LET’S TALK ABOUT GOALS
Do me a favor and pull up a search in your favorite browser. Have some fun for a few minutes and do various searches on GOALS. You can search “the power of setting goals,” “setting goals and success,” “statistics between goals and achievement,” or make up your own words and phrases. Go ahead and have a bit of fun and then come back here…….I’ll wait.
I hope you didn’t go too far down an “online time-suck vortex” (TM pending Steven Julian Inc.) like I am prone to do sometimes. Remind me to tell you the story about the YouTube documentary on the Monopoly world championship…..ANYWAY – the reason I asked you to do that search is that I wanted to talk about GOALS as we approach the end of the year.
If you did the search you will see a sea of statistics about the importance of setting goals, writing down your goals, and achieving your goals. You see study after study trying to quantify how important it is for you to have goals. I also find it slightly humorous that there are stories debunking some of the studies about goal setting and claiming that some of the studies and statistics are completely made up.
Rather than focus on percentages or mathematical factors of success, I’d like to use this time to state some common sense. Here goes…….GOALS ARE GOOD FOR YOU.
Setting goals is more likely to help you than hurt you. Thinking about what you’d like to accomplish and making a plan with concrete steps to accomplish what you’d like to accomplish will at worst lead you to think about and probably take some actions that will cause you to be closer to where you’d like to be.
I could write two hundred more pages with charts and graphs and stories and statistics and anecdotes and anagrams to prove that point, but I won’t waste your time and I won’t ask you to pay $25 for that hardcover book. I will ask you to take some time over the next month or two and think about your financial journey. Would you like to set some goals for your investments and your financial journey? Would you like to put some numbers on paper to get a halfway decent “financial snapshot” of where you are today? Would you like to project your savings plan for the next one, three, five and ten year period and get a possible projection of future savings for retirement? Would you like to think about what is missing from your current financial snapshot and then plan out what steps you can take to add that missing piece to the future snapshot?
There are many “next steps” that can be taken after the goal process has started. I would like to offer my help. I can help with the actual goal setting process in the financial realms. I can also help with some of the next steps through a conversation and relationship. I’ve already helped you avoid a vortex of wasted time online and I saved you $25 from a book that I never wrote because the only point I wanted to make was that GOALS ARE GOOD and you can help yourself by thinking through them, writing them down and letting someone else in to discuss and help you plan your next steps.
Now if you’ll excuse me I’ve got to go search 1980’s Christmas toy commercials….I’ll see you next month.
The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual.