Develop a plan
The final part of the series addresses a fundamental element that brings all your actions together – develop a plan.
Everything worth doing right starts with a plan. You plan get-togethers, vacations, diets, etc so why not plan your finances as well? Whether it’s personal or your own business, having a plan is critical to your financial success. Just like you use a GPS app when traveling, having a plan becomes your road map to where you want to go financially.
Here are a few steps you can follow to start developing your plan.
1. Assess your current financial situation
Understand where you are now by identifying what are your current assets and liabilities. What do you own and what do you owe to others? This gives you an assessment of what is going on in your life right now. The status gives a good base to start and becomes your reference point. Ideally, the purpose of the plan would be to help you improve your current financial situation.
2. Identify goals that you want to achieve
These goals can look different for everyone depending on what life stage you are at, but the idea is to establish goals that will help improve your situation over time and set you in the right direction.
They can look like this:
- Buy a house
- Start/ finish my degree
- Buy a car
- Achieve a career milestone
- Start my own business
- Travel to *insert bucket list country here*
The idea is if it’s identified then it can be achieved.
3. Quantify the goals
By themselves, goals don’t necessarily look financial, but to achieve them you need finances. For each goal you have, you need to break them down into steps and then quantify what finances are needed for each step.
For eg to achieve a career milestone, you may need to complete a degree that will have a cost attached to it. Starting a business will require some start-up capital. Break the goals into smaller targets that contribute to the overall goals.
4. Consider the timing
The plan should have a healthy balance of long-term goals and short-term goals. This will help spread your actions over time. Everything cannot be achieved in the same time frame. That will lead to financial stress!
Plan the time frame for each goal by prioritizing the order in which they should be completed. Spread them out over several years. Take a look at your next 5, 10, or even 15 years and see what that looks like for you. You can even go all the way to retirement!
Achieving financial success and building wealth is a journey that is unique to every individual. So it’s important when crafting your financial journey that you try to not compare yourself to others. Financial success and freedom look different to everyone because not everyone has the same goals or is in the same life stage.
Empires are not built in a day. Take your time and craft your journey!