We’ve just clicked over the halfway mark for 2019, which also brings us to the beginning of the New Financial Year. Did you set yourself personal or business financial resolutions at the beginning of this year, but haven’t really made any progress towards them? Fear not! You’ve got a second chance to redeem yourself as we’ve officially declared July as a month for New Financial Year Resolutions! Sadly, less than 10% of the population actually achieve their New Year's resolutions. If you’re determined to be the 10% who do and you’re looking to achieve your financial goals this year, read on! Grab a paper and pen, you’re about to set some goals and crunch some numbers!
Everyone has different goals, particularly when it comes to financing. It’s important to understand WHY you want to save more money or budget better, (otherwise, you don’t really know what you’re working towards) this means getting specific with your goal! Saying “I want to save more money this year” isn’t really an actionable goal, it could mean you save $1 more than you did last year… try getting specific with your financial goals, like some of the ones we’ve listed below.
Plan and pay for an overseas holiday
Expand your business & hire employees
Take 6 months off to travel
Renovate your kitchen/bathroom/home
Buy a new car/boat
Purchase your first home
Afford dance lessons for your daughter
Pay for sports memberships for the kids
Become debt-free
Dive into property investment
Invest money in shares
The list is endless, but it needs to be specific to you and your personal circumstances. No one, including us, can tell you what your goals are, you need to decide that yourself! Just remember to choose a goal that makes you excited and determined to achieve it. Whether it’s a proud parent moment watching your kids do something they love or ticking off a bucket list item while traveling, or it’s cooking in your brand new kitchen. Choose something that you are crazy excited to accomplish!
It’s all well and good to set an actionable goal to improve your financial situation, but without a plan to achieve it, the weeks will tick by and you won’t be making any progress. Now it’s time to develop a plan to make it happen.
Do Your Homework!
Now you know your goal, you’ll need to work out the dollar value. This might require a bit of homework and research. If your goal is to become debt-free, it won’t be too hard, as you will know how much debt you’re in, but you will have to take interest into account while you pay off debt.
Whereas, a goal to expand your business and hire employees is going to require more homework. You may need to sit down and develop a business plan. Where will the business need to be in order to reach that point? What steps do you need to take as a business owner for your business to grow enough to warrant employees? This could be relevant to your profit, so once you reach $50,000 profit/year you want to hire an apprentice. You decide!
Or you’re planning to renovate your kitchen, how much is it going to cost? Do you need to get a quote prepared so you know what you’re looking at?
Time Frame!
Your goal needs a time frame, otherwise, it could be 10 years before you go on that overseas holiday! Whether it’s six months, one year, two years - is up to you. Choose a time frame that is achievable, then you can break it down into months, weeks, days, etc. For example, you’ve decided you want to go on an overseas holiday, you know it’s going to cost $10,000 and you’ve decided you want to go in 12 months.
Rather than leaving it at just that, determine how much you need to save each month, week and maybe even day! Now we know to save for a $10,000 overseas holiday in 12 months' time, we need to be saving $192/week. We know this may seem like simple math, but so many people forget to go through these steps in order to achieve their goals.
How?
How are you going to achieve this goal? It’s most likely you haven’t achieved this goal before, so what is going to be different this year than last year that’s going to allow you to achieve it? Perhaps you have poor spending habits and need to rein yourself in? Sitting down and working out a weekly budget for your different expenses will help to keep you accountable for the money you are spending.
Maybe you need to transfer the money you’re saving into a separate (and locked) account at the beginning of the week before it’s spent?
Do you need to find a way to make more money? Start a hobby side hustle, grow your current business, work towards a promotion, or perhaps you absolutely hate your job and it’s time to find a new one that pays better at the same time?
Do you need to speak to a financial advisor who can help you reduce debt or how to best invest your money?
Who/What Can Help You?
There are a wide variety of tools and support that can help you achieve your goal. Perhaps as a business owner, you need to speak with a business advisor or accountant for support to grow your business? If you want to purchase your first home, speaking to the bank or a finance broker will help you understand your requirements to buy a home and qualify for a home loan.
Get educated! One of the greatest tools available to us all is the knowledge of others who have been there and done that. Read books relevant to your situation, speak to people who have achieved what you want to achieve and choose to learn something new every day that is going to allow you to grow in the direction you’re aiming to go. You might even want to take your current hobby, refine it and find a way to capitalise on it to make money from doing something you love.
Apps - technology can be our greatest friend! There’s so many apps and programs available to us now that can help us manage our finances. For personal finances and budgeting, you might like an app called Pocketbook. As a business, we can make some suggestions for programs to help you better manage your business finances and get real time financial updates/statistics.
Measure It!
Finally, you can’t manage what you can’t measure! It’s important to find a way to keep track of your progress. Ask yourself ‘how will I know if I’m on track?’. It could be a matter of knowing you’re saving the right sum each week or paying off the right sum of debt each week. It might be managing your weekly budget and knowing you’re sticking to the budget each week.
It could be hitting your monthly profit target each month in business. You may want to set yourself a goal to read a personal development book once a month? Or you could have certain tasks you need to tick off each week to launch your new side hustle! Whatever it is, make sure you have a tangible way to measure that you are working towards your goal.
Now, if you haven’t already, it’s time to write all this down! Spend some time now going back through our tips above, writing it out and following the process. Below are the 6 steps to go through to set your financial goals and ACHIEVE them!
What is the goal?
What is the dollar figure?
What is the timeframe to reach it?
What steps have to be taken to achieve it?
What tools, resources, and support will help you achieve it?
How can you measure your progress?