A Wish is a Goal Unfulfilled

So many people spend their lives “wishing” for things, instead of planning for them. Eleanor Roosevelt was quoted as saying,

If you wish you had more money – plan for it. Set measurable and attainable financial goals and develop a plan to reach it. You can't say “I wish I had more money”, because you can't measure your success and you won't know when you've reached it. If you say “I'm going to increase my income by $5,000 this year,” that is a financial goal that is specific, attainable, and measurable. You either make $5,000 more than you did last year or you don't.

Turning your wishes into reality is a matter of changing it from being too broad “I wish I had money in savings,” to goals that are specific, and therefore, measurable. “I will save $65 from every pay check in my money market fund.” Not only is it specific and measurable, but in order to see your wish become reality you need to be realistic. It's no good to say you'll save 80% of your paycheck each week if your expenses use up 50% of your income on a weekly basis, because you're just setting yourself up for failure trying to do something that's impossible.

Setting realistic, measurable, short term goals helps build your confidence to succeed, and motivates you to keep working toward the goal, too. For example, if you plan to save $65 from every weekly paycheck, at the end of each month that you stick to the plan you'll see an extra $260 in your savings account of choice. Do that for a period of one year, and you'll see your savings account increase by over $3100 annually, not counting the interest earned.

Turn your wishes into goals and instead of “wishing”, spend the time planning to turn it into reality.