Ignore the Hype

Chapter 5You Must Have a Specific Financial Goal

In order to achieve financial success, you need to begin with the end in mind. And the more precisely you can define what that end looks like, the more likely you are to reach your desired outcome. Once you've crystalized your financial goal, you need to plot out the necessary steps to achieve that success and consider how each of the steps you take will impact other facets of your finances. Finally, you need to put your plan into action, and adjust as appropriate over the course of your working career and retirement. Get all this right and you can achieve victory, in the form of a successful and prosperous financial future. But fail at any of those tasks, and your future may not look so bright.

Success begins with planning, so this is the part of the book where I sound like an annoying teacher as I remind you, “Failing to plan is planning to fail.” Yes, I realize that you've probably heard something similar before. And yes, the concept is self-evident. And yet, when it comes to their finances, the vast majority of individuals fail to plan appropriately.

Think about that for a moment. Almost no one you know would head out on a summer road trip without at least some sort of planning in place. At the very least, people usually have a destination in mind! Not to mention a map or GPS to tell them how to get where they want to go. And they usually have a general sense of how long it will take them to reach their destination, and what ...