Finance Roll

I believe it's true that with NO financial goals you're likely to achieve just that: NOTHING! I've got some ideas on this subject that could help you to not only conserve and save money, and consequently help the status of your family and household budget, but also help you to achieve some major family financial goals.

This is just one of a number of financial strategies that I'll be rolling out for you that should help you learn how to budget just a little better and help your personal finance picture improve. Good goals for us all!

What matters most to you and the other members in your family? Do you really know, for sure? Gather the entire family in one place and, together, make a list of the ten most important accomplishments, purchases, experiences, vacations, whatever, that your family wants to achieve. Rank these ten items in order of importance, using numbers one through ten, with number one being the first that everyone wants to see happen.

Everyone then gets a minute or two to describe, out loud, what it looks and feels like to them when the family reaches that goal. The purpose of this part of the exercise is to help everyone visually see what the family wants to achieve so they'll all really possess and feel a "burning why" for the collective family decision to budget and save for these goals. Don't leave this step out.

Break these financial desires into short-term, intermediate, and long-term goals -- some will take longer than others to achieve. Then determine the specific action steps necessary to reach each of those goals, along with deadlines for each action. Track your actions, checking them off one by one in weekly family meetings, as you work toward these goals.

Seeing and recognizing your accomplishments, the steps you've all made toward these family goals, will help motivate the entire family to continue working hard at saving. If you set a short-term goal of saving for tickets to the symphony and reach that goal, you'll all feel encouraged to keep saving for your joint family intermediate and long-term goals.

Remember, as mentioned previously, to set deadlines for the specific action steps necessary to reach your goals. Don't set deadline dates for the goals themselves -- that very often leads to failure and to goals that just get dropped and forgotten over time.

Finally, there is really NO plan until you write it down. When a person goes into business, they create a business plan which becomes the blueprint of their business. The same principle applies to budgeting and saving money. Create a master family plan that includes everything you've decided together to work toward. And keep those written plans updated as you all jointly reach and achieve the steps toward each goal.

Be sure to encourage each family member to contribute toward determining these family financial goals. This will result in each member "owning" those goals and working hard to make them happen. After all, those goals now belong to each member of the family because each person contributed to the creation of those goals.

If it seems that the family is spending too much on a weekly or monthly basis and that you're not moving quickly enough toward reaching your big financial goals, go back and look at your plan to see where you went off track and figure out how to fix it. Then make the necessary changes and move closer to that goal. Constant course corrections are necessary in budgeting, just as in flying to the moon or sailing a boat across the bay.

Follow these family financial goals guidelines and you'll find your family achieving and experiencing more than you could possibly have imagined. The jointly imagined and created family experiences will bring precious and long-term memories for everyone.

I hope these ideas have put you on the right track to considering small things that you can do, which can add up to big amounts, to improve your personal finances and help to protect your precious family financial resources!