How often do you reevaluate your financial goals?

Maybe I should start by asking, have you set some financial goals?

Setting financial goals is honestly one of the biggest reasons I’m doing so ok.

Name it and claim it, right?

(Goal setting wise – not theology wise, prosperity gospels are nonsense.)

But for real, the stage manager in me is good at getting stuff done and checking off items on to do lists. Even if that item is something that seemed insane when I wrote it down, like crack $100,000 in net worth.

That number might seem laughably low to a few of you and impossibly high to others, but there are a lot of studies done on wealthy people that cracking the first $100,000 in growing your net worth is one of the most difficult financial goals to hit.

And to be clear, it wasn’t the first financial goal I started with.

I had two goals when I first started this blog (nearly 7 years ago). Max out my Roth IRA and add $1,000 to my emergency savings account. Roth IRA limits were a little lower then (I want to say $5,000 a year). $6,000 was nothing for me to sneeze at while I was finishing paying off my student debt and only making like $34,000 a year.

But, like I mentioned, I like to cross things off to-do lists. And I was a fairly motivated hustler as I mystery shopped my way around America while living on a circus train.

And I managed to cross off those goals.

And they sucked. I can actually vividly remember how much it sucked trying to come up with that money, while making student loan payments, and still trying to live my life. I honestly think that one of the few reasons I was successful was that my job was so insane and ridiculous that I had almost no free time to spend money.

My saving/spending balance was way out of whack that year – and the year following it – to such an extend that I probably should have spent a little more to be a little happier.

However, if you have it in you to go hard for a while, I do think you can reap some big benefits from it. I think if you just go to your breaking point once or twice in your life, you can supercharge some savings and investments – if you do it while you’re young enough.

So. Yay for making it through that season of misery.

After those years, I wasn’t making any more student loan payments and was able to hit those financial goals without any pain and I hit my final goal amount on my emergency savings.

So I did what any reasonable masochist would do. I increased my financial goals.

I added a goal of saving a few thousand dollars a year for a house down payment and about two thousand a year for a new car.

When I was able to hit all those goals, I learned about Health Savings Accounts and made maxing that out a goal too.

And then, when I was in a really solid financial position a few years ago, I made maxing out my 401(k) a goal, in addition to all those others.

The main thing is – I wrote them all down. Specifically.

Not: I’ll put some money aside for a down payment.

I evaluated what I thought I’d make that year and set a real goal: I’ll put $5,000 toward a down payment this year.

And you want to know a cool thing about emergency savings, saving for a new car, or even a house? Eventually you reach the goal. And you’ve been a badass saver for so long, that you think – well what now with this extra money?

Invest, ya’ll. Get yourself a brokerage account.

On high income years, one of my goals is also a very set amount (usually $1,000 or $2,000) into a brokerage account too.

See, the thing is, if you’ve come on this journey from broke to rich with me, you reach this pretty cool point where you actually have disciplined your saving and investing muscles pretty well and you find you can put some crazy stuff on your financial goals list – and then actually achieve it.

And the nice thing is, even if life throws you a curveball and you don’t cross everything off your list (it has happened to me – numerous years), you’re still further ahead than you would’ve been if you hadn’t gotten started.