How to Set (and Reach!) Your Big Financial Goals

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Learn how to create goals to achieve your big financial goals while avoiding burnout!

Knocking Out Your Big Financial Goals

When we started this mini-series last week about rebooting your money, I talked about how to hit those goals you have to change things up a bit.

Karen Cordaway went over how we could reframe things around the quality of our lives.

It’s not paying off debt, it’s about having money to travel more. You’re not just saving money in the bank, you’re giving yourself a building a sizable downpayment to buy a house.

This can be a powerful way to motivate yourself.

There’s another side to that puzzle – creating the goals themselves.

Since most people don’t achieve those big results that they hope for, is there a way to make them work for you so that you do make them happen?

I think so.

I believe there’s a way to achieve those ambitious goals without burning out.

And I think Joseph Hogue is the perfect person to break it down.

Since I met Joseph at a conference a few years ago, I’ve seen how well he’s done with following through on his plans and goals.

So I thought having him break down his approach would be helpful.

In this episode, we’ll discuss:

• Creating goals that fit your season so you’re not burnt out
• Avoiding the yo-yo diet cycle with your finances
• Uses challenges to grab big wins

Hope you enjoy!

Joseph Hogue

Joseph Hogue worked in private wealth management and venture capital for more than a decade before freelancing as an investment analyst.

He now teaches regular people how to beat debt, make more money side-hustling and invest with his popular YouTube Channel Let's Talk Money.

He's also an author of several books including Step by Step Investing.

As mentioned on the show, Joseph's created two really handy calculators –

• Credit card interest calculator – How long will it take to pay off that debt?
• Retirement income calculator – Are you saving enough?

Mama Talk Money Summit

Speaking of hitting those money goals, next week we’re talking about a special event that I’m a part of to help you do just that – Mama Talk Money Summit.

Chelsea Brennan from Smart Money Mamas has put everything together.

For 5 WHOLE days, the Mamas Talk Money Summit is bringing you presentations from over 40 incredibly financially savvy mamas who have TONS of valuable advice to share with you all about finding your financial swagger, raising kids who are money masters, and connecting with a tribe of moms who are getting smart with their money.

We’re talking all about:

• Family Finance
• Investing, Retirement & Estate Planning
• Career & Business
• Teaching Kids About Money

And much more!

So whether you’re trying to knock that credit debt, get some savings stashed away, or are looking to invest for long term goals, this summit will have at least a few sessions that can help you make it happen.

Along with the session, there will be a live Q&A with each speaker.

For example, for my session – Dump Debt Together (When You Can’t Agree How) – I'll be online in the chat so you can ask me questions while watching it.

It’s all online and you can register and watch the sessions for FREE!

This was an important point for me because I know we’re all at different points in our financial journey, so having it be free to register was one of the reasons I wanted to join in.

The event is happening on October 21st through the 25th.

Now what I love with how Chelsea is putting this together, is that she has some fun giveaways and prizes along with the summit.

There will be over $15,000 in giveaways of money tools, courses, swag, and gifts for moms throughout the event!

So you not only can catch the most useful sessions to help you knock out your big money goal, but you can also pick up some fantastic and helpful prizes.

I hope you’ll join me and other mamas. Just make sure you grab your FREE ticket by signing up here!

Resources to Hit Your Money Goals

If you two are looking to improve how you talk and work together with your finances (and lives), please check out these resources.

• Best Budget and Money Apps: Personal Capital, Tiller, Mint, Zeta
• Jumpstart Your Marriage and Your Money
• Grow Your Stash Faster: High Yield Savings with CiT Bank
• Automatic Saving: Qapital
• Free 401(k) Analysis: blooom
• Why Most People Fail with Their Goals (And How You Can Win!)

If you want to discuss talking with your spouse about money, ask questions, or share your own tips please join us over at Thriving Families on Facebook.

One Reason Goals Fail

Elle Martinez: Time and again at the beginning of the year, people make their they make their goals for the year, and the reality is most people don't reach them.

I've seen numbers as low as less than 10 percent of those goals are actually kept. I know a lot of times it starts at the beginning, which is the goals themselves, how people beat them and make them.

I hear smart goals all the time. I've even talked about them. Do you think they make a real difference?

Joseph Hogue: Well, I think I think it's a good place to start. You know, that that whole smart analogy, because. But that's really just the process of putting your goals together.

I mean, that's not that's not going to help you actually stick with your goals and some of the other things that are going to factor into into your success.

While I love going through that list of the s.m a.r.t and and really creating those goals, there's there's some other things that are going to really hinge on on how successful you are.

One thing and one thing that I learned tragically on my own is it's not enough to create goals. You have to create realistic goals.

Actually, my first professional job right out of college and in after the Marine Corps, you know, I hated my job, hated it with a passion.

And so all I could think about was that retire, that early retirement and that was my one main goal was saving every penny I could.

I worked I had a real estate rental portfolio at the time, so I worked that I also had a part-time job at times.

Avoiding Burn Out with Your Goals

Joseph Hogue: And I was saving every penny for that one goal. And it just wasn't realistic. What would happen is I would get so burned out on just working and saving and not enjoying my money or really my life.

Then I was in the I guess I was in the financial equivalent of yo-yo dieting. Right. Every every six months I would just burn out and just spend half or more of what I had saved.

So it was almost kind of like two steps forward, one step back kind of idea. And I didn't even know what was happening. It actually took a friend, kind of a financial buddy, so to speak, to really tell me, hey, what are you doing? You know, I see you go through this cycle every six months or so and this is what's happening.

I couldn't even see it. And so, yeah, I learned that it just can't be goals that have to be realistic goals. What can you really do without burning out, without creating some of these other money problems?

Elle Martinez: Yes. You know, that's fascinating because we've met a few times at conferences. And you strike me as someone who's very organized and like the projects you had listed. I think you had a sheet and it was like this guy knows exactly what he wants to do. And I'm kind of curious, have you always been like that or has it been a process?

Joseph Hogue: I think that's it's been a development. I think certainly, you know, I've always been kind of that type a person that, you know, hard-charging.

I think the Marine Corps brought a lot of it out of me, a lot of that organization and that discipline. But even after that, like I said, I fell into a lot of these money problems that that is really hard to see ourselves committing.

But other people, it's sometimes painfully obvious to our friends and the people around us. But no, you know, I have always been a little organized and maybe a little angel in that in that respect.

Giving Yourself a Worthy Challenge

Elle Martinez: I do appreciate that, because sometimes, you know, you talk to different people when they say smart goal, they like the idea, but they change the realistic.

They want to make someone have like this ambitious goal. But I think you're a good example that if you can be honest with yourself, like, say, if you're a major spender eating out, you shouldn't really look at. I eat out five hundred six hundred a month. Let's go. Cut it down to zero. Exactly. That's a lesson in frustration.

So like, for example, if we took that example of someone who is a hard core spender. Where would you kind of have them start off with?

Would be really small, like maybe save a hundred or would it be like just enough of a challenge where maybe they're saving 50?

Joseph Hogue: Well, and you said the magic word right there. Challenge. You know, I think one of my favorite spending tools is a spending challenge. You know, is taking just one thing from your budget and cutting it out, either cutting it out for a month, maybe two months, or just cutting it down dramatically.

And that gets back to those the smart goals that timing. You know, it doesn't have to be forever. And I think, you know, right around New Year's here, everybody is talking about their New Year's resolutions and they're typically goals that are OK from now on or, you know, we're going to pay off all our debt. Well, that's really hard to do and it's really hard to keep to those find it. Those New Year's resolutions.

So I think if you make your goals a month, make them two months or even three months at the longest. Make them. I'd recommend more like two months, two and a half months.

Just make short term goals. And just so get on a spending challenge where you cut one thing out of your budget each month or cut it down dramatically.

First of all, you've got light at the end of the tunnel already. You know, you're only doing it for two, two and half months. And you're going to. You're going to start seeing things that really don't make you any happier by with all your spending.

You know, you're really not going to be happier going out to eat all the time or some of the other frivolous things you spend on sort of spending challenges or are just enough to help you cut your budget back. But it's not like going cold turkey on everything all at once. Plus, you know, you go back yet you're good, you're good. You work through your two months or you're three months and maybe you spend a little bit more on that. Maybe you don't challenge yourself quite as much on that one budget item.

That's coincidentally that's just happened to be how long it takes to build good habits. It's usually eight to twelve weeks, they say. So by taking the spending challenge, you've started creating those good habits that are going to carry through after that goal.

Taking Money Challenges

Joseph Hogue: Yeah. That's fantastic. I'm also a fan of monthly challenges because I feel the same way. I'm like, you can do anything for a month or two, you know? And it allows you to kind of step outside your routine and see what works and what doesn't.

And, you know, you can do the challenge again. There's always like later on down the year, you know, down the line what we'll do the challenge again or mix it up and understand that you know, spending challenges, they don't necessarily always have to be stop spending on one thing.

It can be spending it maybe a little bit differently. Maybe instead of eating out, you start you figure out ways to have, you know, public picnics or some other types of some other ways to eat out or enjoy that family time without going to a traditional restaurant. That's gonna be one hundred bucks a pop.

Handy Money Tools

Elle Martinez: Yeah. Yeah, very true. So I love that this idea of monthly challenges.

Are there any other resources people could use to maybe track their goals and their progress that you've seen that either work for you or people in your community?

Joseph Hogue: Sure. Well, you know, I'm an old school Excel spreadsheets kind of guy. I am from my work as an equity analyst than, you know, my life was creating spreadsheets. So that's always been something that I've used.

It doesn't have to be complicated, basically. Just writing, just taking it, taking note of your expenses each month and going back five or six months, or tracking them for five or six months to make sure you get those irregular expenses.

I think where a lot of people go wrong in budgeting and in saving and in some of these goals is they don't budget for those irregular expenses, those you know, that marriage, those weddings, those birthday parties when the car breaks down. So these emergency or irregular expenses kinds of sneak up on them and they just destroy a budget.

Well, you know, it's kind of disappointing when that happens. So a lot of people that they'll see this and they'll just kind of give up on their goals. They'll think, oh, you know, I tried, but life got in the way. Well, you kind of has to build life into your goals sometimes. And that helps a lot. So so I'm a big-time Excel guy.

But I understand a lot of people like the apps and the tools that go around. I actually created a credit card interest calculator on my Web site that I love it. It's actually kind of a wakeup call for a lot of people because it shows you you put in how much you owe the average rate on your credit card.

And it's going to show you how much interest you pay a year, how long that's going to take to pay that debt off, which is really the rude awakening. I think a lot of people see is, you know, if you're paying 2 percent or 3 percent a month on that credit card bill, though, you know, or maybe the minimum payment, how long is it gonna take?

Is it going to take those two or three or five years to pay it off? And how much money are you really paying in in interest?

Another app I know a lot of people really like is mint dot com. It's a free, free Web site. You have to be alike a mint. You have to log in and create an account. But it's free to use.

And that really helps you manage some of your debts and plan and budget. And I know personal capital is also a really popular one along around the personal finance space with a lot of the bloggers.

Elle Martinez: Fantastic. Yeah, I've tried a lot of those apps and tools and we too also left spreadsheets. That's our budget.

We do Google Sheets and my husband and I love to go back and forth. And I know a lot of couples. That's. An additional challenge, like when you're single, you have to create these goals. But once you create them, you know, you follow through.

But what if a relationship in a marriage, you guys have two seemingly conflicting goals.

One of you wants to say you feel like, OK, we need a financial cushion. The other one is like, the debt that the credit card debt is killing us. How do you find a compromise? I'm curious, what's your take?

Getting Your Spouse Excited About Money Goals

Joseph Hogue: And my heart goes out to people that are in that situation because it's it's tough. You have to find that that middle ground and those shared goals.

You know, I like to think of everybody. They need to start with not just their goals, but the reason for those goals.

I think it's so much easier if you come together and you talk about the future and what you want to do and what your life is going to be like.

Not necessarily just know what you want to do, but what you're going to experience when you get there. So you make those that future real.

And in doing that, you're going to make those goals real. And then it's I don't want to say simple, but. But it's a simple process working, you know, working to those goals.

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Music Credit

Like the music in this episode? Our theme song is by Gentle Regime. Additional music by Lee Rosevere