How to achieve financial goals and stop wandering aimlessly
It's amazing how much we think about when we are doing house chores. So today, while I was washing the dishes, I was thinking about my investments and saving habits. In the past two months, I've been struggling to trace where my money is going. And it's not because I don't have a budget. I do.
But now, the money that I have been failing to trace is the extra money that I have leftover after paying off everything on my budget. Currently, I don't have a full time job so my income is variable. My big expenses is my home loan and data. I understand why #datamustfall. I also save and have a few investments and I have set up a monthly debit order for those. So that always get taken care of.
So while I was trying to figure out what was happening with my money, I realised that the reason why I don't know where the extra money was going it's because I didn't have goals for it. Without any clear direction for the extra money, I was wondering aimlessly.
So I had to re-evaluate my budget and financial goals. I am still very much on track with my initial goals but I know I can do better. And I don't want to create an illusion of progress for myself. That's just fooling myself into believing that I am ok when I am not. And not knowing where my money is going is an illusion of progress. And this is why financial goals and having a budget is important. These two tools are my road map.
Setting both short-term, medium-term and long-term goals is important.
What I picked up from my habits, is the day to day spending that is costing me. So I decided to come up with short terms goals. The short-term goals are meant to guide my day to day spending and to help me not spend on things I didn't budget for. It is easy to give in the temptation of day-to-day wants. So from now I will be doing my groceries shopping every week so that I don't get tempted to spend on things I don't need. This gives me time to think about what I really need and why I need it; and it helps me to meet my monthly food budget.
The medium term goal is to add an extra R500 into my savings account every month. This short term goal leads to the long term goal. My long term goal is add a minimum of R10 000 to my savings accounts annually. The yearly goals help me to look at the big picture and feel motivated to continue pushing monthly and weekly.
And this is how I stop my wandering aimlessly. These goals help me to account for the leftover money and combined, my goals create a wonderful cycle of staying motivated and making sure that I realise my financial freedom.
Are you still on track with your goals?
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