Financial Success

SETTING GOALS IS VITAL TO YOUR FINANCIAL SUCCESS

Setting goals is vital if you seriously want to succeed financially. It has been truthfully said that if you aim at nothing, you are almost sure to achieve it. You cannot succeed financially by being a gambler or a spectator.
You need to study your financial options, make decisions, and then invest regularly and wisely. Financial success can be described as the progressive realization over time of your own predetermined financial goals.
However, numerous studies reveal that most people who fail economically have inadequate and vague financial goals that are not committed to paper.
A major study revealed that 27 percent of Americans have no financial goals at all and usually arrive at retirement with less than $25,000 in net assets and a meager Social Security pension. Sixty percent of people have only the vaguest of financial goals; they will barely survive with modest personal assets of $50,000 plus Social Security.
Ten percent of those surveyed have financial goals but never put them in writing. However, it is
fascinating to note that even the people who have unwritten goals still accumulate an average of $250,000 by age sixty-five, more that ten times the retirement assets of those who have no goals at all.
Finally, the studies show that only 3 percent of Americans have clearly defined, written financial goals.
This small but select group with written financial goals accumulated considerably more than one million dollars in personal assets at retirement! The bottom line is this: If you are not setting financial goals to succeed, then you are effectively planning for financial failure. The choice is yours.
If you are married, it is worthwhile to sit down with your spouse and establish some meaningful financial and life goals at least annually. Once a year take time to review your actual accomplishments compared to your written goals from twelve months earlier. Every year on New Year’s Eve Kaye and I celebrate another year of publishing and ministry at a favorite restaurant.
We bring along our Goals and Objectives book and record the accomplishments we made during the past year.
Then we prayerfully discuss and outline our new goals and
objectives for the year to come.
These goals cover three time intervals and encompass several distinct categories.
Our goals are
(1) short term (less than one year)
(2) intermediate (two to three years)
(3) long term (five to ten years)
The categories include:
(A) financial: savings and asset buildup, debt reduction, and income objectives;
(B) ministry: a new book, new videos, conferences, foreign mission trips, and so forth;
(C) personal: vacations, education, health, physical exercise; and
(D) material: home improvement, car, computer equipment.
Setting goals together and recording our accomplishments as God blesses our endeavors is one of the most satisfying moments of the year. It is an opportunity to thank God for his many blessings and to prayerfully ask the Lord for His direction in our lives as to future goals and objectives.
In addition, this exercise reminds us of the tremendous blessings God has granted to us. We should recognize that we enjoy enormous economic blessings and advantages in North America that are greater than 98 percent of all those who have ever lived throughout history. We should thank God every day for his rich blessings to us and recognize our responsibilities as stewards of the large financial resources the Lord has placed in our hands.