How to Monitor Your Progress
If you've created visionary long-term goals, you've already faced hurdles in achieving the short-term goals necessary to materialize those dreams. You may feel like you failed, but the beauty of failing to reach short-term goals when working toward your long-term goals, is that even if you only accomplish a fraction of the goal, you're in a better place than you would have been without the goal in place.
Failure in this context is normal, and in reality it's a mark of success — you are still moving in the right direction and benefiting from the effort. Learning how to better structure short-term goals is progress, as is being more conscious of your financial realities. Taking financial responsibility is a huge success, and it's quite possible you set your initial goals too high.
It's advisable to review your progress toward short-term goals at least every three months. Some questions to ask include the following:
Are your short-term goals effectively working toward your long-term goals? If not, what needs to be changed?
Are you making the returns on your investments that you need to meet your long-term goals? If returns have been falling short, you either need to save more, or find a higher-return investment to meet your goals.
What caused the missteps? Did you miss your savings hurdle because of unexpected one-time expenses, or because you fell off the budget wagon? What do you need to do to get back on course?
Alert
Prioritize your goals. If you have massive credit card debt, or delinquent accounts, addressing these crisis situations needs to be a top priority. The cost of carrying high-interest debt or allowing delinquencies to affect your FICO score, will defeat goals before you get them off the ground. Once you've fought the debt dragon, you can refocus your goals on savings and wealth creation.
After you have analyzed your goals, make any adjustments to existing goals — extending or shortening the completion date, adjusting the tasks, raising or lowering the financial reach, or whatever is required. If your long-term goals still reflect the dreams you want to manifest, and you have reached some, or all, of your short-term goals, create a new set of logically ordered, short-term goals that will maintain the momentum.
The review process helps you — and your children, if they are participating — recognize your progress. And by all means, celebrate the milestones, no matter how small. Anything worth accomplishing is only achieved by envisioning, recording, and mastering a series of tasks, goals, and dreams. If you have taken the reins by creating goals and working to achieve them, you are on your way to financial health and, quite possibly, wealth.
