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Last Updated November 2, 2021

Are you sick of not having money? Do you find yourself in the same financial situation year after year? Whatever your financial goals, you need to have a financial goal planner.  Find out why a financial goal planner is the key to your financial success.  

Daily Goal Planner

What Are Financial Goals?

Financial goals are the things you hope to achieve with your money. They aren’t one size fits all, because everyone has different hopes and priorities when it comes to their money. However, if you don’t set your financial goals, you’ll probably stay stuck in the same place financially.

Why Are Financial Goals Important?

Having financial goals are important because people who make goals usually achieve them, and achieve them much faster than those who do not set any financial goals. The reason for that is because goals give you more focus, allows you to track your progress, and help you stay motivated to achieve your task.

For example, say your goal is to save for a house. You might cut back on your shopping trips and use that money you save to put towards your house fund instead. Without establishing that goal, you’re more likely to continue spending as usual without putting anything towards savings.

Short term financial goals

So in other words, having financial goals help influence your actions today to ensure you have a better financial future tomorrow.

What Should My Financial Goals Be?

It’s hard to say what your financial goals should be because everyone is in different stages of their financial life. So I would just say your financial goals should put you in a better position to have more wealth than you had before.

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But in general, everyone should strive to achieve these financial goals at some point in their life:

  • Have a fully funded emergency fund
  • Have enough money for retirement
  • Get out of debt (or at least have a positive net worth)
  • Have multiple streams of income
  • Spend less money than you make
  • Making sure your loved ones are taken care of upon your death

3 Different Types Of Financial Goals

cashless envelope system

In general, there are three different types of financial goals that you can have: 1) short-term; 2) mid-term; and 3) long term goals. Let’s break down what I mean by that…

1. Short-Term Financial Goals

Short-term financial goals are usually goals you wish to accomplish in less than 1 year. Some common examples of short-term goals are building your emergency fund, paying down high-interest debt, or saving for a wedding or vacation.

2. Mid-Term Financial Goals

Medium-term financial goals usually take about 1-5 years to achieve. Some examples of mid-term financial goals may be saving to buy a car, saving for a down payment on a house, or paying off your high-interest debt.

3. Long-Term Financial Goals

Long-term goals usually take more than 5 years to achieve. Some examples of long-term goals may be saving for retirement, saving for your child’s college tuition, or paying off a mortgage.

Why Do I Need A Financial Goal Planner

You can make financial goals, and even write them down, but a financial goal planner will help you take action

Woman goal setting while drinking coffee

Using a financial goal planner allows you to schedule any task that you need to do to achieve your financial goals. Regardless of what it is, planners help you to stay on track with each individual task you need to complete, and encourages you to move on to the next one effectively and efficiently.

It also helps you set specific due dates and deadlines for everything to help you stay on track.

I recommend having a financial goal planner mostly for your short-term financial goals because most planners only allow you to plan for about a year or so—although you can certainly keep a reminder of what your more long-term goals are.

If you’re active with financial goal planning, and take action to achieve your financial goals, I promise you will have more money at the end of the year.

Examples Of Short-Term Financial Goals

Here are some examples of short-term financial goals that your financial goal planner can help you achieve:

  1. Create And Stick To A Budget
  2. Increase My Net Worth
  3. Save At Least 10% Of My Income
  4. Have A Fully Funded Emergency Fund
  5. Make More Money Than I Did Last Year
  6. Pay Off At Least One Of My Credit Cards
  7. Spend Less Money Than I Did Last Year
  8. Increase My Credit Score
  9. Break Bad Spending Habits
  10. Increase or Start Investing
  11. Pay For My Wedding In Cash
  12. Save For My Vacation To Jamaica

How Does A Financial Goal Planner Save Me More Money?

Short term financial goals

1. You Save Money By Being Organized

Being organized saves you time and money.  The more organized you are, the more money you save. A few ways being organized saves you money are:

You Get The Best Deals

why can't i ever save money

When you’re organized, you can plan ahead for anything you need, and purchase things when they are on sale or clearance.

You Avoid Fees

Being organized can help you make sure your bills are paid on time. By scheduling your bill payments, you will avoid costly late fees.

You Get Lower Interest Rates

Paying your bills on time can also help you avoid high interest rates. Paying your bills on time will increase your credit score. With a high credit score, you get more access to better interest rates.

You Buy Less

You know exactly what you own when you’re organized. Since you know what you own, you tend to buy less. You no longer have to buy an item because you either can’t find it or don’t know you already own it.

Saves You Time

how to prioritize your financial goals

Everyone knows time is money. By keeping things well organized, you can save yourself time. The more organized you are, the less time you spend looking for things. You can therefore spend your time on things that are productive.

You Can Earn Extra Money

As I mentioned earlier, being organized saves you time. Having more time will allow you to spend your time on things that will earn you extra money.

Also, being organized can help you recognize the things you no longer use. If you have everything organized, you tend to know what you use and what you don’t use. You can sell the things you don’t use and make some extra money.

You Know How Much You’re Spending

prepaid debit card

Being organized and having a budget helps you get control of your finances. A budget helps you know how much you’re spending. If you’re aware of how much you’re spending, you will tend to spend less.

You Will Waste Less

When you know what you have, you will tend to use it; and therefore waste less.

2. You Have More Control of Your Money

Being more aware of your financial goals makes you take more responsibility for your behavior. 

You are clear about your goals and what you need to do to achieve them.  Therefore, you are more accountable and aware of how certain actions will affect your financial journey.  Because of this, you will tend to keep and have more control over your money.

3. Helps You Get Closer To Your Financial Goals Quicker

financial goal planner

The most important thing about financial goal planning is it makes you take action and helps you achieve your goal.  By planning the steps you need to take to achieve your goals daily, weekly, and monthly you are more likely to take action. 

You are also more likely to be productive during the time you are working towards your goals. To achieve your goals, they need to be written out and planned for.

According to a study done by Gail Matthews at the Dominican University of California, those who wrote down their goals accomplished significantly more than those who did not write down their goals. 

I notice when I don’t use my financial goal planner, I tend to be less productive and it takes me longer to meet my goals.

Being clear about my goals is exactly what helped me achieve them. Once I was able to lay out a plan, I took action every day to get closer to my goals.

how to prioritize your financial goals

I was able to get to my financial goals quicker by having my goals written down and planned for. If my plan wasn’t mapped out exactly for me, I wouldn’t have been able to achieve those amazing results in such a short period of time.

Financial Goal Planner You Can Use

Now that you realize how important it is to use a financial goal planner, I’m going to share with you a tool that I love and use.

I created the Financial Goal Planner because I couldn’t find a planner I liked specifically dedicated to your finances.

The Financial Goal Planner is a carefully curated planner filled with 37 pages worth of printables to help you make a plan for financial success and crush your financial goals.

With this planner, you can set up your budget, save more money, and make a clear plan to get out of debt faster than you ever thought possible. This goal planner has everything you need to be productive, manage your time wisely, organize your finances, and set money goals.

financial goal planner

I highly recommend you check out the Financial Goal Planner because the value is AMAZING and it has made a difference in my life!

You will save money because you never have to buy another planner again. Keep the files for life and reprint the pages you need—or keep it in the digital format and use it with a note-taking app as I do.

Having an action plan in place allowed me to be financially free in 6 short years (I initially thought it was going to take me 15 years—so I was able to meet my goal in less than HALF the time). 

Pros:

  • You get a lot of value for the price because you never have to buy another planner again.
  • You get to keep the files for life and reprint the pages you need.
  • You can use it in a digital format through a note-taking app (such as GoodNotes).
  • You can customize your planner to only include the printables that are most useful to you.
  • It’s so much more than a financial goal planner. It helps with building routines, getting organized, overcoming obstacles, shifting your mindset, and time management.
financial goal planner

Cons:

  • You have to print out the pages yourself if you want to use it as a physical financial goal planner.

My Opinion/How I Use It:

I highly recommend the Financial Goal Planner. You will definitely find it useful in managing your money, setting goals, being productive, and managing your time.

I like to use my Financial Goal Planner digitally on my iPad with the note-taking app GoodNotes. This way I can easily reorder, duplicate, and reuse pages. It also helps me save on printing costs.

Work On Your Money Mindset

The first printable I recommend you use in the Financial Goal Planner is the Money Mindset Worksheet.

Before starting any financial journey, it’s important to change your money mindset. You cannot approach your financial journey with a scarcity mindset or limiting beliefs.

When you think of money, you should say to yourself “there’s more where that came from” instead of always thinking “I can’t afford it.” So the Money Mindset Worksheet will help you get rid of any limiting beliefs you may have.

Personal Finance Binder
Here’s an example of what my Money Mindset worksheet looks like.

After filling out my Money Mindset Worksheet, I normally feel empowered to achieve my financial goals.

Make Financial Goals

Next, I fill out my Financial Goals Worksheet and break that down to 3 BIG goals I will achieve this year.

Personal Finance Binder
An example of my financial goals this year.

I then break my yearly goals into monthly and weekly goals so I know what action steps I need to take.

Personal Finance Binder
Example of how I break down my yearly goals into monthly goals.
Personal Finance Binder
Example of how I break down my monthly goals into weekly goals.

After I make my financial goals, I like to calculate my net worth every quarter and go over my financial goals every month. This helps me to see if I’m still on track to achieve my goals. If not, I know I need to make some adjustments.

Personal Finance Binder

Make A Budget

Once you have your financial goals set up and know your net worth, the next logical step is to set up a budget.

If this is your first time trying to create a budget, follow these 5 simple steps:

  1. Determine your net income (take-home pay)
  2. Determine your monthly expenses
  3. Determine how much you want to allocate to each spending category
  4. Track and review your spending
  5. Make adjustments where necessary.

If you need more help setting up a budget that actually WORKS, read my step by step article “How To Make A Budget For Beginners: 5 Simple Steps” where I go into more detail.

I use the Daily Expense Tracker to keep track of my monthly spending.

Cash Envelope Method Without Cash
Here’s an example of what the Daily Expense Tracker looks like.

It is important to review your budget on a regular basis to make sure you are staying on track.

If you track your spending every day, you should write down what you spend as you go. Make a note on your phone or on a small piece of paper as you spend throughout the day. Then write the numbers in your expense tracker at the end of the day.

If you decide to track your spending every week instead, you can go online to your credit card, bank’s website, or use a third-party website like Personal Capital to see your spending for the week.

You can then write down those transactions into your Daily Expense Tracker. Remember to also keep track of any cash you may have spent since this will not be on your bank statements.

I personally recommend recording your spending every day, or at the very least, once a week.  Use multiple sheets (one for each spending category or sub-category) and keep them in your Financial Goal Planner. 

If the hardest part of budgeting for you is tracking your spending, I highly recommend you sign up for Personal Capital to help you.

Once you have recorded your spending for the month, plug-in the numbers from your Daily Expense Tracker (or whatever other method you use to track your spending) into your Monthly Budget.

Personal Finance Binder
Here’s an example of my Monthly Budget Worksheet.

I use a fresh Monthly Budget Worksheet every month to replace the one I used last month in my Financial Goal Planner.

Take a minute to sit down and compare the actual expenses versus what you had in your budget. This will show you where you did well and where you may need to improve. You should not let a month pass without reviewing your budget.

Remember, you’re not going to get your budget perfect the first time and it will take adjustments to find a perfect system for you.

Make An Action Plan

Now that you have your financial goals and budget made, you can use your Financial Goal Planner to make an action plan.

No matter what your goals are, it’s very important that you take action and do something every day that moves you closer to achieving your dreams. So start by planning your month, week, and day.

The Financial Goal Planner has undated calendars for each month so you can have a general overview of things you need to do that month.

It also has a Monthly Bill Payment Calendar. This allows you to see all your upcoming bills for the month at a glance. 

Budget Organization Monthly Calendar
An example of my Monthly Bill Payment Calendar so I can see all my bills coming up.

Next, I recommend you use the Birthdays and Special Days tracker, so you can properly prepare for irregular expenses that come up once or only a few times a year. Simply plug in those dates when you replace your Monthly Bill Payment Calendar every month.

My Birthdays and Special Days tracker reminds me of all the holidays and celebrations I need to plan for.

Next, I have my weekly and daily planner to make sure I’m taking action steps towards my financial goals every day.

I like to use the task blocking strategy because I find I’m more productive that way. Task blocking is when you batch similar tasks together.

Here’s how you task block:

  • Make a list of all the tasks you need to accomplish
  • Color-code all your similar activities.
  • Group all your tasks logically by their function or locations.

For example, in the picture above, I color-code my tasks based on personal tasks (yellow), work tasks (pink), and blog tasks (purple).

Here’s an example of what it looks like once I plug my tasks into my Weekly Planner printable.

Using the weekly and daily planner makes sure I stay productive and work towards my goals every day.

Finally, at the end of every month and every year I take a moment to look back and reflect on my progress. This helps me understand what went well, and what areas I still need to improve on.

I have a Monthly Financial Goals Reflection and Yearly Financial Goals Reflection worksheet in the Financial Goal Planner to help you get clear on how your previous month and year went.

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Summary

A financial goal planner will allow you to be more successful with your money than if you didn’t plan.  Making a plan also allows you to have more control of your money, and helps you get closer to your financial goals quicker.

By planning and taking actions to accomplish your financial goals, you will see that you will be in a better place financially and have more money. For those reasons, I recommend you invest in a financial goal planner today.

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