Well, another holiday season has come and gone. If you happen to be like me, your waistband is feeling a little tight and the struggle to return to normality has begun.
With a new year, comes the traditional resolutions, ambitions and dreams for the following 365 days. I do not pretend to be Nostradamus, but I am willing to go out on a limb and publicly state that there is no chance that 2021 will result in the bedlam that was 2020.
When it comes to the realization of your ambitions and dreams, there is nothing more essential than utilizing the tried and tested SMART Goals framework, however as with all things I like to put a little Jonas Wealth sprinkle on things.
To give a quick refresher the SMART goals framework is an acronym standing for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Timely.
As it is the new year, and if you are like me, following a season of overtly generous gift giving you are secretly hoping that the bank forgets to send out your credit card statement until July, I think it is only appropriate to use saving as an example. Incidentally, it also happens to be one of the most popular reasons that people come to see me in the first place.
Firstly, one of the best places to write down your goals (and I thoroughly advise you to write them down) is on either your bedroom or bathroom mirror. Just don’t use the mistake of using a permanent marker, like I once did.
Rather than using a bland, generic and ultimately boring objective such as “I want to save money in 2020” lets break the mould and use some creativity.
Using our above SMART framework, a more appropriate and ultimately successful goal would be to say something along the lines of “By December 1st 2021, I am going to save $20,000 that I am going to use to invest in the stock market in 2022.”
The goal manages to tick all boxes of our SMART framework and in my opinion is a great goal to have for 2021.
By being specific in targeting to save $20,000 to invest, it not only provides you with a clear target but as I like to say gives you a way to invest with purpose.
The measurable aspect is pretty simple, you would be able to break the big goal of $20,000 into monthly, fortnightly or even weekly targets.
The achievable aspect is the key of this process. It is crucial to not limit yourself to small goals but neither do you want to make your goals so incredulous that they become insurmountable. For the example above it may be very realistic for you to save $20,000 in 12 months if you earn $150,000 per year but if you only make $50,000 it is going to be incredibly difficult to the point of it being an impossibility.
The relevancy part of this goal comes from aligning your goal with what you actually what to do over the long term. This would be saving the required capital to invest. Our goal above has become timely as we have set a time frame with our goal as being December 1st. So if only have one goal for 2021, use the SMART framework and you are much more likely to see the results you want for the coming year.
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