# Financial goals you will actually stick to

> "Save more" is not a goal. It is a wish. The difference lies in four elements whose absence makes the resolution disappear by February.

Most financial goals fail not from a lack of money but because they are phrased
in a way that makes it impossible to tell whether you are meeting them.

## The four missing elements

**An amount.** "Save for a deposit" is not a goal, because there is no point at
which it is achieved. "Save 60 000" — there is.

**A deadline.** Without a date you cannot work out the pace, and without a pace
you cannot tell whether you are on track. A goal without a deadline slides
forward indefinitely, always by one more month.

**A monthly figure.** This is the number that actually drives behaviour. 60 000
in three years is 1 667 a month — and only on seeing that figure do you know
whether the goal is realistic or wishful.

**A starting point.** If you already have 8 000 aside, the goal is not 60 000 but
52 000 still to gather. Without a recorded starting point, progress is measured
wrongly, usually against you.

## Check feasibility before you start

Work out the monthly figure and compare it with what actually remains each
month. If the goal needs 1 667 and 800 is left, the goal is unrealistic — and it
is better to learn that in week one than in month ten.

There are then three honest options: extend the deadline, lower the amount, or
increase the surplus. What is not honest is keeping a goal you already know
will fail.

## Example: the three ways out, in numbers

Goal: 60 000 in three years, with 8 000 already saved. That leaves 52 000,
or 1 444 a month. But only 800 is left over each month.

- **A later deadline:** 52 000 at 800 a month is 65 months, five years and
  five months instead of three years.
- **A smaller amount:** in three years at 800 a month you gather 28 800,
  36 800 including the starting point.
- **A bigger surplus:** you are 644 a month short. Stretch the deadline to
  four years and the gap shrinks to 283 (52 000 / 48 = 1 083).

The last option shows the exits can be combined. A year longer plus a few
hundred less spending is often easier than either one alone at full scale.

## One goal at a time

Three goals against a single surplus means each advances at a third of the pace.
All three then look stalled, and a stalled goal gets abandoned.

Better to close one in a year than to have three at a third after a year. The
exception is the emergency fund, which runs in parallel by definition — it is
not a goal but a precondition.

## Non-financial goals work the same way

The same structure applies outside money. "Read more" is not a goal; "read 12
books by the end of the year" is — it has an amount, a deadline, a pace (one a
month) and a starting point.

A numeric goal in units other than currency obeys exactly the same rules, and
recording progress against it is just as worthwhile.

## Why record contributions, not just the balance

The balance tells you where you are. The history of contributions tells you
**whether the pace is holding** — and that is the only information you can act
on in time. Three months below plan are visible immediately in the contribution
history; in the balance you will see it only near the end, when reacting is too
late.

## Recalculate the pace every quarter

Every three months, divide what is left to gather by the months to the
deadline. If the result has gone up, the goal is slipping, even if the
balance is growing. That is the moment for one of the three decisions
above — early, while the correction is small, not after a year, when the
gap has grown so much that dropping the goal is easier than fixing it.

---

Źródło: https://ordiarion.com/blog/financial-goals-that-stick