Do you ever set any goal about how much money you want to make in next year?

If you do then you must pay attention. You might fall into a trap. I agree that goal setting is an important process for us. It is a guide for us to plan our year accordingly so that we can achieve what we want to. If you want to make more money, you must set a clear and achievable money goal.

The Problem of Money Goal

I always set money goal. I’m making money from the Internet and this is a business that needs to be driven by goals and motivation. This is because it is a part time business where I take action in my spare time. So I need motivation to take action and sacrifice my spare time to exchange for a business income source. Otherwise I cannot take action because of laziness.

However, I always fail to achieve my goal. I always fail to achieve goals that I have set for my online business. If I want to give a mark to this “test”, I can tell you that I FAIL. I believe something must be wrong with me.

So I look back at my works and I found something common. That is I always stop taking action in the earliest stage. I never take action persistently until I achieve my goal.

The biggest problem that I have is I’m too focusing on the money goal. For example, I want to make $1000 in 1 month. So I usually divide the $1000 by 30 so that I know on average I have to make at least $33 per day. I wrote this down on a piece of paper and put it every where that I can see it. Then only I go out and take action.

But I’m not the lucky guy that always succeed in first few days. In day 1, I fail and I told myself that I’m just starting up. In day 2, I fail again and I told myself that it takes time. After 1 week, if I haven’t hit my goal to make $33 daily, I gave up because I worry, lost my focus and stopped taking actions.

I must do something on this or else I will never succeed in online business or any money goal that I set in my journey to financial freedom.

Finally I found the solution for the Money Goal Problem

I found a secret to overcome this problem. I wish I would have found this earlier so that I won’t waste so much of time.

Lately, I managed to get an audio course for a popular book; the Millionaire Next Door. This is a popular financial book. So I quickly spent my first week listening to the tape and learn from it.

The Millionaire next Door is a good learning material about wealth and wealthy people. The most amazing part of this audio course is it provides all kind of statistic and facts to discuss the spending habits, money mindsets and money behavior of the wealthy people. The course also shows us that most of the wealthy people looked ordinary and normal. However, the people who owned fancy car and biggest house, in reality are broke! They just look like a wealthy people and they are also the one who suffers from money problems.

Currently I almost finished 60% of the audio course and I get a big message that we should concentrate on our wealth instead of how much we make and earn or how many fancy materials we have. There are a lot of benefits becoming a wealthy people. So I quickly did some research on building wealth and I found a new terms for my mind – High Net worth Individual (HNWI).

What is High Net worth Individuals?

We all heard about millionaires, billionaires, rich people and their exotic lifestyles. However, recently, the term “High Net worth Individuals” is being used frequently to describe a person whose net worth is more than $1 million. This figure does not include the first piece of real estate owned by individual.

Needless to say, HNWIs know something about making money, managing money and growing their wealth. In fact, they accumulate their first million by sticking to some simple rules and formula. If you do the same thing, you also can become a High Net worth individual.

Determining your net worth is the first step in most financial planning processes. If you want to have a better financial future, then you must learn how to make a good financial plan for your future. In order to do so, you must learn how to determine your net worth first. By knowing your net worth, you can understand how well you have achieved in your personal finance and hence set some financial goals to improve. You have to find the right treatment to cure it by knowing the illnesses in your body.

Calculate your Net worth

Theoretically, it is very easy to calculating your net worth. The process consists of three steps:

1. List your assets with values
2. List your liabilities with values
3. Subtracts your liabilities from assets and the result is your net worth.

So the Formula is: Assets – Liabilities = Net Worth

Previously I shared with you how you can do a financial self-assessment so that you can know where you are now financially. This is the most important and basic step that everyone of us must take before we make any financial goal.

Through the financial self-assessment, you will find out your financial problems and hence set a goal and plan to overcome them. I think this is the main reason why we must set a financial goal. A financial goal must be a goal that can improve our finance level or solve our financial problem. It is hard to make a good financial goal without knowing what kind of problems you have right now If you haven’t do the financial self-assessment, you can read my post : Do you know where are you now Financially and find out the steps that you can do so.

Taking Control of Your Money by Setting a Financial Goal

Congratulation if you knew your current financial status. So let’s move on to set some goals and start taking control of your money. Below are some of the tips that I would like to show you on how to make a financial goal.

1. Decide what you want. First you must decide what you want to achieve. Now you know your financial status and understand your financial problem. You should know what kind of financial problem and weakness that you want to cover. Just ask yourself what you want to improve and what kind of end results you want to achieve in next week, next month or end of the years. If you feel hard to make the decision, maybe you can read my article about the 6 financial levels. This article will tell you what kind of financial levels that available for you. So you can spend some time and then choose 1 that you want to achieve.

2. Which Problem to solve first. I suggest that your first target should be those problems and weakness that you have found from the self assessment test. If you found that you are paying too much of debts, then getting out of debt should be your first choice. If you are having a negative balance at the end of each month, then you have to control your expenses and make it back to positive. Or if you found that you are suffering from the high mortgage payment or car loans repayment, then you should consider whether you change your car and house or look for second options to drop down the payments.

3. Make a plan. You need a plan to succeed in anything. Now you know what you want and select the financial levels you are targeting at. Then you also know your current problems and etc. So with this 2 important information, you can start compiling a plan to solve your financial problems and move forwards to your goal. For example, I want to achieve financial freedom for my life. Then before achieving it, I have to pass 2 levels – financial security and comfortable. Of course, if you are in debt, then you have to make your balance break even first before those 2 financial levels. In financial security, we are looking for “security protection” on our finance. So in this level, we must prepare our savings, emergency funds and last but not least, good money management system that will prevent us from the financial disaster. After that, we will look for business and investment opportunities to build up our financial comfortable level. In financial comfortable, we are living comfortably with excessive cash from business, investment and our job. So with this money we can start building our asset empire and achieve financial freedom. This is just an overlook on my plan to achieve financial freedom.

4. Take 1 action at a time. Please make your plan simple and take 1 action at a time. People always fail because they always try to take a big step at a time. In most cases, this will make you feel overwhelmed and stop taking action. I have this experience before too. In order to solve this problem, I found that making a plan is a good solution. In my plan, I always list down what I want, what is my current strength and weakness and finally write and list down the small steps 1 by 1 in my plan. After that I just follow my plan and I will achieve what I want. The power of a plan with some small steps is it can let you feel easy. Once you feel it easy, your mind will be clear and you will take action easily.

Last But Not Least …..

Please set a financial goal that you strongly believe that you can achieve. You will be lack of motivation if you set a financial goal that is too high for you. For example, if you set a goal to be a millionaire in next year. If you believe it then this is a good goal for you. But if you are not, it will block you instead of motivating you and move forward. So please set a financial goal according to your ability which you believe you can make it.

Good Luck

Harrison Loke

A dreamer who chases a Goal