Take a second and think about the goals you’ve set for yourself. How do you feel about them? Do you feel like you’re making progress toward achieving them, or do you feel like progress on them has ground to a halt, and that maybe the goals weren’t that realistic in the first place?
If you nodded your head at the second scenario, you’re not alone. According to the website Reliable Plant, over 70% of people will not achieve the goals they set for themselves. This might make you think that the people who achieve their goals are special or have some sort of privilege the rest of us don’t, but that’s not the case—they just know what difficulties you might face in achieving your goals and how to overcome them.
Give Yourself Purpose
The Reliable Plant website has another statistic that ties into the one mentioned above--over 80% of people don’t set goals at all. In other words, just by setting a goal for yourself you’ve taken a step that most people don’t.
If you don’t have any goals beyond some vague notions about success, please don’t beat yourself up. Instead, take the time to list some goals that are meaningful to you. They can be as small or as grand as you want, and you’re forbidden from thinking that any of your goals are impossible or silly.
When you’ve got a list of goals, set it aside for a day or two, then come back to it and think about the goals that are important to you. Then, narrow the list down further and think about which one you’d like to accomplish first.
Get started setting financial goals today!
Remind Yourself why you set the Goal
A lot of the important goals that we set for ourselves, like getting a mortgage for a house, will take years to achieve. That’s a lot of time for the importance of your goals to get lost in the stresses of day-to-day living, and over time you might even forget the reason you set those goals in the first place.
The way to get around this is to keep reminding yourself why you set your goals. Write down all the benefits you’ll get out of achieving your goals and make sure you keep it close by. Review it periodically, and if you can think of another benefit add it to your list.
Give Yourself Manageable Goals
Once you’ve listed all the goals you’d like to achieve, it’s only natural to want to accomplish as many of them as possible. While that’s a good attitude to have, you need to be sure you don’t overreach yourself.
There are two ways people overreach themselves. The first is by trying to do too many goals at once, and getting bogged down in a lot of small steps that can leave you feeling as though you’re not making much progress toward your goals. The other way is by trying to move too fast on a goal and burning yourself out when you can’t maintain the pace you set for yourself.
In order to avoid this result, give yourself permission to take baby steps, especially if you’ve never set a financial goal before. Focus on only one or two goals at a time to start, and make sure the savings plan you come up with for each one will be sustainable. Once you’re comfortable with the pace you’ve set, you can decide if you’d like to do more.
Get Ready to Achieve Your Financial Goals
A lot of people don’t achieve the goals they set. If you’d like to be one of the people who does, you not only have to set some goals, you also have to remember why you set those goals and make sure that the plan you have for achieving them won’t burn you out.
If you’d like help achieving your financial goals, become a member of First Alliance Credit Union today. You can set up a separate savings account or club savings account for your goal, and you can monitor your progress on our online banking platform and mobile app.
