How to Set SMART Financial Goals

I’m always on the hunt for relevant info and I loved this article by Rob Berger. Here are a few paragraphs as a taster...   

here is only one thing worse than not setting financial goals–setting ineffective financial goals. A perfect example of a worthless goal is, “I want to achieve financial freedom.” While it may sound good, we don’t know what financial freedom is, so how will we know when we have arrived? A slightly better goal is, “I want to be debt free.” But this goal also has shortcomings. After all, we will all be debt free eventually (when we are pushing up daisies), but that’s probably not what we have in mind.

Setting workable, practical effective financial goals is really quite easy. They just need to be SMART. A financial goal, or any goal for that matter, should be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time bound.

Specific

Imagine if the goal of football was to get the pigskin down to the other end of the field. We’d be arguing over what the other end of the field means. Isn’t the 2 yard line the other end of the field? Of course, the goal in football is to get the ball into the end zone. The official language of a touchdown is even more specific: “When any part of the ball, legally in possession of a player inbounds, breaks the plane of the opponent’s goal line, provided it is not a touchback.”

We need the same specificity when we set financial goals. Here are some good examples of specific goals:

• I want to be debt free.
• I want to make $100,000 from my blog.
• I want to save $2,500,000 for retirement.

There is more left to do with these goals, so keep reading.

Pretty valuable stuff, I’m sure you’ll agree! Why not check out the whole article here and share your thoughts with me afterwards: call (0431) 474-681 or email me at [email protected]  

Thanks,

Tara