Goals are important to help an individual grow in both their professional and personal lives. We hear about them everywhere: I want to lose weight, I want to get that promotion, I want to make extra money this year, etc. Some goals are easy to achieve and others are near impossible unless someone plans a course of action before stepping out to do it.
But what makes a goal reachable? There are different sets of rules to help you, and like all rules out there, there is a mnemonic acronym tied to each one. The one I like to use is the S.M.A.R.T. criteria.
- Specific – target a specific area for improvement.
- Measurable – quantify or at least suggest an indicator of progress.
- Achievable– sanity check on if it can be done.
- Realistic – state what results can realistically be achieved, given available resources.
- Time-related – specify when the result(s) can be achieved.
There are different words that can be swapped in SMART but for the most part, it should help everyone create goals for themselves.
With the new year coming, I like to go ahead and spend some time and figure out what I would like to do. My actions are based on these goals, and using the SMART system, I make sure that I can do them. I divide my goals to fall under either Personal or Professional.
Personal
Pay off the Jeep: At the time of this post, I owe about $8,400 on my car loan. I have enough to pay it off but I haven’t been in a hurry since the interest rate is pretty low. The minimum payment on the loan is $450 dollars but I’ve already been paying $600 a month. I am financially able to pay it off this year if I add some extra cash on top of the extra cash I already put on it. I will be adding an extra $100 dollars a month ($700) and my goal is to pay it off in 2017, which should free that $600 a month when its done!
Increase Deposits for 2017: I currently auto-deposit $300 dollars a month and put an additional deposit of 100-500 dollars depending on how the month goes. Some months are good while others I skimp on the extra deposit. My goal is to put at least an extra $250 bucks into the account. If I consistently do this every month, then my goal is to add an additional $3k for the year. This number is do-able I believe, even with the extra $100 going to the car loan noted above.
Get In Shape: I’ve been neglecting my health for the last few years and I need to make a change in order to get back into a healthy shape. Good health is the best investment that one can make. I will be enrolling in a local gym in my area. The cost should be around $15 dollars a month. An expense that I believe is worth it. I’m setting a goal to go three times a week.
Professional
Start Posting Weekly on DividendNoob – I like to build the website more and the way to do that is to post more quality content on a consistent basis. I’ve been posting weekly for the month of December and have been getting good results from it. For instance I’ve hit over 500 page views for the website and before that, I would be lucky to hit 50. Interaction on twitter and other dividend blogs should also help Dividend Noob grow as well.
Youtube – Sometimes information is easier to digest in video/audio form for some people. I would like to get a youtube channel up and going where I talk about my portfolio and bring up some potential investments that are on my watchlist and go through my thought process while doing my due diligence. The time requirement for this is pretty heavy at first but my goal is to start with at least one video every monthly portfolio update.
Those are my goals and I hope everybody has a good New Years and I’ll see you in 2017!