Finance Roll

In order to solidify your plans and intentions for a results oriented savings plan in your new life together, you must be willing to go beyond today's insta-matic, microwave, and have it now mindset. If your partner has a tendency to spend like one of the Hilton sisters, even a well defined savings plan can quite frankly be derailed and made non effect.

Since the world economies are delivering major financial blows to families all over the world, you have been given the assignment to do more with less. Now the Jones' would dictate to you that you must be able to get it all now and pay for it later, but this type of spending behavior will likely deliver you to place of utter financial ruin sooner than you can imagine.

Take heart my friend because even though times are hard, you can still save for whatever goals and dreams you have together. You just have to be willing to be more frugal and no frugal is not the same thing as being cheap. You don't have to spend every single coin that rolls in your bank account like most people do. Your brief should the two of you choose to accept it, is to get past the ching a ding ding of the cash register into a place of strong financial security together.

Whatever you do, make sure you incorporate these three key elements in your savings objectives.

1. Savings plans must be realistic - Savings goals should be something that you can actually accomplish. They should not be so highfalutin that you can never achieve them no matter how hard you try. Set your goals to be like steps on a staircase. A little step here and there will eventually get you to the top but it will take a degree of patience and hard work. When you were a baby you had to crawl before you walked. Goals are not achieved with an immature or destructive mentality. You will have to work together until you see what you envision materialize.

2. Consistency is a goal necessity - A goal is something that needs to be carved in stone. You cannot change them every time something new and more exciting crops up. There's nothing wrong with having more than one thing on your list. In fact you should have list and lists of different types of goals that are in every area of your life. A good notebook will help you keep track of your joint goals as well as your individual ones. The more goals you set, the more of them you will achieve. Getting what you want out of life cannot be a guessing game or a mere dream. An item is not a goal until it is written down. But if you never look at your goals after you write them down then your list of goals become only a wish list. Unfortunately, Santa Claus is not going to deliver your goals to you wrapped up in a bow under the Christmas tree and the Easter Bunny is not going to give you a goal crusted magic egg either.

3. Focus on what lies at the end of the road - After we get married we have a tendency to focus on the present with all of the newness and passion and stuff. While you need to focus on the present, you also need to take hold of what's at the top of the staircase of your lives together and go after your targeted goals wholeheartedly. If you do not remain focused, you will look up the stairs years later and see the steps you never even stood on.

Realize that you will arrive at some destination in the future. You must make sure that you arrive where you originally intended. Do you think Bill Gates or Oprah Winfrey got to where they are by just willing things into existence? No, they had a general ideal of what they wanted, I'm sure they wrote it down somewhere and worked on in each and every day until what they envisioned materialized.

Perhaps you are with a partner that does not believe in goals at all. They may believe that you should just take every day as they come and that tomorrow will work itself out over time. I have to tell you that they are partially right? They are right smack dab in the middle of their way to financial ruins and they are taking you along for the ride. With all of the resources available to couples like you today, that would be a crying shame.