I used to be over $100,000 in debt how did I get out of that mess and build an
investment portfolio of close to six figures financial goal setting one year
of serious focus and alignment can put you 10 years ahead in life if you could
use a motivational kick in the ass plus some tips on how to set good financial
goals and actually achieve them then keep watching what is up everyone I'm
rose and welcome back to my channel the number one place for financial education
empowerment and inspiration let's talk about setting financial goals the new
year is just around the corner and we all know how important it is to have
some goals goals that get you closer to the life that you truly want in this
video I want to share with you four simple steps to set good financial goals
and actually achieve them and I know it'll be encouraging for so many of you
to hear about my own personal money journey but don't take my word for it
all the tips and strategies I'm gonna share with you are backed by research
and data as well so if you're excited to set some awesome financial goals and
make 2020 your best year yet then give this video a like and let's jump right
into it step one is to think big but start small
a lot of us have big goals for ourselves especially if you're an overachiever
ambitious but sometimes that gap between where you are now and where you want to
be can be so big that it actually paralyzes you from taking action back
when I started my personal finance journey I had $100,000 of student loans
but I always knew just somewhere in my heart that I wanted to be a millionaire
except whenever I thought about wanting to be a millionaire instead of
motivating me to take action that that thought just left me super deflated and
hopeless because it made me very conscious of how large that gap was and
it really felt deflating like Here I am with a net worth of negative $100,000
and very little savings and assets to my name so I just didn't see a path to one
day having a positive net worth of 1 million
dollars so while that's a very honorable goal it wasn't very helpful or practical
because the thing is humans are motivated by the belief that they can
make progress progress motivates in a study done by Stanford researcher su Chi
Huang they found that when you are just starting a pursuit feeling reassured
that it's actually doable is important and achieving a sub goal increases that
sense of attained ability so there's been a lot of psychology and behavioral
research researchers that can back this up setting small goals motivates you to
action and so that going back to my personal story one day I thought they're
thinking that you know it's great to want to be a millionaire one day but
actually it would feel amazing to just be at zero like to have no debt and to
be at a zero net worth like forget 1 million dollars I was at negative
100,000 just being at zero would be amazing so rather than thinking about
this huge ambitious financial goal to be a millionaire in the distant future I
decided to just focus on that sub goal of getting to zero and it seems so much
more achievable for me and I'm telling you everything changed from that moment
on so I started chipping away at my debt just one thousand dollars at a time and
every time that thousand dollar decimal place went down I just focused on the
progress I was making and these moments of mini progress created this awesome
snowball effect and it really motivated me to keep going
it's almost like I got addicted to that feeling of making progress little by
little so I just started paying off my debt with whatever extra money I could
come up with and I really really cut down on spending and it literally just
became a hobby of mine just whenever I had free time I would like log in and
pay off some student loans here and there and I really thought twice about
spending mindlessly on dinners out and other things I previously hadn't really
been thinking about and I'm happy to say three years later my net worth finally
crossed the zero mark so moral of the story is to think big but start small
it's super cliche but a journey of a thousand miles really
does begin with that single step and just because you start small doesn't
mean you think small because now I've hit the zero mark now I can focus on the
$100,000 mark and once I achieve that sub goal I can focus on the
half-a-million dollar mark and then once I hit that then I can focus on the
$1,000,000 mark which is my ultimate goal so see how that all works so for
step one I want you to think about what starting small looks like for you right
now just close your eyes and think about it for a second if it's something that
will get you closer to your ultimate goal yet its ambitious enough to make
you feel motivated but it's achievable enough to help you not feel deflated
then you know you're on the right track so start small but think big and
remember starting small does not mean you are thinking small step two is to
activate your reticular activating system or your rest your rest is the
part of your brain that tells you what to focus on as you know your brain is
bombarded with billions of bits of data at any given moment like right now
billions of bits of data so the wrasse is a survival mechanism that saves your
brain from having to process all those billions of bits of data all the time
because without the reticular activating system your your brain would
short-circuit kind of like when you plug a 120 volt hair dryer into a 240 volt
outlet that happened to me when I went to Korea and brought my blow-dryer from
America and it just like so the rest is exactly that it protects your brain from
short-circuiting because it gets overwhelmed with so much data even
without you being consciously aware of it your reticular activating system is
selectively noticing only what it thinks it's important so that's why you can
pretty much be out on a busy street and tune out all the noise but when someone
on the street calls out your name you instantly snap to it
so that's your rest at work so going back to this whole goal-setting thing
when you tell your reticular activating system what to focus on you know in
other words you set a specific goal then all of a sudden you're gonna start
noticing opportunities around you to help you meet that goal so the more
specific your goal is the for example recently I set a goal to get
a puppy in the next year and I got really specific I know I want a gray
colored French Bulldog as soon as I did that I started noticing French bulldogs
everywhere on the street in my building on my Instagram and pretty soon my
neighbor who has a French Bulldog asks asked me to pet sit while she was away
and so that's how the reticular activating system works when you tell
your brain what you want it starts looking for ways to make that a part of
your reality and it'll filter out everything that isn't in line with what
you want so here's what I want you to do I want you to get super clear on your
financial goal and write it down you got to be specific
tell your reticular activating system exactly what you want so we can start
looking for ways to help get there when I was working to get out of debt I had a
piece of paper on my wall and I had my goal net worth clearly stated I had my
current net worth and my goal net worth and I wrote down all the debts that I
have in the amounts it was kind of like a financial vision board so for you
instead of just saying something like I want to get out of debt get really
specific and make a goal life I want to pay off my Discover credit card by the
end of January for example or instead of I want financial security make it
something like I want to build a $5,000 emergency fund in three months instead
of I want to start investing for my future make it I want to have ten
thousand dollars in my Roth IRA invested in index funds by my 30th birthday see
what I mean so put your goal on a sticky note or somewhere where you can see it
daily and help your reticular activating system work for you 24/7 even if you
have no idea how you're gonna come up with the money just don't worry about
the hell just worry about the what the specific goal and let your brain do the
rest for you because it's gonna work 24/7 in your sleep whether you're aware
of it or not to start scanning your environment for people and opportunities
related to helping you achieve your financial goal
step three is the plan for obstacles in advance so think about all the things
that might derail you in your financial goal
just deal with them right now before it happens so for example if you're trying
to get out of debt or save money and you have a really good friend who has
expensive tastes then don't just leave it up to willpower talk to her next time
she calls you and she wants you to go to a fancy restaurant or go on a spring
break trip with her and stay in a nice hotel and all this stuff then tell her
in advance actually before she asks you tell her that you can't spend that much
on going out anymore because you have XYZ financial goals and if she's a real
friend she'll support your decision and find other ways to hang out with you and
better yet maybe she'll join you on the goal to just consider that your wealth
and your financial situation is going to be the average of the five people you
hang out with the most so if you have friends who aren't supportive of your
financial goals and they're not taking care of their own finances either then
you might want to reconsider having them in your friend circle other things that
might derail you if you shop online a little too much then consider doing
something like you know deleting the Amazon Prime app from your phone or
delete all the auto saved credit card information for me my obstacle guide to
deal with in advance was spending too much money on seamless because when I'm
hungry and I don't have any food in the fridge I would just go crazy on food
delivery so I would start planning ahead and just have groceries in the fridge
and just have yummy things to eat in advance and that really helped me so
it's really simple stuff you can do but it's important to sort of future pace
and think about okay I have this financial goal what are the things that
would derail me and how do I just prevent those in advance do whatever you
need to do to set up your environment to naturally breed financial success okay
and now step number four is to eliminate the need to exercise willpower and you
do this by putting your financial goals on autopilot when I was climbing my way
out of debt I had automatic monthly payments on ACH
from my checking account to my student loans that recurring amount that I had
on autopilot was a little more than I was comfortable with but once I set it
on an autopilot it was just no longer a question
if I'm gonna pay off debt or whether I'm gonna have enough money and then
everything else all my spending and everything else around it just sort of
accommodate it to meet that and now my financial goals have shifted to things
that are more about investing and building wealth and I put all that on
autopilot as well so here's a screenshot of a recurring automatic monthly
investment that I set up in my fidelity account and it's on the first of every
month $200 goes from my checking account to my
HSA and automatically buys certain index funds just more of the index funds that
I already own if I left it up to chance literally I probably never remember to
log in and buy more investments and I probably come up with all kinds of
excuses to not save that money and to spend it on something more fun instead
but because it's all automated I just get closer to my financial goals whether
I feel like it or not whether I remember to or not and that's just how it goes
so wherever possible put your financial goals on autopilot don't make it a
question of if just make it a fact of life okay so those are the steps step
one is to start small but think big step two is to activate your reticular
activating system by getting super specific on your goal and putting it in
on a sticky note or somewhere where you can see it often step three is to deal
with all the obstacles in advance and step four is to put your financial goals
on autopilot automate to wherever possible I hope you're feeling inspired
and full of ideas by now and that's good but don't let this be just another
YouTube video that you consume but don't take any action on I want you to really
kickstart your financial goal setting so let's get you started with just one tiny
baby step action right now when I started my $100,000 debt payoff goal the
baby step for me was to just add up all my debts on a spreadsheet and you know
that's really easy it's fast it's something that you can do right now so
here's some other ideas for baby steps for you if your goal is to save money
then go through your credit card statement and cancel one monthly
subscription that you really need and reroute that to savings
instead if your goal is about investing then another baby-step idea for you
would be maybe to call your HR department and make sure you're maxing
out your 401k employer match that's something super easy nice little
baby step you know it's too easy to think about your financial goals and
just say I'll start tomorrow but no start today just think of one small
thing you can do and tell me what it is in the comments below like right now
I'll wait just remember you have what it takes
start small think big you are totally worth it
you deserve to have financial freedom and abundance and to have your
hard-earned money work for you thanks so much for watching I really hope this
video has helped and that it helped you learn how to set good financial goals
and figure out how to actually achieve them it's kind of my first time sharing
more openly about my money journey on YouTube but you know it felt pretty good
to share and I hope that many of you could relate to my stories please like
this video if you liked it and if you have any questions feel free to DM me on
Instagram because I'd love to hear about your journey and just have a chat as you
know my favorite topic in the whole wide world is money and I never get sick of
talking about it so feel free to reach out I hope to hear from you soon I post
new videos every Wednesday so I'll see you next week same time same place
remember to invest early and often and to go after the life that you want
unapologetically Cheers