Sample Goals - Financial "Easy" Goals

Earlier I wrote a post about my new body/exercise goal setting philosophy.

I'm happy with it so far, about a week into the process. I can't guarantee it will work long term or for anyone else. Right now it seems to be much more manageable than the high-pressure goals I'd set in the past. List-making is fun for me, you see, and I oftentimes get so involved in making a great list that I forget that I'm the one that has to check everything off of it! Whether it's a to-do list or a goal list or a marketing project, I'm often over ambitious and get burnt out or discouraged too quickly.

Here is my rough draft of the financial goals. This fits the first two parts of my new goal philosophy. I'm setting a large number of goals, many of which are easy to checkoff even though they are important.

"Easy" Goals:

These goals are ongoing that I can check off monthly:

- Pay each bill on time.

We do this anyway so it's one of the "freebie" checkoffs. Yet, if we didn't do it, then financial disaster would occur.

- Track bill paid date and bill amount in spreadsheet.

An easy step, barely takes any time since I pay all bills via computer anyway. I also have my excel spreadsheets already set up. I'm not happy with them yet but I can track what's been paid and what's coming up fairly easily. (Haven't switched to Quicken yet... maybe in July once I see how busy I'll be.)

Goals that I can set on a weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis that are also easy:

- Call (Service Provider) and ask what discounts are available.

Variations of this goal would be, "Shop for auto insurance and find the best deal," "call credit card company and ask for lower interest rate," and even, "look online and check for rebates on recent purchases." I obviously can't call Comcast or Chase once a week to ask for a discount, but I can call each of them once every six months or so. We saved hundreds of dollars by doing this recently and it took me less than three hours to do so.

- Review Credit Report.

I could do this three times a year for free. Checking for inaccurate information is very important. If I track who I asked for a report for an when I can do this indefinitely and easily at no cost to me.