The Ultimate Guide to Setting and Achieving your 2024 Money Goals

In the wake of challenging times, as we transition into the new year, it's important to reflect on our experiences and find inspiration to set meaningful goals. Whether you're facing lingering financial repercussions from the past year or adapting to a new chapter in your life, 2024 offers a fresh start to redefine and achieve your financial aspirations.

In this ultimate guide, we'll explore how to create purposeful money goals across various aspects of your life and provide a roadmap to accomplish them.

1. Reflect on Your Dreams and Aspirations:

Before diving into financial specifics, take a moment to envision the life you desire. Money should serve as a means to achieve your broader goals rather than an end itself. Your aspirations are unique to you, whether it's achieving financial independence early, creating lasting family memories, or pursuing a passion. Jot down your dreams to lay the foundation for personalized financial goals in 2024.

Read this blog post for a step-by-step guide on setting personal goals for 2024 - Design Your Life Day 2

Personal Finance Goals Categories:

Consider different facets of your life when outlining your financial goals:

Career and Education:

Think about your current position and compare it to where you would like to be. Here are some considerations to get your goal-setting started:

• Do you enjoy your current company and perhaps want to advance internally?

• Do you want to switch career paths entirely? Does the new path require formal education? What kind of funding will you need for formal education?

• Do you want to gain more skills? Is there a mentor or a program that could help you with this?

• Do you want to start your own business?

Each goal has varying levels of effort that will be required. Asking someone to mentor you is vastly different from starting a 4-year degree program. But whatever is needed, you can absolutely get started on accomplishing your goals in 2024.

Budgeting & Saving:

If you don’t have a sustainable budget and method of tracking your expenses, 2023 could be the perfect time to get these systems in place! A budget will help keep your spending in check and reach your short, medium, and long-term savings goals.

Examples of budgeting techniques include the 50/30/20 method, the pay-your-self-first method, the envelope system, zero-based budgeting, and more!

Whichever method you choose, try to stick to it for a couple of months. It can take time to adjust and it often takes practice and endurance to grow in financial diligence. Having a budget can help you accomplish different savings goals.

Short-term (0-5 years) savings goal examples: starting a business, home renovations, car, wedding, vacation, debt payoff, or a fully funded emergency fund.

Medium-term (6-10 years) savings goal examples: child’s university education, down payment on a house, anything from the short-term list that might be longer than 5 years.

Long-term (10+ years) savings goal examples: retirement fund, paying off your bond, buying a second home.

All of your savings goals should be prioritized and updated, as needed. Life happens and your plan won’t always go as expected, but it’s important to have your goals in place as a roadmap.

Investing:

Investing goals can be short or long-term and they can help you reach your savings goals and grow your portfolio.

Debt:

Debt weighs both you and your budget down. Consider setting up a debt repayment goal for 2024. List all of your debt and choose a repayment strategy.

Some debt repayment strategies include:

• Debt snowball: paying debts off in order from the smallest principle to the largest.

• Cash flow index method: paying off debts that impact your cash flow the most.

• Debt avalanche: paying debts off in order from debt with the highest interest rate to the smallest interest rate.

Choose one of these strategies and get your finances on track for financial freedom.

Giving:

Giving can have a major impact on our career advancement and money management. The simple act of giving to others increases our happiness, which increases our confidence, overall work performance, and entrepreneurial drive.

Determine how much money you currently give away - percentage or dollar/rand amount - and see if it’s in alignment with your giving goals. If you’d like to give more - and it’s in the budget - think of the charities, causes, etc. that you’d like to give to and the impact your donation will have.

Money Mindset:

Maybe your biggest financial goal doesn’t have a dollar amount attached to it whatsoever. Maybe your money mindset needs some improvement.

Your money mindset is comprised of the attitudes you have surrounding money. These core beliefs are often developed in our childhood and affect the way we spend, save, handle debt, and more.

If you’re unhappy with your money mindset - maybe you’re a penny pincher scared to give any money away or maybe you can’t seem to stop spending your entire paycheck - set a money mindset goal.

To get started, discover your current money mindset and dive into your fears, triggers, and habits surrounding money. Use the Free Family Money Tree Download that I have created to assist you to discover your current limiting beliefs, habits and thoughts around money.

DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE FAMILY MONEY TREE HERE

Our Five Day Money Mindset Cleanse will help you redefine your money mindset patterns.

- Click here to get it.

Serious about changing your money thoughts and patters , get our 48 Hour Personal Finance Makeover - Click here to get it

How to Accomplish Your 2024 Money Goals

Now that you have your list of money goals, it’s time to make a plan to achieve them. You’ve probably heard of the acronym S.M.A.R.T before. It stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely. This is an excellent method to apply to your 2024 money goals.

Specific: From the list above, pull out your goals and make them as specific as possible. For example, don’t just put “invest more”. Instead try, “I want to increase what I put in my company 401(k)/retirement annuity by 10% every paycheck and invest 5% of my monthly income to a brokerage/savings account to save for my 10th wedding anniversary trip.”

Measurable: This aspect of SMART goals should be pretty easy when it comes to financial goals because most goals will have percentages or dollar/rand amounts associated with them. Using the example from above, you could check in with yourself in 3 months to ensure the 10% and 5% are still flowing into your investment accounts and that it’s sustainable.

Achievable: Speaking of sustainability, you want to make sure your goals are achievable given your income, lifestyle, cost of living, and other factors. If you have 4 mouths to feed, it’s probably not achievable to invest 90% of your income. You can still set goals that make you stretch or even make you a little uncomfortable but don’t be unrealistic.

Relevant: Make sure your money and financial goals are relevant to your life. Don’t set goals that don’t apply or belong to different areas of your life.

Timely: Assign a deadline to each of your financial goals, with smaller deadlines along the way. For example, “I want to be in a new career field by the end of 2024.” Smaller deadlines could include, “By the end of March, I will have completed 2 relevant online courses” and “By the end of September, I will have applied to 3 companies in the new field.”

Some other tips that will help you accomplish your 2024 money goals include:

Visualizing: Imagine your first Monday as an entrepreneur. Picture yourself on the beach with your spouse celebrating a milestone anniversary. Or visualize your retirement full of freedom and time with loved ones. Whatever your goal is, visualize it! This will help you stay motivated and remember what you’re working towards.

Automate: Set it and forget it! Consider automating savings, investing, and debt payments.

Get inspired: Read books and listen to podcasts to get educated and inspired.

Don’t do it alone: A financial coach can provide you with the necessary tools and encouragement to reach your financial goals. Their expertise and experience can offer you judgment-free advice, clear action steps, security, peace of mind, confidence, education, and accountability

As you embark on your journey to achieve financial success in 2024, remember that every goal is achievable with thoughtful planning and dedication. Visualize your dreams, automate your actions, stay inspired, and don't hesitate to seek professional guidance if needed.

HM Accounting is here to support you in reaching your goals and creating a prosperous future. For personalized assistance, schedule a free 30-minute Discovery Call with Humairaa at admin@hmaccounting.online or click here to schedule directly - click here. Let's make 2024 the year you turn your financial dreams into reality!

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