Why Vision is the Foundation of Strategy

When I was younger, I quietly disdained the idea of vision. I tried the usual tools—vision boards, written goals, pictures meant to motivate me—but none of them worked. They felt hollow. I assumed the problem was the tools themselves, that vision was just another self-help gimmick dressed up as productivity.

That wasn’t the real problem.

The real problem was that I hadn’t taken the time to understand my own motivations or define what success actually meant to me—financially or otherwise. I chased “security” without ever stopping to ask what that word meant in my life. And because it was undefined, it was unreachable. I could never feel secure, no matter how careful or disciplined I was, because I didn’t know what I was trying to arrive at.

Without a clear vision, my default behavior was simple: spend as little as possible. Saving became the goal rather than a means. Money decisions revolved around restriction instead of purpose. Over time, that made life more stressful, narrower, and less enjoyable. Ironically, the harder I chased security, the further away it seemed. The goal felt vague, distant, and permanently out of reach, which only amplified the anxiety I was trying to escape.

It wasn’t until I studied financial planning more deeply—and thought seriously about how to teach people to make better financial decisions—that I recognized what my younger self was missing.

Vision isn’t about motivation posters or lofty dreams. It’s about clarity. Without it, you don’t have a strategy. At best, you have a series of evolving plans aimed at… somewhere. A “secure retirement.” A “comfortable life.” Words that sound responsible but mean almost nothing without definition.

That’s why in my book and my classes, I spend so much time hammering on vision. Not abstract vision. Personal vision. A vision rooted in values, priorities, and a concrete sense of what a good life looks like to you. When you know what success actually is—how you’ll recognize it, how it will show up in your day-to-day life—money stops feeling like a constant source of tension and starts functioning like a tool.

Without vision, every financial decision feels heavier than it needs to be. You’re optimizing blindly. You’re sacrificing without knowing what you’re sacrificing for. And no matter how well you plan, the finish line keeps moving because you never defined it in the first place.

Vision doesn’t replace planning. It gives planning a purpose. It tells you where you’re going and why, so your financial strategy has direction instead of just discipline. If you don’t define success for yourself, you’ll never know when you’ve reached it—and no amount of saving will make that uncertainty go away.