The Purpose Rules: Know Your Numbers | Dwight Heck

Dwight Heck on goals, budgeting, and net worth, Give A Heck Podcast

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Budgeting and knowing your net worth can turn a hopeless situation into a plan. In Part 2 of The Purpose Rules, Dwight Heck walks through the first three steps of his five-step coaching process- goals, budget, and net worth- using the real story of clients John and Sally to show exactly how it works.

🎤 Give A Heck Podcast

Real conversations and solo episodes about purpose, financial stewardship, mindset, leadership, and intentional living.

🔍 Episode Overview

In Part 1 of The Purpose Rules, Dwight Heck laid out why hard work alone was never enough and introduced the three rules of the money game nobody taught us. Part 2 moves from diagnosis to action, covering the first three steps of Dwight’s five-step coaching process: set your goals, build your budget, and know your net worth.

Dwight walks through his own client process, starting not with numbers but with story, building what he calls know, like, and trust before ever touching a goal sheet. He introduces the rule of three goals, never ten, and explains why narrowing the list is what actually gets things done.

The episode follows John and Sally, a composite couple in their forties, $40,000 in debt, no life insurance, and no real holiday in over a decade. Dwight walks through their goal-setting, their budget (which uncovered over $400 a month in redirectable cash flow), and their net worth statement, which revealed a negative $40,000 position they had been avoiding for years.

Dwight also shares his own numbers from 24 years ago: his first net worth statement, done just before he got licensed in the industry, which he describes as nauseating and a genuine wake-up call.

Part 3, Build the Safety Net, covers protection planning and the savings rule, and finishes John and Sally’s story.

📚 What You Will Learn in This Episode

  • Why Dwight never starts with a client’s goals, he starts with their story
  • The rule of three: why narrowing your goals to exactly three changes everything
  • How to find the money that is already in your budget without earning more
  • Why needs versus wants gets complicated once you are an adult with real bills
  • How to calculate your net worth, and why the number itself is not the point
  • What John and Sally’s $400 a month in redirectable cash flow actually came from
  • Why a negative net worth is not a verdict, it is a starting point

📵 Chapter Summaries

[01:29] Intro and Series Recap

Dwight recaps Part 1 and introduces today’s focus: steps one through three of The Purpose Rules.

[02:19] The Five-Step Framework

A reminder of the full process: goals, budget, net worth, protection, and the savings rule.

[02:42] Step 1: Set Your Goals

Why Dwight starts with story, not goals, and the rule of exactly three goals, never ten.

[07:32] Meet John and Sally

A couple in their forties, $40,000 in debt, no life insurance, stuck on the hamster wheel.

[09:01] Step 2: Build Your Budget

Building the budget together rather than handing over a template, and finding the holes in the boat.

[12:10] Finding $400 a Month

John and Sally uncover over $400 a month in spending that was not aligned with their goals.

[13:28] Needs vs. Wants as an Adult

Why the needs-versus-wants conversation gets complicated once you have a mortgage, kids, and real bills.

[16:59] Step 3: Know Your Net Worth

Assets minus liabilities, and why the number itself is not a judgment, it is a baseline.

[19:18] John and Sally’s Net Worth Reveal

A negative $40,000 position, and Dwight’s own nauseating first net worth statement 24 years ago.

[22:20] Setting Up Part 3

Why the next two steps, protection and the savings rule, are the ones most people skip.

🎯 Key Takeaway

Goals, budget, and net worth are not three separate exercises, they are one picture. Your goals tell you where you want to go, your budget tells you what you are working with every month, and your net worth tells you where you are starting from. None of it requires earning more money first. It requires awareness, and awareness is available to everyone right now.

💬 Continue the Conversation

If this episode resonated with you, here are related episodes to explore:

Part 1 of this series, the foundation this episode builds on.

The retirement math that makes knowing your net worth so urgent.

Dwight’s own reflection on what 24 years of client conversations taught him.

On unlearning the beliefs that keep a budget or a goal sheet from sticking.

Extends the goals-and-budget conversation into the sandwich-generation squeeze.

📰 Pertinent Articles

The framework this series lives inside — Pillar 1, Financial Alignment.

The written companion to the retirement statistics referenced across this series.

Dwight’s own story behind the goals and budget work covered in this episode.

On the learned beliefs and limiting patterns this series is built to break.

🔑 Key Themes Discussed

  • Starting with story before starting with goals
  • The power of narrowing to exactly three goals
  • Finding money that already exists, not earning more of it
  • Needs versus wants as an adult with real financial pressure
  • Net worth as a baseline, not a judgment

👤 About Dwight Heck

Dwight Heck is a financial and life coach licensed in Alberta and British Columbia, operating as Give A Heck Financial through Hub Financial Inc. He has been in financial services since September 2001, after pivoting from a career in IT consulting. Over 24 years, Dwight has developed The Purpose Rules, a five-step coaching process, and the 7 Pillars of Intentional Living framework. He is the host of the Give A Heck Podcast, a globally ranked show with listeners in over 85 countries, and the Amazon bestselling author of Give A Heck: How to Live Life on Purpose and Not by Accident. Dwight is based in the Edmonton, Alberta area and is a single dad of five.

🤝 Connect with Dwight Heck

🎧 Listen and Watch This Episode

💭 Final Thoughts

None of this required John and Sally to earn more money. It required them to see clearly, for the first time, what they actually had and where it was going. Their situation was not hopeless, it was just unorganised. That is true for most people. Come back for Part 3, where we finish their story and cover the two steps most people skip entirely.

📣 Call to Action

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📝 Full Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Speaker: Sally told me she did not want to see it. She said she already knew it was bad and she did not want it confirmed. And I told her what I tell everyone. The number does not change whether you look at it or not. The debt is there whether you write it down or not, whether you ignore it. But the moment you write it down, you take its power away because now you know exactly what you are dealing with.

[00:00:26] No more guessing, no more lying, awake, doing mental math. That never works out. The number is real.

[00:00:33] Welcome to Give a Heck. I am your host, Dwight Heck, and for much of my life, lived my life in quiet, desperation wondering how I was going to pay the bills, take vacations, save for retirement, and one day wondering if I would get off the hamster wheel of life and have purpose, a life that most of society lives, which takes us to work, then home, then repeat, and pays us hopefully enough.

[00:00:58] Just to survive the harsh truth that most live with more months than money and have no idea how to live life on purpose, not by accident. This ensures the mass majority are living not just financially broke, however, emotionally and mentally as well. Due to financial pressures and each episode, I will introduce you to thoughts, ideas, and guests that can help you to learn how you too can live life on purpose, not by accident.

[00:01:29] Speaker: Welcome back to the Give a Heck podcast. I am your host, Dwight Heck. I am here to help you live a life on purpose and not by accident. Each week we dive into real stories, raw truths and powerful conversations that challenge you to give a heck about your life and the lives of others. This is the purpose Rules, no fluff, just what you need to know.

[00:01:54] This is a part two of our three part series of Purpose Rules. If you have not listened to part one, I would encourage you to go back and start there. The link is in my show notes on the website, or search your favourite podcast platform or YouTube To access that episode, laid the foundation. We talked about the three rules of the money game that nobody taught you.

[00:02:19] Today we move from understanding the problem to actually solving it. In part one, I told you I have a five step process I use with every single coaching client. I call it the purpose, rules, goals, budget, net worth protection, and the savings rule. Today we are covering steps one through three goals, budget and net worth.

[00:02:42] This is where we stop talking about what is broken and start building what works. And I’m going to introduce you to John and Sally. I mentioned them at the end of part one. They’re a real example of what this process looks like in action. So let us get into it. Step one of the purpose rules is set your goals.

[00:03:02] And I know what some of you are thinking. I have heard of a thousand times Dwight. I know what my goals are. I want to get outta debt. I want to save money. I want to retire. Great. But here’s the thing. When somebody sits down with me for the first time, I do not start with their goals. I start with their story.

[00:03:23] The first thing I do with every client is build what I call know, like, and trust. I ask questions. I listen. I want to understand who they are, what their life looks like, and what their relationship with money has been up to this point. ’cause you cannot fix what you do not understand, and you cannot help somebody if you do not know where they are coming from.

[00:03:48] I ask them about their money monsters. What are the things that keep you up at night? What is stressing you out about money? Who taught you about money? Was it your parents? Was it your school? Was it nobody? And more often than not, the answer is nobody. Nobody sat them down and said, here’s how it works.

[00:04:11] Here’s how you win. Here are the rules. A lot of people come to me because they need a specific product. They need life insurance. They need to start an investment, and that is fine. That is what brought them through the door. But once we start talking, I widen the lens. I ask them, are you aware of what proper financial education and planning looks like?

[00:04:37] Do you know how it can anchor your entire life? So nothing is left to chance, and most of them do not. They came for one thing, but they need the whole picture. That is what the purpose rule gives them. Once I have that baseline, once I understand who they are and where they’re coming from, we move to the goal sheet.

[00:04:59] And here’s the rule. Top three goals. Not 10, not seven, not a wishlist. Three. Why three? Because focus is everything. And when somebody gives me a list of 10 goals, nothing gets done. Everything feels equally urgent and nothing gets attention. It deserves. But when I say, tell me the three things that matter most to you right now, the conversation changes.

[00:05:25] It forces prioritisation, it forces honesty, and it forces you to look at your life and decide what actually matters. And here’s the part that surprises people. Once we start talking through those three goals, the order often changes. Sometimes a goal that was number one, drops to number three because the conversation opened up a possibility they had never considered.

[00:05:53] Sometimes a goal drops off the top three entirely because they realise it was not really their goal. It was something they thought they should want, not something they actually needed. I tell every client the same thing. I can help with all of your goals, every single one, but we need to stay focused on what is the most important right now.

[00:06:16] We handle the top three first and we build from there.

[00:06:20] So myself personally, I have had many different things that have changed in my life in regards to goals itself. I know when I first got in this industry, my goals changed quite a bit. When I first got in, it was, oh my goodness, how am I gonna pay my bills from month to month? I don’t wanna see that zero amount on my bank account, or worse being overdraft.

[00:06:46] So my goals were very simplistic. I didn’t have goals of thinking about vacations or thinking about, whether or not I was gonna be able to retire. I was just goal setting for today to make sure I could get outta debt, to make sure that I could move forward and be able to afford what I needed to for my family, for my children.

[00:07:07] So did my goals evolve and change? Absolutely, they did. Over time, my goals became something completely different, and I’m glad to share them with you. Reach out to me and we’ll proceed on from there. What your goals looked like when you first entered the industry versus now. What shifted and why take 90 seconds to two minutes here.

[00:07:32] Now, let me tell you about John and Sally. John and Sally came to me in their forties, $40,000 in debt. No, life insurance had not had a real holiday in over a decade. Camping and fishing were about all they could manage. And look, there is nothing wrong with camping and fishing, but when that is the only option you have, not because you choose it, but because you cannot afford anything else.

[00:08:03] That is the hamster wheel. That is what being stuck looks like. When they sat down with me, they thought their situation was hopeless. They had been carrying this weight for years and could not see a way out. The first thing I did was ask them about their goals, not their debt, not their problems, their goals.

[00:08:26] John wanted to take Sally on a real vacation. That was his number one. Sally wanted to know if something happened to one of them that the other would be okay, that was hers. And together, their third goal was to stop feeling like every month was a scramble. They wanted to breathe. Those three goals changed the entire conversation because now we were not just talking about debt, we were talking about what their life could look like on the other side of it, and that is what goals do.

[00:09:01] They give you something to build toward instead of just something to dig out of. Step two, the purpose rules is to build your budget, and that is where everything starts to click. This is where people go from feeling overwhelmed to feeling in control sometimes in a single conversation. Now, I do not hand somebody a template and say, fill this out and bring it back.

[00:09:25] That does not work. I’ve seen it fail a hundred times. People stare at a blank spreadsheet and they do not know where to start, or they fill in what they think the numbers should be instead of what they actually are and the whole thing falls apart. What I do is sit with them and build it together. I ask them, what do you think it should be on here?

[00:09:50] What comes in every month? What goes out? And they tell me what they know, the mortgage, the car payment, the phone bill, groceries, the things that are top of their mind. And then we start finding the holes in the boat. The subscriptions. They forgot about the streaming services they’re paying for and not using the insurance premiums they set up three years ago and never reviewed.

[00:10:18] The eating out they think is $50 a month, but it’s actually 300. The little charges that slip through because nobody is watching, that is where money is hiding and it is hiding in plain sight.

[00:10:34] I know myself and my own personal budget. When I first started doing this 24 years ago, I found holes in my own boat, things that I didn’t necessarily write down. I was like, many people grab, an envelope that you have that some mail had come in and you start scribbling some numbers down and you forget about so many things.

[00:10:56] I know some of the holes in my boat is I really didn’t plan for those little outings where I’d take my kids somewhere and you might spend 80 to a hundred dollars or you had that last minute thing that came up and you couldn’t afford to, , go home, make a meal for your family. And we had to eat out.

[00:11:15] And those little costs, because they weren’t documented, were eating at my bottom line. They were making it for where certain months I had way more month than I had money. And once I learned how to understand and start budgeting for them, it does not mean they didn’t come up again. It meant though, that I was thinking before I go and do that, and I plan better.

[00:11:41] So maybe I made a meal earlier, maybe I brought something with us so that we could actually eat when we got home so that the kids would be satiated, bring some healthy snacks for them and it better help me plan my life. And it can help you too. In part one, I mentioned that people who go through this process may typically free up a hundred to $500 a month they did not know they had.

[00:12:10] I want to show you what that actually looks like in practise, because it is one thing to hear a number. It is another thing to see it happen in front of you. When John and Sally sat down to build their budget, they were certain there was no room. They told me to wait. We have already cut everything we can.

[00:12:31] There’s nothing left. And I said, okay, let us see. Let us put every single dollar on paper and find out. What we found out was over $400 a month in spending that was not aligned with their goals. $400 subscriptions they had forgotten. They signed up for a gym membership. Neither of them had used in eight months insurance on a vehicle they were overpaying for because nobody had reviewed the policy in three years.

[00:13:03] Small purchases that individually seemed harmless, but added up to hundreds every month. John looked at Sally and said, where has this money been going? And the answer was everywhere and nowhere at the same time. That $400 a month was the difference between hopeless and possible. It did not require them to earn more money.

[00:13:28] It did not require a second job or a side hustle. It required awareness. That is all, and that is what the budget gives you. Now, in part one, I talked about needs versus wants and how I was never taught the difference. I shared how I started teaching my kids that concept when they were young. But here’s what I want to talk about today because is it is different conversation entirely needs versus wants as an adult with real bills and real pressure is not the same thing as a kid at the store deciding between a toy and a snack when you were 40 years old with a mortgage, two car payments, kids and activities and credit card balances.

[00:14:13] The needs versus wants conversation gets complicated because everything feels like a need. The second vehicle feels like a need because both of you work. The kids’ activities feel like a need because you want them to have opportunities. The dining out feels like a need because by Friday night you are both exhausted and nobody has the energy to cook.

[00:14:39] I get it. I have been there, but here’s where the honesty has to happen. A vehicle is a need. That specific vehicle with that specific payment might be a want. Activities for your kids are a need. Five activities at once might be a want a meal you did not cook is fine. Sometimes four times a week is a pattern that is costing you your goals.

[00:15:02] That is the conversation I had with John and Sally. Not about cutting things they loved, but about seeing the difference between what they genuinely needed and what had become a habit they never questioned. Once they could see it, they made their own decisions. I did not tell them what to cut. That is not my job.

[00:15:24] My job is to show them the numbers and give them the clarity to choose well, because at the end of the day, it is their money, it is their life. I am just the guide I mentioned in part one that outta my five kids, maybe two of them, budget and I meant it. But what I did not talk about in that episode is what that taught me.

[00:15:46] Because as a parent, you pour everything you have into your kids, you teach them, you show them, you model it, and then you watch them make their own choices. And sometimes those choices are not the ones you would make. What that experience taught me is patience. The same patience I bring to every client meeting, because financial change does not happen overnight.

[00:16:13] Some people hear this and take action immediately. Others need to sit with it for months or even years before they are ready and that is okay. You cannot force someone to be ready and you cannot make sure the information is there when they are. The seed does not die just because it is not sprouted yet.

[00:16:36] It is waiting for their right conditions. And that applies to your kids, your partner and yourself. Once we had those $400 identified for John and Sally, we were able to redirect that money toward John’s holiday goal, Sally’s protection goal and their shared goal of not scrambling every month. The budget is what made it possible.

[00:16:59] Without it, they were guessing with it. They had a plan. Step three of the purpose rules is know your net worth. And this is a step that makes a lot of people uncomfortable because it’s, it is the one that puts everything, it black and white. Your net worth is simple. It is what you own, minus. What you owe.

[00:17:22] Assets on one side, liabilities on the other, your home, your vehicle, your savings, your investments. That is the asset column. Your mortgage, your car loan, your credit card balances, your lines of credit. That is the liability column. The difference between those two numbers is your net worth. Now, for a lot of people, that number is going to be negative, and that is okay.

[00:17:48] This is not about judgement. This is about awareness. You cannot build a plan to get somewhere if you do not know where you are. Starting from. Your net worth is your starting point. It is your baseline. It is the honest answer to the question, where am I right now? And it plugs directly into the budget because your liabilities need to show up in your outflows with a plan to pay them down.

[00:18:16] Your net worth snapshot tells you what debts are there, how large they are, and what they’re costing you. And once you see them all in one place, you can start making strategic decisions about which ones to tackle first and how fast you can realistically move. When John and Sally did their net worth, it was hard.

[00:18:40] Sally told me she did not want to see it. She said she already knew it was bad and she did not want it confirmed. And I told her what I tell everyone. The number does not change whether you look at it or not. The debt is there whether you write it down or not, whether you ignore it. But the moment you write it down, you take its power away because now you know exactly what you are dealing with.

[00:19:06] No more guessing, no more lying, awake, doing mental math. That never works out. The number is real. And now we can build a real plan to change it.

[00:19:18] I know personally myself with my own net worth. I remember doing my first net worth statement with somebody just prior to starting in the industry, and getting licensed. I sat down with a gentleman that was person that introduced me to the industry and he said, let’s do your net worth. So we wrote it all down and it was nauseating.

[00:19:42] To be honest with you, once we completed it, I was nauseous. I felt terrible. I was immediately in the valley of despair thinking, how did I get into this situation? I’ve gotten nothing. I was one of those people that if I was to have zero income coming in, I would be in trouble after 90 days.

[00:20:04] I was already in that circumstance eating away at what little savings I did have. And it was a giant wake up call that if I didn’t change something, that I didn’t start getting rid of, the debt I had as soon as possible and start saving for an, a better emergency fund, a longer term emergency fund, that I was going to be in trouble if something severe happened with my health.

[00:20:30] And I was unable to make income for a period of time. So the net worth statement was a wake up call that I had no savings for retirement at that point in time, that I had very little on the asset side of the net worth statement, but I had major amount on the liability side. And unless things changed, I was never going to see the light at the end of the tunnel where the asset side was greater than the negative liability side.

[00:21:01] And I’d have a positive net worth.

[00:21:03] John and Sally’s net worth was negative $40,000 in debt with limited assets beyond a modest home and two vehicles. But here’s what they could also see. For the first time, their income was solid. Their budget once cleaned up, had over $400 a month in redirectable cash flow. Their situation was not hopeless, it was just unorganised.

[00:21:31] Nobody had ever helped them see the full picture before, and that is what step three does. It completes the picture. Step one tells you where you want to go. Step two tells you what you are working with every month. And step three tells you where you are starting from. With those three things on paper, you have everything you need to build a real plan, not a wish, not a hope, a plan.

[00:21:58] So now you have your goals, your budget, and your net worth. You can see the picture for John and Sally. This was the first time in their adult lives they could look at their finances and actually understand what was happening. The fog lifted, the guessing stopped, and for the first time they felt like they had some control.

[00:22:20] But here’s the thing, we are not done. There are two more steps in the purpose rules, and they are the ones that most people skip. They are the ones that nobody wants to talk about until it’s too late. And they are the ones that will determine whether everything you just built survives when life hits you hard because life will hit you hard.

[00:22:44] It is not a matter of if, it is a matter of when. Let me ask you something. What happens to John and Sally if John cannot work tomorrow? What if he gets injured? What if he gets sick? What if he does not come home? $40,000 in debt? No life insurance. Sally is left with everything and nothing at the same time.

[00:23:06] The mortgage, the debt, the kids, the grief and no safety net. That is not a hypothetical that happens every single day to families across this country and around the world, and it does not have to. In episode three, part three of the Purpose Rules, we are going to cover steps four and five, protection planning and the savings rule.

[00:23:30] How to protect everything you are building so that one bad day does not erase at all, and how to build the habit of saving that ensures you are not just surviving, you are actually getting ahead. We are going to finish John and Sally’s story too because what happened after they completed all five steps is the whole reason I do this work.

[00:23:54] If you want to learn more about my story and the principles behind everything I teach, you can pick up my book, give a Heck, how to Live Life On Purpose and Not By accident at giveaheck.com forward slash book or search directly on Amazon. And if you’re listening to this and thinking, I need someone to sit down with me and do this, I need help building my own purpose rules plan, go to giveaheck.com.

[00:24:24] Work with me. If you are in Alberta or British Columbia, I can help you with financial and insurance products, coaching and mentorship, all under one roof. If you are anywhere else in Canada, anywhere in the world, I offer financial coaching and mentorship to help you build your own purpose rules. Plan.

[00:24:46] Either way, we start the same place. Goals, budget, net worth, just like John and Sally. Come back for episode three. We finish the plan, we build the safety net, and we make sure that everything you have worked for is protected.

[00:25:02] And remember, it is never too late to give a heck.

[00:25:06] Thank you for taking time outta your day and listening to Give a Heck if you find value. I’d appreciate you sharing with your friends and family so they too can learn how to live life on purpose, not by accident. So you do not miss the next episode. Please subscribe on your favourite podcast platform and please also post a review.

[00:25:27] I look forward to reading your comments. This has been Dwight Heck. If you want to check out other podcast episodes or today’s show notes, please check out my website. giveaheck.com, and until next time together, let us all strive to give a heck.