Wednesday, October 24, 2007

GOALS VERSUS WISHFUL THINKING



At the end of my husband and my third financial meeting, we had it on our agenda to write out our joint goals. This was something that I thought we would enjoy doing, however, it became one of the more heated discussions of tonights meeting.

My husband's goals were to travel whenever he wants, golf whenever he wants, have 1.4 million in a retirement account, pay off all our debts, to be prosperous, etc.

Whoa, 1.4 million in the retirement account! How about something that's attainable, or something I can comprehend? How will you know if you're traveling whenever you want? What determines prosperity? How will you know if you've even met your goal?

I struggle with writing what I call generic goals. Goals that have no real beginining or end. I want to be able to track whether I'm successfully working towards achieving my goal or not. I'd like to be able to actually cross a goal off the list when I've reached it. I want to know exactly where I'm headed and when I arrive.

Fortunately, my husband was able to work with me in writing out some very specific goals with the understanding that when we meet these goals, more goals will be written. Hopefully, someday, he'll be able to golf whenever he wants to, but, in the meantime, I need to know exactly what we need to do to get him to that position.

Our list of goals:
  • Pay off our outstanding loans.
  • Pay off our outstanding credit card debt.
  • To have an emergency fund of $35,000
  • To determine ways to produce a passive income of $2,000 per month or greater.
  • Determine how much we need to save for our retirement.
  • To continue to be financially responsible.

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