Fast Fact Notes Chapter 1

Chapter 1 – Score Big by Creating Life and Financial Goals

What’s standing between you and your future success? Nothing, if you can set goals and make an actionable plan for achieving them!

Setting goals and priorities, and then following through by making active plans to make them happen, is essentially about turning your dreams into a reality. Goals and priorities are the steps that will take your life out of your parents’ hands and into your own - setting and achieving goals is the best way to get from dependent child to independent adult.

If you’re ever aspired to be comfortably secure, or financially independent - or even a millionaire! - that takes goal-setting. Because you can’t score without a goal, right?!

What are goals?
Goals are statements of anticipated outcomes you are looking to achieve.

There are many benefits to setting financial planning and life goals:

• Motivation
• Saving/spending
• Freedom
• Scoring – knowing where you are and who you are

Make goals for all areas of a well-balanced life:

• Family/Relationships
• Physical Well-being and Health
• Giving Back
• Fun & Toys
• Spiritual Self
• Money/Career
• Personal Growth

Successful people have written goals. It is a scientific fact that you will achieve a higher percentage of your goals through imagining the successful achievement of those goals. When you use mental imagery to focus thinking, you can actually rewire the brain so the neurons form new connections and new pathways. The act of writing down your goals helps in creating a visual image.

Money Pros have written goals that allow them to live the life they dream about.

 

How can you set goals for your life - and realize them? To take your dreams and turn them into reachable objectives takes some thought, but there’s a proven technique: write your goals is by using the acronym S.M.A.R.T.

S—Specific, Significant
M—Measurable, Motivational
A—Attainable
R—Results-orientated, Related, Reasons
T—Tangible, Time-based

S
Be specific. If you can really see the goal, you can achieve it.

Example: If you are trying to save money to buy a car, it’s much easier to keep to that savings plan when you have the model, color and features picked out and in your head.

M
Do you measure up? You must be able to measure your goals.

Example: “I have a net worth of $2.5 million dollars by my 30th birthday.”

A
Goals must be doable.

Example: Wanting to be President is tough but attainable; wanting to be Spiderman is a fantasy)

R
Results Orientated

Phrase your goals in the positive by using words like I accomplished, I received, I have. These phrases direct your mind to focus on the outcome and achievement of the goals. When your mind is on board, the rest comes naturally.

Example: “I have earned enough money by January 2008 to afford the $1200 VIP pass to the My Chemical Romance concert.”

T
Time—Give yourself a deadline

It is important to set a deadline to accomplish any goal. You need to write down specific dates, numbers, and timeframe in order to work toward it, and for your plans to operate in the most efficient manner.

Example: “I have saved $2,300 by graduation day in June 2008, and will be backpacking through Europe next summer.”

Remember that your goals must fit together. Goals should be heading in the same direction, not contradict each other. For instance, having two goals of “saving up enough money by the end of summer to buy a Sony Plasma TV” and “taking the summer off work to travel” contradict each other. In this case you would only be able to accomplish one. Which is more important to you, travel or TV?

Money Pros reach their goals faster because their written goals pass the S.M.A.R.T test.

 

Once you’ve written them down in the right way, follow these steps:

• Plan of Attack

Write down each step you need to take in order to accomplish the goal. It may sound corny, but these step-by-step plans actually work. Reaching your goals is like climbing stairs: without steps, how can we ever go up? So, create your steps in the staircase of life, and suddenly the next level will seem that much closer!

• Review your goals often

Write your goals on the back of an index card and tape it to the mirror where you brush your teeth. Put an identical card by your bedside table and another on the dash of your car. Look at your goals and keep them at the forefront of your mind.

• See it, believe it—Visualize your goals coming true

The body goes only where the mind has already been. That means you must see, hear, smell, touch, feel what it will be like when you accomplish your goals. This visualization is like daydreaming, just with a purpose. By imagining yourself already accomplishing your goal, you are well on the road to success.

• What you think about, you become.

You have the ability to get whatever in your life you want. all you need to do is change your thoughts to attract the things you want in life? You get what you think about, whether wanted or unwanted. This is called the “law of attraction.”

Money Pros recognize the power of the law of attraction and carefully monitor their thoughts to attract what they want in life.