Six Overlooked Reasons why you are struggling with your finances: Reason #2 - Have not made other key life decisions

Financial Planning without other life planning is like being on a rudder-less ship. If your financial boat is sinking it is important to make short term financial decisions to keep your ship afloat. Keeping you financial ship afloat basically means being able to pay all of your bills today. Keeping your financial ship afloat is something that everyone should strive for, however if this is all that you are able to do, then you are struggling with your finances.

Without having long term goals you will lose the motivation to save money, and to pay down your debt. You will also be more likely to make impulsive spending decisions. Long term planning does not have to complex or complete, it is something that you can change at any time. Basically you need to start be answering a few questions:

What do you want to do with your career? Perhaps you are completely satisfied with your career or maybe you have the desire to move up in your current field, you might want to switch fields or even open up your own business. This will give you the incentive to cut costs if you want to switch fields or save up enough money to go to school or to open your business.

What do you want to give to your family? Perhaps your goal is to spend more time with your family, to able to help out your children with their college education, or to be able to buy a home for your family to grow up.

What do you want to give back to your community? You want to think about this in both time and money.

What other goals will make you happy? Do you want to visit Europe, become a black belt in karate, have your own art show, or restore an antique automobile. It is likely that you will need some money to help you achieve these goals. This will also help you to think about whether to spend extra money on other things that might not make you as happy.

This is obviously not a complete list of long term goals, but these are the major areas that will affect your financial planning, and will give your financial ship the rudder it needs to go in a positive direction.

Comments

[Jerry]

That is a good start to a list. Those are certainly very important things for people to consider when mapping out their future. A financial plan is truly like a rudder-less ship. And, with no plan you may find yourself someday selling lattes at Starbucks when that was the last thing you wanted to do. Certainly there is no insurance policy for success in anything, but having a deliberate plan of action puts you ahead of the game.

Jerry
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