Part 1: Set Your Financial Independence Goals

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When you start your journey to financial independence there’s a lot to consider and go through. There might be many new things you’ll end up learning about or just points you had never really thought about before.

To avoid you feeling overwhelmed and to provide some structure to your path to FI, I’ve divided the many topics into 10 smaller parts, to help you get started on your journey to Financial Independence.

Part 1: Set your Financial Independence Goals

Before you set out on any new adventure, it’s often helpful to take a step back and think about why you are embarking on that new mission. What are you trying to achieve?  What aspects of your current situation are you not as content with and would you like to change? How would your life change for the better? Once you know why you are starting  this new journey, it’ll work as a motivator to get back on track anytime you find yourself veering away from it.

Once you know your reason, it is equally important to define what your new situation would look like when you get there. What is your end goal? What are some of the milestones that you would need to achieve before reaching that final destination?

It often helps to state your objectives as clearly as possible and to visualise exactly what that would look like. Instead of thinking you would like to have more money, define why you want that money, how much you want, what you would do with it and picture what your life would look like.

Here is an example of what that might be:

“I want to have more money so I can spend more time with my family being outdoors. In particular, would need X amount of money to buy a small condo in the mountains. During holidays and for long weekends we can just drive up to our second house and enjoy our time together out in nature.”

Lastly, an important aspect of part 1 of your journey is keeping track of your progress to financial independence and motivating yourself to stick to your targets. You can do this by creating a vision board with your goals, by creating a tracker of your progress as well as by celebrating each time you reach one of your smaller milestones along the way.

Find some time today to look at the questions and guidelines above and then note down some of your answers to them to get you started on your path to Financial Independence!

The above is an adaptation of part 1 of the 10 parts in the guidebook to Financial Independence: 100 Steps to Financial Independence: The Definitive Roadmap to Achieving Your Financial Dreams where you can find more details as well as action plans and guidelines to each of the 10 parts. Available in both ebook and paperback format!

Coming up next: Part 2 of the Journey to Financial Independence: Define your Starting Points