Set
Clear Goals

Simply, if you don’t know where you are going, it is very difficult to get there.

You are likely to have goals in your work (they may be called Key Performance Indicators), and if you participate in sport, your goals might be to win a trophy or a competition, or just to get faster on that run than you were last week.

Managing your money is no different. You need to work out what you want to achieve.  And those goals should have a time frame and dollar value associated with them.

For most of our clients, the big goal is having enough money to have a financially comfortable retirement.  We can work out how much money that will require, and when, and then work backwards to work out how much needs to be saved and by when.

You might have a goal to repay your mortgage, to save for a trip or a new car, or to provide a certain level of education for your children.

Of course, with the realities of life, those goals regularly change.  Our spending habits change as we go through the different stages of life, we may decide we want to work for longer than we initially thought we would because we are enjoying ourselves. 

As a consequence – as outlined in step 9 – your goals and your plan need to be regularly reviewed to keep up with those changes.