Having a Plan to Reach a Financial Goal

Being financially savvy means taking charge of both personal and professional matters. A major component of independence and self-reliance is planning and setting concrete financial goals. Successful people know that financial goals are much more attainable when you write down specific action plans for reaching them. 

Glinda Bridgforth used to write her goals in a notebook and keep them in a drawer, but she heard that goals were more effective if they were seen daily. She says that she finally pulled them out “on a Sunday night and filled them in and on Monday morning my phone started ringing. I got eight new clients that week! There is something extremely powerful about writing goals down and putting them up where you can visualize them. I think it helped me both on a conscious level—to get up to make a phone call—and on a subconscious level when they were in front of me.” Her business that first year of writing out her goals and posting them where she could see them increased her business 43%. She attributes that to putting them in a visible place.

Glinda advises her clients to do the same thing, regardless of whether they are in business for themselves or working in a corporate setting. “We identify goal categories: the number of clients they want to work with per week or the sales they want to achieve, and then devise action plans to achieve those goals. We do personal goals as well. If you don’t have that balance, then this isn’t going to work, and you aren’t going to be happy. However, if you focus too much energy in personal areas, then your business or career is going to suffer. I believe in focusing on balance.”

The ultimate goal, most successful people agree, is the financial independence that gives you the freedom to make choices based on your longer-term goals and desires, not on financial necessity. C.J. Hayden, owner of Wings Business Coaching, developed her company with the express purpose of helping women create financial independence. “In order to become economically equal, women must be economically independent. That means ‘un-dependent.’ Women have to make their own way or there will never be any kind of equal footing. As long as a woman is financially dependent on someone else—a husband, a parent, or an employer—she remains economically unequal. That doesn’t mean that everyone has to be self-employed, but it does mean that they need to know that at any moment they would know what to do if they lost their job.” C.J. believes that becoming economically independent is a goal every woman can and should set for herself.

Ask yourself these important questions, and then take action:

• Do you have set financial and personal goals?
• Have you written down those goals?
• Do you keep your goals visible as reminders?
• Do you have a simple budget written out for all of your monthly expenses?