The big goals – retirement, saving for a house or for kids’ college – can feel a bit daunting. One human instinct (I can vouch!) can be to just avoid them for now, and figure that perhaps it would be better to deal with them later. I’m sure you can imagine where that goes.

There can be many forms of avoidance. It may be that the goals just feel hopeless, so it seems barely worth trying. Or we could have Peter Pan thinking, believing that we will be young forever and tomorrow will never come. Or perhaps we hope for an inheritance, or just a miracle!

Unfortunately those scenarios are unlikely to work out (see my piece on the inheritance here, btw), so how to actually move forward on the big goals? There are 3 places where I see people get stuck, so these then are the 3 steps to pay attention to:
* first, save.
* Then, once you have your saving moving along, start learning how to invest.
* And once you have that sort of set up, then do your planning.

Notice that in all of these, I have the action step *before* you get everything figured out.

Start saving before you can do it perfectly. Just save something somewhere – start the habit rolling. Same with the investing – this can be a challenging step because there is so much to learn, and it’s really nerve-wracking to watch the stock market go up and down (recently mostly up, but what goes up must come down, so hold onto your hats!) Planning is actually the thing you want to do *after* you have all of this started. It seems backwards, but starting with the action can avoid the analysis-paralysis that comes with thinking too much about how to get it right, and can also get you over the hump of “that’s too big, I can’t take it on” or “tomorrow is a better day”.

So that’s all well and good, but how does one actually do these things?

Here are some concrete actions.

For the saving:
* First, open a designated account for your savings. Even if you are not sure what you are saving for, have a separate account. Time enough to figure out the details later.
* Then, each month, move some money into it. The trick is to do this at the start of the month, rather than seeing how much you have “left over” at the end of the month. There is no such thing as left over money…
* Then once you have done it manually for a couple of months and you see that it is working, automate that transfer so that it will happen without you even thinking about it.

Investing, as I mentioned, is a large subject. This is a good place to get a book and/or get some help. Check out the links for my earlier posts on those. Keep in mind that how you invest will depend on when you need your savings – it’s a different approach if you will need the money in 5 years (for example, a house down-payment or grad school) or in 30 years (retirement).

For the planning, there are a lot of specifics, depending on your goals. Feel free to give me a call if you need some help thinking this through. If we consider just retirement, for example, it can be useful after about age 45 to do a projection and make sure that you are on track for a decent retirement income. For the younger ages, Fidelity (no affiliation) has a really nice chart of retirement savings targets at this link. There are also many other goals that we save for, and for each one the basic approach is to determine the target amount, the timeline, and how to get there.

Consider how you are coming along with your big goals. Are you stuck on any of the steps? – if so, take some time to sit with what is keeping you stuck. If you need help with the emotional side or support with the logistical side, give me a call, I would be happy to help. And then, take the next right step towards your goals. Each time you take a step, they will come closer!

If you have any questions about your own situation, feel free to give me a call. And if you have a friend, relative or colleague who might be interested, please do forward this post.

p.s. Free talk in October

I will be giving a free talk at Davis Community Church on October 10th, live and in person! Please bring your mask and join us if you can. The topic is “How to Secure Your Financial Future”. They also have a Zoom room, so you can attend regardless of where you are.  Details and registration here.