Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Do your goals inspire you?

This might sound corny, but "Are your goals inspiring?" If your goals are too practical and limited, you wont have incentive to discipline yourself to do the things necessary to achieve them. If you don't involve your emotions and imagination in your goal-setting process you'll find it extremely difficult to stay motivated and interested.

We understand it is necessary to set short-term goals as "milestones" along the road to acheiving your longer term goals but even with these, well defined markers in place, long-term goals will be hard to relate to if they are not specific enough. Consider this goal plan:


I want to save enough money so my children can attend university and then have enough left over so I dont have to live of the pension.

With this:

I want contribute $________ towards John and Sue's university education. I also want to trave to (name of country) for (number) of weeks. I want to save $________ for this purpose. I will have enough money invested so I can draw a monthly income of $_________.

The more colourful and personal the plan, the more real and exciting it becomes. The easier it is to visualise the goal the better. Its your responsibility to arrange your life in any way that suits you. Put some effort into having something to look forward to besides simply meeting a financial obligation.

Set Goals!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jaeneen, interesting post. Would you be interested in syndicating your content on the home page of my site? It's an online community of finance professionals ( http://www.wallstreetoasis.com ). I could add an RSS feed that will allow me to promote your blog posts to my home page (when i think it will lead to a good discussion and/or is appropriate), but I wanted to make sure you were comfortable syndicating first. The syndicated post would have a link back to your original post. Thanks, Patrick (you can reach me at wallstreetoasis@wallstreetoasis.com if you have any questions).

Also, if you are willing to provide a link to wallstreetoasis.com that would be much appreciated.

Anonymous said...

It won't work as when you overspent and need money you will always make excuses for yourself, like I will save double next month.

What you need is a monthly STO to a saving account that restrict you taking money out.

Anonymous said...

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p: (07) 3368 2666
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w: www.omg.com.au

Anonymous said...

Hi jaeneen
I earn money but can't save much,give some tips to improve my finance,more i find on site....

Anonymous said...

Jaeneen-

Not only are my goals NOT inspiring, but they're not even written down right now. I appreciate the post! It's given me the kick I need to start setting REALISTIC goals again.

Great post! Hope you're well!

Anonymous said...

This is a good thought. Many people think of goals being set by their manager or department goals but not setting goals for themselves. Setting goals for yourself is equally or more important!