Track Your Wealth-Building Goals
Why is it important to track my investment goals?
It's really important to track your investment goals because it's kind of a game - you want to know where you stand. You put all this time and effort into creating this vision for your life, creating the life zones, figuring out what you want to own, accomplish and be, and you direct deposited money into these separate investment accounts. Now it's time to figure out - alright, am I getting closer to reaching my goals? How close am I getting? Do I need to put more money in each month? Maybe the performance of the accounts isn't what I thought it was going to be. As a result, I'm going to be short when I need the money, so I might have to put some more money in. You're only going to be able to answer those questions if you are tracking your investment progress.
How can I track my investments efficiently?
The best way to track your investments and to track how far or how close you are from reaching your goals is to make a financial date with yourself. You need to set a specific time every month with yourself or maybe with your spouse or partner, where you sit down and you open your investment accounts, the statements that you get. Figure out how much money went in - was it the right amount of money that went in, was I credited what I should have been credited, look at how much money I have in the account, and look at the performance. Is it on track or is it not on track? Do I need to put in more money to reach some of these goals? Or maybe you can put in less money to reach some of these goals, if you're actually doing much better then you thought.
What is an investment goal tracker 'report card'?
A goal tracker report card is the simplest, easiest way to know exactly where you stand and how close you are to reaching each of your goals. It's on a single sheet - you fill it out, it takes you less than three minutes, and you will know when you're done completing this for each of your goals, how close you are reaching it in time, and how close you are to reaching it in dollars. Am I 50% of the way there? 60% of the way there? And also, even more importantly, you'll know whether you need to contribute more money or less money depending on the investment success of the account.
What should I do if my investments are not meeting my goals?
Investments fluctuate. They go up, they go down, they go sideways. I wouldn't get so caught up into looking at the day-to-day performance and seeing, "Oh, my account was down today, there's no way I'm going to be able to afford that trip, or afford that house down-payment." You've got to look at the bigger picture, so look at three year performance. Look at one year performance. And if, at the end of one year, or three years, you're still not on track, there's a couple of things you're going to have to do. You can either reduce some of your goals. Maybe instead of saving $10,000 for a house down-payment, you might only be able to save $8,000. You might have to temper some of the goals. Or, conversely, you might have to contribute more money each month to fund the goals.
