Setting Reachable Financial Goals by Elizabeth Williams

Creating a budget is a common need for everyone to tackle in order to put their money to work. However, before a budget is established, financial goals need to be set in order to provide a basis for the budget. The financial goals provide the long term motivation to stay with the budget.

Clear and concise

Any goal-making should be done in a clear and easy to understand manner. Specific goals should look something like this: retire by age 65 with $1,000,000 in retirement investments. If you say “I am going to go on a vacation in the Caribbean” with no details behind it, then that does not qualify as a goal. It is only a simple assertion of your intentions.

You need to take time to think about what you want your goals to be and then write them down on paper. Even if they are somewhat unclear or lack adequate details, you can add those after you have them committed to paper.

Short, Mid, Long term goals

Once you have your goals on paper and have taken the time to add the details about them so that they are goals and not just statements of your desires, then you need to separate them into groups based on the duration it will take to reach them. This way, you will know what you need to begin to work on right away, and what can wait.

Once you have them segregated in this manner, you can look at your short and midterm goals to see if there is a natural progression towards your long term goals. Must they all be this way? No, but if you have those goals which are progressive, then you will be able to perform the short term before long term. A good example of this would be a goal to obtain a degree in nursing before you can reach your goal of being a nurse in a hospital.

Reachable goals

Realistic goals are reachable goals. For example, if you are ready to retire, but have a goal to begin to work towards making a billion dollars by the time you are 70, then this would be considered unreachable. If you make goals this way, you will become disillusioned and stop paying attention to goals at all because you never reach those which you set.

Take a look at your goals and see if you can break the individual goals into smaller ones that will help you see some progress towards the larger goal.

Flexible goals

Because of life events, sometimes our goals must change. If there is a passing of someone who was a major part of one of your goals, you might have to change that goal. Do not be afraid of changing goals if circumstances dictate. Only be concerned about wanting to change them in order to satisfy an emotional and temporary feeling or desire. You might not be able to forgive yourself for breaking that goal and taking yourself out of your dream.

These tips work for not only financial goals but any other goals that you make in life. Use them to help propel yourself towards your dreams.

Elizabeth Williams, Editor-in-Chief for CreditCardFlyers.com CreditCardFlyers.com makes it easy to compare and apply for a variety of credit card offers featuring low balance transfer rates. We are the leading source for searching 0 apr balance transfer offers online.