Sowing seeds can teach us a lot about financial planning.

Spring is upon us in North Country. After a long winter, this avid gardener is anxious for garden planning and seed planting!

I’ve made analogies between gardening and financial planning before, but as I was sowing my seeds a couple weeks ago, I thought more about how connected they really are.

Success Starts Very Small

My somewhat purposefully overgrown summer garden of vegetables and flowers does not just happen. It starts with a tiny seed, in a small container in our makeshift grow area (a corner of our home gym).

For the first week or so, my seeds look like wet soil. But then, one day, you discover the beginnings of a green stalk pushing through the dirt.

Financial planning happens in the same way. You don’t get financially free or achieve your financial goal in a day or week; you have to roll up your sleeves and start with the wet dirt that looks like nothing. Open the Roth account, increase your retirement contributions, do those tiny things that seem to make no impact and wait; it may take months and even years, but you will start to see the little green grow (in this scenario that green is your money)!

Growth Requires Consistent Nurturing

Tiny seeds turn into little plants, which go through several steps before being planted in our outdoor garden beds.

Throughout all their lives, these plants require regular watering; without mastering this basic need the rest of the nurturing is irrelevant. Anyone with a garden knows that watering at the same time every day/weekly will lead to the best plant outcomes.

I encourage anyone who is serious about financial success and freedom to create and implement money routines. Review your spending and pay your bills at the same time/day every week. Set aside savings, charitable contributions, etc. at the same time in the same place every month. Make all the basic mechanics related to your money routine, this way there is no playing catch-up and you are regularly informed on how things are going.

Beyond watering, the seeds will go through two other phases before being placed in their beds for the season.

Culling the Seeds: When we start our seeds, we plant a lot more in the little containers than we need or can use. This ensures at least some of the seeds we plan are successful (perhaps we could compare this to diversifying your investments). At some point, before going outdoors, we have to choose the healthiest ones and eliminate the less fortunate.

I compare this to eliminating useless debt. If you allow your garden to grow too many plants, none of them will grow healthily, and likely they will all die due to lack of nutrients and space to sustain them. This is what useless debt will do to your financial plan—it will use up all the resources and nutrients killing your entire plan. As you are building towards success, make sure you cull any debt not moving you forward.

Hardening the Seedlings: Before transplanting seeds outside, for about a week you should gradually expose them to the outdoor elements (direct sunlight, cooler temperatures, wind). By doing this, you’re toughening up the seedlings so when they are planted they can withstand harsher environments.

Hardening seedlings is the emergency fund of gardening. Anyone who has engaged in financial planning for long enough knows that there will be challenges to your finances—both self-imposed but also from outside forces. Things like loss of a job, poor market or economic conditions, a medical diagnosis etc., can derail your meticulously built plan. To prepare for these challenges you must build an emergency fund. An emergency fund is a savings account with at least three months of living expenses set aside, so you are prepared to get through any unforeseen challenges.

The Outcome Is Worth All the Work

In both gardening and financial planning, all that hard work will be worth it. It may be hard to picture the end result at times, especially when we just start with a wet plot of dirt. But, it will be worth it when you see your mid-summer overgrown garden, or feel in control of your destiny because you know you are on the path to financial freedom.