Recently I had a lovely chat with David Koch sharing our top tips for setting financial goals.
In my role as a trusted and independent financial planner, I am lucky enough to have wonderful, thought provoking discussions with all manner of successful and inspirational people.
David Koch recently asked me to be the resident financial planner expert for his Money Makeover program, a full financial overhaul and transformation setting Australians up for financial freedom.
I hope you enjoy our series of discussions.
Transcript of David and Claire’s discussion
David Koch: A mate of mine is Claire Mackay, a financial planning whiz, and was recently gonged Financial Planner of the Year. She helps people set themselves up for the future. I asked her to give us her top tips on how to set challenging, but achievable financial goals.
Independent financial planner Claire Mackay: Be realistic. If it’s the first time you’ve done this, set it so that it’s a stretch, but it’s not Everest, yeah? So having it so that it’s a stretch, it’s a little bit harder, but you can see that you can do it. The second thing is tell everyone. Tell everyone, friends, family that you’ve got this goal and you’re really aiming towards this really important thing because it’s accountability. And the third is write it down. If it’s not written down, it’s actually not a plan at all. You gotta write it down.
David Koch: Hang on, everyone says it’s all up here.
Independent financial planner Claire Mackay: Yeah, no, no. If it’s not written down, how can you then go back and check how close you are to it? If it’s written down, each week or each month, you can go back and say, “Am I close to it? Did I get there 100% for this week? Or was I at 90%?” So writing it down is absolutely critical.
David Koch: If you came to hear more, you can catch our extended chat at the end of this lesson.