do I plan that? I never seem to get away, I never seem to work out my holidays. I always seem to be working, I feel burnt out, I'm I'm not refreshed. How do I do that? What my wife and I do every year, and we've done it for many years, is around this time of the year, we look forward to next year and say, What where do we want to go? What holidays do we want to have? What experiences do we want to have? Now, this doesn't have to cost you lots of money at all. It's not overseas travel or anything, although you can put a goal for overseas travel. We did it many years ago with our children. We wanted to go to Disney World in America. We've made it a two-year goal. The whole family was involved in it. We put a date, we said, right, we want to go there, and how can we make this happen? And it just happened. We saved money and eventually by the end of the two years we had enough to go there and we had a wonderful time. So we take the year and everybody's got leave, probably. And you say, Oh, well, I've only got X amount, 15 days leave, that's not a lot. When okay, so if you've got children at school, it's that's already holidays in your diary. So you know that the the children are off for the those times. So that can be a helpful uh a way to space start and put time aside that okay, those are the holidays, and how can I fit my 15 or 20 days into that that space? If you haven't got children, then a way to do to say every three months I must take a long weekend. So let's assume I've got nine, fifteen days leave, and I'll take a Monday and a Friday off in the quarter. So that's two, four, six of my nine, fifteen days.
SPEAKER_01:Also, one of them could be a public holiday. So you can if you look at yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it can be smart and take two days and you get seven days top. Absolutely, that's where that's where that does help. And then you've got nine days left. Those nine days are the our big family holiday. Maybe it is in December because the company does close, or maybe they let you take it some other time of the year. Sometimes August is a big holiday period for school, so it depends. So you say two the six days are long weekends, and the big holiday is away somewhere in December. And then we we mostly camp and we mostly go to chalets where we self-cater. So it's not a very expensive way to do. Yes, you need the petrol to go there, and you need the cost of the of the of the self-catering chalet. But the food you are eating at home you take with you as well, so it's not a eating at restaurants. We might have one treat where we go out and eat, but mostly we rather prefer brying and eating, making our own food in the places we go to. So you put that in your diary, so you work out that those 15 days are now in the diary, banked. Where we're gonna go. So there's berg, there's sea, and there's bush. So it depends what you like. If you love going to the game, game reserves and that, then you can work out where you where you can go. You might want to camp, or stay. It's mostly self-catering in those instances. So, or you might go to the Darkensburg and do walks, or you want to go the sea and enjoy the sea. So it doesn't also have to be if it's a long weekend, we make sure we're not far away. We it's not great to drive many distances, maybe three hours is the max on a long weekend, and then obviously your big holiday can be a long way away. But that we put it, we we blank off the diary for the year. We've got a year planner, we put in the diary, now that's in the diary. Okay, now where do we go? Then we start researching places to go. Okay, we want to go to the game reserve, we want to go in spring and autumn because it's not so hot. Where are we gonna go? Pilansburg or Kruger or whatever.
SPEAKER_01:And can I ask you, how do you plan for that financially?
SPEAKER_00:We've got a separate account, we put money away every month for that. So we we've got an idea of what it's gonna cost us on the self-catering and the camping weekends, and we put that away every every month, and then so we we're ahead of the a year ahead, so we've got money for next year. We and that's how we and then the long holiday. So sometimes, as I said, that long holiday to America to Disney World, that was a two-year plan. We knew what the number was, and then we save like made to get to that number.
SPEAKER_01:Because I think ultimately to like do that, there's two things that clients would be like, Well, I don't have leave, but you've kind of broken down. Look at your leave, and if you look at it now at the beginning of the year, it makes it so much easier. And I think one of the most important things to note is that you are supposed to take leave. Like if you go and do that, you are more refreshed and you'll be able to give your company more, and then obviously the people in your lives more. And then the second thing that I'm sure people are like, yeah, but I never have finances for that. I think what you're doing is is awesome. So they can start now with that holiday fund trying to build it up. They will, however, not be one year ahead, like like you and your family are. But I think the goal is just to start because if in your first year you only use seven of your 15 days because you're trying to build up some funds, at least you've done some of the holidays, and then the following year you can do more. I'm pretty sure when you started out, you weren't, I mean, how many days of holiday did you have this year?
SPEAKER_00:Over a hundred, I must well that that is also including weekend.
SPEAKER_01:So I'm sure when you first started, you weren't taking a hundred days of holiday.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:You were taking five. So I think the goal is for everybody just to start. If it means just putting one holiday in instead of none, that's your start. If it means putting 500 Rand away instead of a thousand Rand away, that's your start. Start where you are at. That would be my encouragement.
SPEAKER_00:No, absolutely. And some sometimes you're lucky your friend has timeshare and they invite you to go with them, or your friend has a holiday home somewhere and you can go with them. So that's a lot less money to set aside. So maybe you'll have a bit of access for that.
SPEAKER_01:You know what I've noticed is since you've helped me change that mind frame of like going away more, there are more people that are going, listen, we're going here, do you want to come use this? Or my dad has the most amazing friend, he has this beautiful house at the Vol. He literally calls me to say, please go. And I feel like it's because I set that intention that I want to go on more holidays. And I think that's exactly what you said, like with the um Disneyland. You you set the goal, you didn't know how you were gonna get there. No, you didn't, but you got there because you set it.
SPEAKER_00:Correct.
SPEAKER_01:And that's the key of what you're trying to say today is like set those things. If they don't happen, it's not the end of the world that's they will happen, it's they eventually will. It's like going to the gym. If you pick up the weights one time, you're not gonna have muscles. But if you just keep consistently trying, that's how you build the planning muscle or the holiday muscle.
SPEAKER_00:No, correct. And if it's blanked out in your diary, you we know next year it's blanked out. So you can say, well, then at the end of March, where are we going? Okay, we're going camping.
SPEAKER_01:Stay at home.
SPEAKER_00:Well, exactly. But take the time off.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:You can still stay at home, be with if you've got young kids and that, you can still have a great holiday with them within the the cities you live nearby. There are lots of things to do where you are that you don't realise. And some of them are completely for free.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. One big thing, um, you know, um I I got stricter with my budgeting. And one thing I realized is because I was quite strict with my budget when I came to school holidays, it was always quite tough because now there's this extra expense because you're gonna go eat out or you're gonna go do this thing. So creating a sort of bucket for that is also important.
SPEAKER_00:Very important, I think. Very, very important, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, so back to the year planner. We've now first one you've put in is your holidays. How else do you plan? What else do you do?
SPEAKER_00:Well, then obviously work, you know, then the rest obviously is very so play first, then work. Yeah, play play first in your diary. That's immediate. And then, of course, we've got to work. So, yes, you know the days you're gonna work, and you might have sales targets in your business, you might have um personal targets that you have to achieve, or deliverables for your company that you have to do. And if you know what those are, you can plan them as well in your diary. So, I mean, in in our industry, we've got targets to meet every year, and I know what those targets are, and I know what I have to do per week. And then it goes back to your your weekly what you do every day and what you do every week. So it's putting those important things in your in your diary every day. If spiritual family time, work time, exercise time, friends and family time. It goes back to the wheel. You take the wheel, you put those those very important rocks in the diary for the week, and and a successful life is a progression of successful days. So it's very important that you try and not have the same day every day with no outcome going, oh, I didn't give a chance, I didn't plan my holiday, I didn't know what I did. Oh, the year's gone, another year's gone, I didn't do anything. No, it doesn't have to be like that. You know where you gain, and then the the other rocks will be in your diary, and you say, Well, gee, I had a great year. Physically I feel better, trained more in the gym, went to own holidays more. My family and I had a great time, we got a better relationship. It just spills out everywhere. And if you've got a plan that and you work the plan, it's little steps that'll make the massive difference.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. You know, I think it it leads so nicely into our next episode, which is where we where we've spoken about like the importance of that wheel of life. So we will, it is on our website, you can go have a look at it. Noting all of those areas, that's your rocks, that's how you put it in. But one thing um that I've created within our business is also the wheel of wealth. So you need to have the wealth to have the wheel of life, and I th I think the task about the wheel of life is when you actually sit down and do that and see that little spider web of okay, my health is here, that's where you get to see, okay, this year I want to focus on health, or I want to focus on my marriage, and you see those starter points, which makes it so much easier because I believe you can have it all. You can have the life and the money and the relationships, but it's just that awareness of seeing it first.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01:Awesome.
SPEAKER_00:So plan everybody, start your planning now and look at your holidays right now, put the fun times in now, and the rest will follow. Oh, another thing we do, Brian, in our kitchen we've got a calendar and it's on the pinboard in our kitchen, so we we don't have clashes with I'm going to play golf and Wills organized uh a dinner. So we we write down our social arrangements in and our holidays on that calendar. So every we all know we can just walk to the calendar and look at any day and say, Oh, we free that day, yes, we'd love to come for a bride at your house. So we don't have that. We've got one central calendar. We buy a bird life calendar every year and we put in the kitchen and we write our our events and our holidays on that calendar. Awesome.
SPEAKER_01:Great, awesome stuff. Hope that helps.
SPEAKER_00:Thanks everybody.
SPEAKER_01:Thanks. Bye.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you for listening. If you have enjoyed this podcast, would like to subscribe, please visit our website www.growthfp.co.za. The information we have provided in this podcast is our personal opinion. For more detailed information, please discuss your financial association with a financial planner.