Goals Without Deadlines Are Just Dreams

Business author Harvey MacKay often quoted that “A dream is just a dream.  A goal is a dream with a plan and a deadline.”

Artist Pablo Picasso followed up on that by quoting “Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act.  There is no other route to success.”

We all have dreams and many of us have goals even though we may not realize that we have them.  Life mandates deadlines on us without discrimination.  Retirement age, life expectancy, children’s and grandchildren’s births, the start of college, weddings, and the list goes on and on.   We should all begin to think of these goals as liabilities to be funded by investment assets.  In fact, investment assets exist solely to fund our goals.

We spend a great deal of time managing our investments.   Doesn’t it make sense that our goals should be managed as well?  They should be measured and tracked for adequate time and funding.  This creates a sort of Household Balance Sheet which can be managed over one’s lifetime.  Investment assets on the left should equal Goals on the right.  Any shortfall is to be corrected by adding more to investments or by decreasing the cost of goals.  Over-funding can result in the increasing of existing goals or the addition of new goals. 

Families should begin to think that financial success is directly related to goal attainment and not to beating some investment index.  You can’t manage what you don’t measure.  A Household Balance Sheet is a great tool to evaluate whether your goal plan is affordable and whether or not you are on track to achieve your goals.

We have successfully used the Household Balance Sheet to assist clients in turning their dreams into goals and the crafting of family financial plans to achieve them.  I would like to make the Household Balance Sheet available to our listeners free of charge in an initial one-hour meeting.  In this meeting, we will discuss your family’s goals and objectives and existing plans for their funding.  The completion of the Household Balance Sheet will allow families to see if they are on track for the successful funding of their goals or if there is a critical shortfall in funding. 

If you and your life savings are being ignored or feeling taken advantage of, come join our family. We are a family-owned financial planning and investment advisory firm who promise to treat you like family. No products. No hard sell. No gimmicks. Just honest advice based on four decades of experience.