Once upon a time I wanted:
- A house
- Dogsledding team
- Fully-funded retirement account…at age 35
- Trips around the world
- A new Toyota Tacoma
- To get my PhD
- Airplane lessons
- Guitar lessons
- To win the Iditarod
- To be fluent in French
- A private island
- To be fluent in German
- An ambulance
- To be fluent in Finnish
- To be an award-winning wildlife biologist
- ….
You get the idea. I want a lot of things.
You know what I didn’t want, though?
Subway sandwiches and cheeseburgers every day for lunch. Yet, somewhere along the way my dining out habits were getting in the way of me reaching my true goals without even realizing it.
I found this out when I looked at my current spending patterns from the last post. I was spending over $800/month on dining out and I didn’t even know it!
Related: I cut my crazy dining out bill by switching to MyFreezeasy meal plans. I use these like all the time dudes!
Did you find any surprises too? I bet you did—it’s easy to let things get out of hand when you don’t have anything to reign them in like out-of-control cats.
If your current spending patterns are way out of whack too, don’t fret! I’ll show you how you can go about identifying what your real financial goals are so that you can ultimately live the life you want. Because cheeseburgers are great, but can they compare to a round-the-world trip? Methinks not.
Contents
Step 1: Brainstorm A List Of Goals
This is the fun part. Put on your favorite upbeat music, grab a couple sheets of plain white paper, and set a timer for ten minutes.
Now, write down a list of all your future goals, financial or otherwise. Why? Because everything comes down to money, and even if it’s something like “Save Endangered Animals,” you still can’t do that without money in the bank. Ask me how I know (I’m an out-of-work wildlife biologist).
The world is yours for the picking here; choose whatever you want. Travel? Retire early? Become the world’s largest dealer of pogo sticks? Let your freak flag fly. I’m not one to judge. I like to order mushroom pizzas, pick off the mushrooms, and eat the pizza and the mushrooms separately. I’m a weirdo too. Welcome.
Make sure you write big and legibly. This isn’t the time to practice your writing-on-a-grain-of-rice skills. We’ll be cutting these up later, and you don’t want a handful of miniscule ribbons. We’re not making confetti here, guys.
Here are some facts to occupy you while you think:
- 80% of Americans are in debt
- 30% of Americans don’t have any retirement savings
- 53% of Americans aren’t happy with their jobs
- 41% of Americans wouldn’t be able to cover a $500 emergency without going into debt
Step 2: Rank Your Goals
Now that you’ve got a list of goals, take a pair of scissors and cut each one so it’s on its own piece of paper. Arrange each of these goals in an ordered list.
Ask yourself for each ranking: Would I be willing to sacrifice my lower-level goals for this one? Think long and hard. As the Rolling Stones once said, “you can’t always get what you want.” So, make sure the ones you want most of all are at the top. You likely won’t be able to do the ones at the bottom, and you have to be OK with that.
Thanks to my goal-setting exercise, I’ll be going to Macchu Picchu in September 2017! Photo courtesy of einalem.
Step 2B: Compare Your Goals With Your Spouse
If you’re married or you have a partner, it’s important to get them to do this exercise too. After all, you’re working as a team.
When they’re done with their goals, compare your lists: how well do you match up?
Now, go through each of your goals and rank them together. You have to be on the same page as your significant other.
Otherwise, you’ll always be yanking your money around like two kids fighting over a cookie. No, it’s mine! No, you had one yesterday! No, it’s going to make you fat!
Related post: Come To The Dark Side: How To Get Your S.O. On Board With Managing Finances
Step 3: Set Your Kick-Ass Financial Goals
Now that you’ve got an ordered list, pare it down to just a few goals, say 5 or so.
Here’s the kicker: your lower-level goals aren’t really goals at all. They’re distractions. They’re the things that are going to keep pulling you away from the things you really want to achieve most of all.
It sucks, I know, because I really want a house but I also want to buy lunch every day. Given the choice between the two, though, I’ll always pick the house.
Step 4: Ready…Aim…Fire! Shoot For Your Financial Goals
Now that we know where we’re heading, it’s time to make a plan to get there. We’ll do this over the next several steps.
As we make our budgets, it’s always important to keep our financial goals in mind. If we don’t, we’ll always be running around in circles. Not that that’s bad, but sometimes I get dizzy and puke on my friends. No one wants that.
Hooray! You just finished one of the most important steps in your adult, put-your-big-girl-panties-on life! How does it feel?
What Do I Do Next?
Congrats! This is the second post in my Budget Like A Boss series. For more info on how to set up a successful budget step-by-step, check out the other posts below:
- What Are Your Current Spending Patterns?
- Set Kick-Ass Financial Goals <- You are here!
- Create A Budget
- Track Your Spending
- Create A Badass Money Saving Plan
- Adjust Your Budget
What are some of your financial goals? Don’t be shy. Leave a comment below!
I wasn’t surprised so much as dismayed when I totted up our food bill a few months back. I knew it was bad, but I hadn’t realized it was *that* bad. For various reasons too long to get into here, we don’t cook. We spent something like $600 on all of our forms of food. It kicked me into high gear for making sure that, while we still don’t cook, we have ways to help avoid eating out. We keep snacks around the house for my husband and protein bars, peanut butter and bread (yay, peanut butter toast!) and frozen meals here. It’s still not as cheap as I’d like, and my husband still has to get something for dinner some nights; but it’s a helluva lot better than where we were.
I’ve had to do a lot of snack-stashing too. We used to live out in the sticks and it was easier to avoid going out for random snacks when we were hungry, but now we live smack dab in the city and there’s temptations in all directions.
I wish I could spend $600/month on all food combined! That’s what we have budgeted for just groceries right now – plus another $300/month for restaurants. That’s still way better than when we were living in Alaska though, where we went out to eat all the time and paid the exorbitant grocery prices for flown-in food. We probably spent a total of $1500/month on all food then. Yuck.
I’ve had to do this recently as I realised I was throwing away so much on unnecessary expenses like food! My partner and I have some big plans for travel in the next few years and we’ll be moving into our first place together so I’m being frugal for that – need over want!
Jenna L at http://hellosuckers.net
Us too. We want to buy a house in the next couple years (we HATE apartments and anything else is out of our price range right now). And I’d like to travel, although my husband isn’t so keen on it. Oh well, at least if I can’t convince him to go with me it’ll be cheaper! 😀
Hi Lindsey,
Great point! No one dreams of having cheeseburgers and Subways yet we allow these insidious little expenses derail affect our spending and derail our actual dreams. Shame!