Personal Financial Goals

Element III: Family and Personal Finance

Success with money, family, relationships, health, and careers is the ability to reach your personal objectives in the shortest time, with the least effort, and with the fewest mistakes. The goals you set for yourself and the strategies you choose become your blueprint or plan.

Strategies are like recipes: choose the right ingredients, mix them in the correct proportions, and you'll always produce the same predictable result: in this case, financial success. The success strategies for managing your money and building wealth is your map guiding you to your financial goals or destinations.

Why most people find this to be one of life's most difficult journey's is that they are not clear about their exact goals -- the destination they want to reach and do not know the strategies -- the way to get there.

The starting point for your journey toward reaching your personal financial goals: which is only one destination on the craftsperson's map of life, is where you are right now. Your first objective is to accept yourself and your current status as an O.K. place to be without making excuses.

Step 1: Write down your goals -- you need a map to refer to and maps are something you can hold in your hand and look at to know which direction you're moving in. Direction and control begin with your written plan spelled out in two parts. Part "A" lists "dreams" -- what you want for yourself both financially and personally. This is the stage in which the craftsperson draws a clearly defined portrait of what the finished work "the goal" will look like in exact detail. It is a blueprint.

Part "B" lists your "strategies" -- the actual steps you will take to travel to your goal. By clearly defining your direction, and by using the correct techniques while you work and by cultivating the craftsman's attitude of incremental excellence, you will establish the shortest route to arrive safely at your destination.

DREAMS LIST

If I had unlimited...

Time

Talent

Money

Ability

Self-Confidence

Family Support

Here's what I'd do....
Relax and let the ideas flow. Don't decide what you can and cannot do as you write. Your ideas will excite you and inspire you. It may go slowly at first but then it will come faster. Once you've made your list with no limits, choose those goals that are the most important to you now. Prioritize or you'll never get started on the right foot. While some of your personal financial goals will be lone journey's just for you, others will include and require the support of family members.

After you define your destinations, you will need the necessary finances --equipment and supplies to complete the work. How much you will need, and how you will go about getting it is your next step -- your strategies list which will include: personal financial strategies, tax reducing strategies, and powerful investment strategies. All of which you will begin to learn once you take control of your financial future.
1. Be specific and measurable - you must be able to define your goals in specific terms so you will know when you have arrived.
2. Have starting and completion dates -- these target dates will help to spur you on and help you plan how to use your time.
3. Put it in writing -- don't let them roll around in your head. Make them concrete.
4. State your goals in terms of results not the processes. Focusing on the results creates your road map.
Your destination -- the result you want -- is the finished craftwork. But there is a process to getting there. There is a beginning and an end to each work. The bigger the goal, the more work there will be to reaching them. But then the highest mountain was never climbed without the effort.

Now is the time to become your own financial expert. Seek out your mentors.
from More Wealth Without Risk
by Charles J. Givens

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Here's what I'd do....

Return to Element III Index: Family & Personal Finance

Life Planner® - The LifeCraft Organizer

User's Guide - Companion to the Life Planner

LIFECRAFT® - Home Page

Personal Financial Goals

Element III: Family and Personal Finance

DREAMS LIST