What are your financial hopes and dreams for your future: to own a second home? Retire by age 50? Send your future kids to college without a single student loan?
Setting those goals for the faraway future is important. Not only can these aspirations help you visualize what you want to achieve, they can set you on the path to take control of your finances and start saving. Typically, these are things you want to achieve that are at least seven years ahead of you or perhaps much further out.
When you establish your goals, you can commit to them, save towards them, and watch your money grow.
The first step involves planning, and here’s where you’ll learn some smart moves to make. You’ll find out how to identify what you want to achieve and then start on the path to making those goals a reality.
Starting by Thinking Big
Setting goals can really fire a person up to achieve big things. Indeed, oft-cited psychological research by Edwin Locke and Gary Latham showed that subjects who were assigned specific, challenging goals were 90% more likely to succeed.
The two researchers went on to publish “A Theory of Goal Setting and Task Performance,” in which they discussed what they’d determined as the five key components of setting achievable goals:
• Clarity
• Challenge
• Commitment
• Complexity
• Feedback
What do these mean for your financial goal setting? First, you must have clarity and specificity about exactly what you want to accomplish. It can be helpful to start by making two lists: What’s most financially stressful to you right now, and what you might consider a dream that you’d like to achieve.
While traditional long-term financial goals like saving for retirement or buying a home are worthwhile, they’re so universal that they might seem uninspiring.
Keep in mind that you can and will likely end up working towards those goals as well as some goals that feel personal. Some examples to contemplate:
• “Start my own bakery business.”
• “Travel across every continent, writing about it as I go.”
• “Buy a property in the desert and build a home to rent as an Airbnb.”
• “Start a scholarship fund for low-income high school students.”
• “Pay for my parents’ retirement expenses, so they don’t have to worry.”
You probably have general ideas of what your long-term financial goals may be, but getting as specific as possible is what can help you the most. You could take time to do some self-reflection in order to establish your goals. Think, write, and revise.
What about your goals is motivating for you? Can you break your big goals down into smaller benchmarks that also motivate you? Do they feel challenging enough to be aspirational and inspiring? This process will help you set your long-term financial goals so you can then go about achieving them.
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Breaking Your Goals Down
Next comes the harder part — making your commitment to your goals real and tangible. This is where the “complexity” component becomes important. How might you simplify the path you’ll take towards your future?
At this stage, you can take a look at the goals you’ve laid out and prioritize them. Which goals will have the biggest positive impact on your life? Which are most pressing?
Next, you can break down the goal into smaller, shorter-term goals. Any big to-do will likely seem overwhelming without a step-by-step plan in place.
As you prioritize and break down your various long-term goals, you might find it helpful to place dollar amounts on these components.
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Examples of Financial Prioritization
Consider the goals “save for retirement” and “start my own bakery business.” Are you ready to tackle them? Begin with retirement:
• Ask yourself if it might be important to first focus on any outstanding shorter-term debts. For instance, if you’re in credit card debt, develop a plan to get out from under it.
• If you don’t have an emergency fund that covers at least three to six months’ worth of your expenses, you could commit to contributing towards it until it’s full. How much will you need to put away on a monthly basis?
• Next, you could research retirement savings options. You might go through your employer or pursue a separate account on your own. What’s your goal amount of money for this fund? Break down what you’ll need to contribute to get there, month-by-month and year-by-year.
Next, think about starting your own business. To prioritize, you might think about and plan the following:
• What do you need to learn? Can you do online research and consult your local library?
• Cultivate a mentor. This can be as easy as finding someone who’s currently a small business owner and asking them out to coffee.
• Research the dollars and cents. Do your research about the costs of opening and sustaining a bakery. What is required to establish this kind of business? You may be able to read up on business plans online. What fees and expenses are involved? What would a business loan vs. personal loan look like?
These steps can help you dig into your financial goal-setting process.
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Take Action and Be Accountable
Next, explore how you will hold yourself accountable to working towards the benchmarks you’ve identified. Once you’ve identified your goals, prioritized them, broken them down, and put dollar amounts on the pieces that require them, you might find it helpful to find an accountability buddy.
• Buddy up. You could tell someone you trust (a friend or relative perhaps) about your goals, and set monthly or quarterly check-ins to review progress. Schedule those calls or meetings, and put them in your calendar to make sure they don’t get lost in the ether.
• Talk to your partner. If you have a partner, be sure to discuss your goals with them — they can help you achieve them and support you as you move forward.
• Automate your savings. This can help you get started by making the whole process seamless. Whether you are saving to get out of credit card debt as a first step or are growing a retirement fund, having money automatically whisked out of checking and into a savings vehicle can accelerate your progress.
• Consult with a professional. As you work towards your long-term goals, you may want to meet with a financial professional or business advisor, depending on your needs. They can counsel you on the best way to achieve your long-term financial aspirations.
• Understand that it’s not always a straight line to success. When you hit speed bumps along the road, you might benefit from reframing negative thoughts like “I’m never going to get there” or “I’m a failure” with less catastrophic ones, like “trial and error is crucial to getting anywhere.”
Setting Yourself Up For Success
No matter what your long-term financial goals are, it’s the planning that helps make them possible.
Creating plans to achieve your long-term goals can help give your life structure and a deeper sense of purpose in all of your actions.
Using tools can help you get where you want to be. Shop around for a financial institution that can be a solid partner for you and offer you helpful ways to better manage your money and grow your wealth.
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SoFi members with Qualifying Deposits can earn 4.60% APY on savings balances (including Vaults) and 0.50% APY on checking balances. Qualifying Deposits means one or more deposits that, in the aggregate, are equal to or greater than $5,000 to an account holder’s SoFi Checking and Savings account (“Qualifying Deposits”) during a 30-day Evaluation Period (as defined below). Qualifying Deposits only include those deposits from the following eligible sources: (i) ACH transfers, (ii) inbound wire transfers, (iii) peer-to-peer transfers (i.e., external transfers from PayPal, Venmo, etc. and internal peer-to-peer transfers from a SoFi account belonging to another account holder), (iv) check deposits, (v) instant funding to your SoFi Bank Debit Card, (vi) push payments to your SoFi Bank Debit Card, and (vii) cash deposits. Qualifying Deposits do not include: (i) transfers between an account holder’s Checking account, Savings account, and/or Vaults; (ii) interest payments; (iii) bonuses issued by SoFi Bank or its affiliates; or (iv) credits, reversals, and refunds from SoFi Bank, N.A. (“SoFi Bank”) or from a merchant.
SoFi Bank shall, in its sole discretion, assess each account holder’s Direct Deposit activity and Qualifying Deposits throughout each 30-Day Evaluation Period to determine the applicability of rates and may request additional documentation for verification of eligibility. The 30-Day Evaluation Period refers to the “Start Date” and “End Date” set forth on the APY Details page of your account, which comprises a period of 30 calendar days (the “30-Day Evaluation Period”). You can access the APY Details page at any time by logging into your SoFi account on the SoFi mobile app or SoFi website and selecting either (i) Banking > Savings > Current APY or (ii) Banking > Checking > Current APY. Upon receiving a Direct Deposit or $5,000 in Qualifying Deposits to your account, you will begin earning 4.60% APY on savings balances (including Vaults) and 0.50% on checking balances on or before the following calendar day. You will continue to earn these APYs for (i) the remainder of the current 30-Day Evaluation Period and through the end of the subsequent 30-Day Evaluation Period and (ii) any following 30-day Evaluation Periods during which SoFi Bank determines you to have Direct Deposit activity or $5,000 in Qualifying Deposits without interruption.
SoFi Bank reserves the right to grant a grace period to account holders following a change in Direct Deposit activity or Qualifying Deposits activity before adjusting rates. If SoFi Bank grants you a grace period, the dates for such grace period will be reflected on the APY Details page of your account. If SoFi Bank determines that you did not have Direct Deposit activity or $5,000 in Qualifying Deposits during the current 30-day Evaluation Period and, if applicable, the grace period, then you will begin earning the rates earned by account holders without either Direct Deposit or Qualifying Deposits until you have Direct Deposit activity or $5,000 in Qualifying Deposits in a subsequent 30-Day Evaluation Period. For the avoidance of doubt, an account holder with both Direct Deposit activity and Qualifying Deposits will earn the rates earned by account holders with Direct Deposit.
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