Are you wondering why you should save or invest? Or why you should have a budget? Or are you someone who starts to save or budget then becomes unmotivated and stops after a few months? If any of these resonate with you, then this article is for you. As with anything in life, it’s best to start with the end in mind—your goals. That is also the first step in Wealth Management—setting your goals and dreams.
I am someone who is motivated by the carrot rather than the stick. Tell me what the goal and reward is and I am listening and motivated. Focus on the disadvantages or penalties and I lose interest. I have also noticed that my children are more motivated by a reward than a stick and that is what goal setting is—it’s looking forward to the carrot at the end of a lot of hard work and sacrifice; looking at the reward at the end of self-sacrifice and keeping the eye on the ball.
I guess goal setting is a type of dreaming; it is a wish list, a “what if…”. The best way to go about goal setting is to let your mind wonder and start to dream. So make yourself a nice cup of tea or pour yourself a glass of wine, get comfortable on the couch with a pen and paper, and start to jot down some dreams, aspirational words and phrases. The ideas might range from self-centered ideas to altruistic dreams and, if we let our minds go, the dreams can become infinitely large and expansive and beyond what we think we can ever achieve. The next step is to take the ideas and words and start to formulate them into sentences and concrete dreams.
For example, you have the words “travel”, “India” and “family”. You put them together to say: “travel to India as a family”. The next step is a timeline—say in 3 years’ time. You now have a goal: “We want to travel to India as a family in 3 years’ time”. It’s as simple as that. You can take it even further by making a dream board by cutting up pictures, sticking them onto a poster, adding some relevant words and sticking it on the wall. You now have a visual picture of one of your dreams.
Your dreams and goals can vary from “able to retire comfortably” to “own my own home”. For us, being able to pay for our children’s tertiary education is a personal goal. My husband and I have both been blessed with tertiary education and so have our parents. It is a generational blessing that we want to continue for our children.
As we focus on Wealth Management this year, I want to encourage you to please do the first step: formulate your goals and dreams. Take some time out of your busy schedule and make some time for you and asking yourself the question “what if…?”
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