Gather Little by Little

I’m big on goals and believe in setting them and doing your very best to accomplish them. This is particularly true of personal finance goals, as if you don’t have goals or a vision of where you want to be with your finances, it becomes very difficult to make the right decisions about you money. I’ve discussed the financial goals and planning topic before in my article on creating a financial plan.

I thought through various financial goals we have and about what things I could do to try to accomplish those goals during 2008. I realized that our primary and most important goal right now is to get out of debt. Everything else is secondary to that goal and therefore our focus goal for 2008 should be in line with that longer term goal of becoming debt free.

Here is our number 1 goal for 2008: Pay a minimum of $1,000 a month towards out debt. This will be done by setting up two auto transfers from our checking account towards our debt. Each transfer will be in the amount of $500, one from each paycheck I receive.

I debated on the amount to put here and it went from $500 – $1,500. $500 was easily attainable as we’ve done far more than that each month for the past year. $1,500 was a real stretch, as we’ve only paid that much once or twice and only as a result of having some windfall money come in. I settled on $1,000 as it would stretch us a bit, but to a point that was doable. Setting goals that you can achieve is important. If you set your goals too high, you won’t be able to meet them and then become frustrated and drop the goal all together.

Have you set one or more goals for 2008? If so, are they SMART? If you haven’t set your goals yet, let me give you some incentive…an iPod. Yes, that’s right, an iPod. Patrick over at Cash Money Life is hosting a giveaway and the prize is an iPod. You can read all about the giveaway on his site.

To add icing on the cake, if you subscribe to his RSS Feed and drop him an email with the secret phrase, which can only be found in his RSS feed, you will be entered into a drawing for 3 books! I’ve been a subscriber to Patrick’s blog for sometime now and he’s not only a great guy, but writes great stuff too. You won’t be disappointed.

I’ll keep you posted on my goal and how I’m doing. I’ll be very interested in reading your goals and see how you are doing as well. If you blog about your goal, I’d appreciate it if you reference Gather Little by Little or even this article so I’ll see your article and can read about your goal! I’ll even add a reference to your post from here.

Gather Little by Little Reader Goals:

• Jazmin at A Renaissance Canuck shares her long and short term goals – Thanks Jazmin, you can do it!
• Mrs. Micah tells us her 2008 goal, she’s gonna work and work hard! – Good for you Mrs. Michah, hard work is good for the soul
• Green Panda shares her goal to payoff her car and tells us how she would use that iPod! – Amazing how much better cars drive when you pay them off.