Chapter 15: The Mechanics of Goal-Setting

Say your goal is to save $500 a month. Then an unexpected expense comes up, and that month you only manage $400. You still saved $400, but because you missed the number, it feels like it didn't count. If you've been trying to figure out how to reach your financial goals and you keep ending up right there, the fix is in how the goal is set up. Pass/fail thinking is why so many goals fall apart the first time life gets messy. You update your budget every day for a week, miss one day, and you don't restart. You just stop. With Good-Better-Best, you set three goals instead of one. A Good goal is the one you'll hit unless something goes really wrong. A Better goal takes a little extra effort or a little luck. A Best goal feels a bit bonkers when you write it down. You can set these up a few different ways, and you'll hear a couple of examples: saving $400, $650 or $1,000 a month for a vacation, or paying off a debt in 18, 15 or 10 months. Goals also get harder when only one person in the house can see the whole picture. Nina tracked about 14 recurring expenses in a notes app on her phone and carried every what-if in her head. Rob's take was, "I think we're fine, she just worries." Nina summed up what she wanted in five words: "I want to feel comfortable." When they finally saw everything she'd been carrying laid out in front of them, Rob leaned forward and asked, "So we can actually see all of this? It's not that we're bad at this?" From there, you'll hear why saying your goal out loud to someone who cares about you makes it harder to let go of, how to fund your goal on payday before anything else, and why every time you do what you said you'd do, even something small, you trust yourself a little more. What you walk away with is a goal that still counts in a hard month, and the shift from having a goal to being someone who goes after one. SpendFirst comes out November 11 and you can pre-order now.  If you want to see where your goal fits in your next paycheck, Your First SpendFirst Paycheck is a free step-by-step guide to splitting it. Subscribe so you don't miss next Thursday.