“Everything that you need or want in life has a time or money cost associated with it!”

In the previous blog, I talked about the six steps to determining where you currently stand with your finances. Once you have done the exercise of knowing what your numbers really are, you are most likely going to be faced with a lot of truth, which can be good, bad or ugly! The key isn’t to get hung up on what the results were, but to assess what it means to you and make a decision on what you are going to do with that information.

Depending on your results, you may realize that you need to make more money (there is always room for more money!) or pay off debt. Or you may be in the situation where everything is all rosy, and now you want to take things to another level with your savings, investments, and giving.

The main thing that should’ve come out of the discovery is that you will need some goals and a plan to achieve the things that you want. By taking the time to write down your goals and put together a plan, you will be closer to bringing your vision for your life, business and money closer to fruition…not to mention the excitement of actually accomplishing the goal!

How do you come up with your goals?

Keeping in line with what you discovered during your financial assessment, you will want to ensure that any of the goals that you do create actually address the opportunities and gaps that you have uncovered. You will also want to capture the desires and dreams that you have captured on your vision board or journal, to ensure that you are actually putting action towards achieving them.

Any goals that you create for yourself should be very specific and not vague. The more you can get very specific about your goals is the easier it will be for you to see what actions that you need to take to get to accomplish the results that you want.

For example, if your goal is to buy a house – that’s great, but it isn’t very specific. The way you make this goal specific is by breaking it down like this:

• Where you want to buy the house: X neighborhood in X city, no more than X minutes away from downtown and the local transit
• House type: Condo, Townhouse, Semi-Detached, Detached, etc.
• House size: Between 2450 square feet and 2750 square feet
• Age of home: New build, less than 5 years, etc.
• Price range: $550,000-$650,000
• When you want to buy the home: purchase home by X date
• Amount of down payment needed for the home

You can see by the example above, things will get real and very specific when you provide that level of detail. The good thing about this is now you can take that information and begin to plan for it, by breaking down the necessary activities that you need to do in order to achieve the goal.

Just make sure that when you are actually breaking down your goals, that they are also measurable, attainable and realistic. You don’t want to be trying to pursue and putting in work towards something that will is not realistic for your situation (i.e., trying to lose 50lbs in 1 month by exercising 10 hours a day) and even it was attained you would not be able to sustain it.

How to be about that planning life!

So, you got your goals, now you got to put that into a plan of action. You should have a head start if you broke your goals down in the S.M.A.R.T (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time Based) way.

The objective of this exercise of planning is to create a clear roadmap for you on how you are going to live and experience the things that you said you wanted for your life, relationships, business/career and to correct any things that have placed you “off route”. When going through a planning exercise, you will need to define all the activities that will require you to reach your goal and to also categorize the milestones and time frames for when to complete said tasks.

Milestones act as “road markers”, you know when you are driving on the highway and you know you have reached halfway in your journey because you see certain landmarks or signs indicating you are heading in the right direction. It’s important to break your goals into immediate (within 90 days), short-term (within 1-3 years) and long-term (within 5-10 years).

Let’s break down the example of buying a home further to illustrate:

Tasks to Accomplish Buying Your Home within 5 years

Tasks Within 90 days	Tasks Within 1-3 Years	Tasks Within 4-5 Years
Determine amount of down payment needed for the house Establish a saving plan for how much savings is needed between now and the purchase timeframe Establish when you want to buy home Establish a debt reduction plan if needed Set up automatic debt and saving payments Find out how much you can actually afford and be approved for a mortgage.	Save minimum amount of money towards down payment each year Reduce debt by set amount each year Create a list of home features that you need and want in a home Select a realtor to work with Tour different homes to see what you like Attend seminars if necessary	Clear off any debts Have full down payment saved Select a realtor to work with if not done so already Purchase your home Save for new home décor and necessities Save for closing and moving costs

Once all the tasks are listed and mapped to the respective timeframes, you are able to breakdown the amount money and effort that you will need have and make to achieve the goal. For instance, if you found out that you currently only qualify for a $400K mortgage and you currently have $100K saved for the down payment, but you want a house priced at $550K-$650K, you will need to do one of two things:

• Make more money so your income that the bank is assessing you at will allow for a higher mortgage
• Make more money and save the difference of $50K-$100K so you can purchase the home in your price range.

How to ensure the plan makes sense!

I would like to remind you that planning is an awesome exercise for some and for others it worse than getting a root canal! What we all need to remember when it comes to planning is to make sure that we are not trying to do too much at the expense of our health, relationships, career or business. I can sit here and tell you that it needs to be all balanced, but I like to be real and remind you that sometimes things need to be off balance for a bit in order to get to where you need to be.

With that being said, the “balance” comes in by making sure that you communicate openly and clearly with all who would be impacted by your decision to pursue the goals. You will also benefit from this process as long you are open and honest with yourself along the way. It’s also great to have accountability and support throughout your journey.

What you don’t want to happen after you write down all these plans is to never look at them again or forget what you need to get done. This is where it helps to create and use systems to help you stay on track with managing your money and time commitments to achieving the goals.

Here are some tips to help you be a Boss at planning:

1. Rome wasn’t built in a day, neither will accomplishing your goals and fixing any issues that you are currently having with your finances.
   • Some things will take a day – like deciding to stop using your credit cards and hiding or cutting them up, other things will take time and a process to get you to where you need to go such as paying off the credit cards in one year and no longer having credit card debt.
   • Be aware of the constraints that are beyond your control that can impact your plans.
2. Automate as much financial transactions as possible.
   • All of your saving and debt repayment goals can be automated by setting up automatic payments to your credit cards, and transfers to the respective savings accounts.
   • This ensures that the money is allocated and not spent on other things…like shoes that you don’t need…just saying!
3. Schedule all of the important tasks onto your calendar and use digital tools to help you capture all of your goals.
   • Google calendar or iCalendar are great ways to schedule tasks that you need to accomplish. If you need a more visual approach to tracking your goals and timelines tools such as Trello and Asana
   • Don’t forget to schedule in time for maintaining and growing your relationship with your family and for self-care!
   • Pssst! Make sure you read to the bottom, I created a free Trello Board download for you…You’re most welcome ?
4. Start small and focus on accomplishing quick wins so you can be encouraged and motivated to move forward.
   • Nothing sucks more than putting a plan together and taking forever and a Sunday to actually see progress towards your goals!
   • Make sure to break down your goals in your plan to be incremental. If looking at the first 90 days in the example that I used above you would’ve accomplished quite a few tasks to give you the clarity to push forward.
5. Track and reassess your progress and your reasons for pursuing the goal at a minimum once a month, and a very detailed assessment quarterly.
   • You have to keep checking in to see if you are making actual progress towards your goals, just like you would with a GPS when driving a long distance. It provides you with the opportunity to adjust your plans (speed or new expectation for when you will arrive at your destination) based on the progress you have made, and assess if you still want to proceed…like being stuck on the highway for four hours during a snow storm when it should only take you 30 minutes to get home…it’s not fun and I wanted to go home, and I you would too! J

To get to started with documenting your goals and creating your plan, I created a downloadable Trello board for you:

You can also download your Trello board here

How have you created your goals and plans for this year?

Look out for the next blog post in the Getting Right with Your Money Series, where I am going to cover how to get those plans into action!

Chat Soon, and don’t forget to download your free Trello planning board here

Nechelle