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how to create smart financial goals

How to Create SMART Financial Goals – Is It Time Bound?

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We’re reaching the end of our SMART goals.  We’ve gone through making the goal specific, being able to measure it, making sure it’s attainable, and looking at how relevant it is.  Now we’ll ask if your goal is Time-Bound?

A good goal will be time-bound or timely.  It will have a starting point, an end point, and measurable time or milestones in-between.  Time adds dimension to specific, measurable, attainable, and relevant.

By making your goal time-bound you give yourself a framework to focus with.  Without deadlines for your goals, it’s easy to let your goals drift away and be put off for other things that may seem more pressing.  You need to know when your goal will end.  A finish point can be a big part of whether your goal was a success or not.
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How to Create SMART Financial Goals – Are They Relevant?

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Having a goal is a great motivator but it still needs structure if you don’t want to be another statistic in the failed goals category. Making your goals SMART is one way to organize your goal to help ensure success.

We’ve looked at making a goal specific, making sure the goal is measurable, and looking to see if the goal is attainable.  Now we will look at how relevant your goal is.

When looking at the relevancy of a goal, we’re asking ourselves how important the goal is in the grand scheme of things?

Is the energy we’re going to put towards this goal the best use of our time and resources or is there something else that may be better?
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How to Create SMART Financial Goals – Are They Attainable?

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In this series on SMART goals, we’ve talked about being Specific about your financial goal and then making the financial goal Measurable.  Now we’ll talk about your goal being Attainable.

Let me preface by saying that I think a person, any person, is capable of doing many incredible things.  You may be truly amazed at what you can achieve if you earnestly put your mind and resources into reaching your goal.

But there are limits.
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How to Create SMART Financial Goals – Make Them Measurable

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When we last talked about goals I told you that you should make your goals S.M.A.R.T. (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound) to help you in achieving them. We discussed making a goal Specific so that you have one concrete goal to shoot for and you know exactly what you want to accomplish rather than a big general category that’s hard to finish.

Today let’s talk about the next step – making your SMART financial goal Measurable.

You need to make a goal measurable, you need to know exactly how much you are going to achieve.  Without a way to measure your goal, how can you track your financial progress?  How will you know if you are making headway towards the financial goal?
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How to Create SMART Financial Goals – Be Specific

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It’s that time of the year where people decide to start fresh and make new goals (many of which are financial goals). But did you know that according to a 2007 survey by British psychologist Richard Wiseman, 88% of resolutions end in failure?  We tend to try and do too much with little willpower to achieve our resolutions.

One way we can help ourselves to success in our resolutions is to make them S.M.A.R.T. – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound.

Today, let’s focus on Specific.

To achieve your goal, it helps to make it specific.  Many times, we make our goals too general, which makes a goal difficult to follow through on.
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