In the financial blogging space, many new bloggers set their financial goals as achieving their first 100K by the age of XX. This age is getting younger from 30 to 28 to even below 25. Many years back, I also set this similar goal and achieved it at the age of 28.
Something miraculous happens when we start to set goals. When you set a goal, your brain first evaluates the goal and start to plan how to reach there. Somehow or another, you'll realise if you're focused on your goals, your subconscious mind will think of new ideas and strategies to achieve it. When I was a secondary 4 student about to take my O levels, the school sent us on a motivational camp in a spur to help us achieve better results. I was from a neighborhood school (which surprisingly is no longer there now due to school merger in a short 10+ years), my results were average and often failed in many of my subjects. The worse thing is while I failed some of my subjects, I sometimes could still be the top 5 in my class. That's how bad all my classmates results were too.
I had low self confidence and didn't think I would achieve much in life, same for the friends around me who are all just happy with average results. We didn't even think if we would have a future.
During the motivational camp, the instructor asked everyone what all of us want to do for our future. He specifically went round each one of us to ask what's our ambition. One by one, each of us shared what we wanted to do. There are people who say they want to be admin staff, teachers, security officers, police officers etc.. Each one of the ambition, he challenged us to aim higher. For example, when someone says he wants to be a security officer, then he'll say why not you aim to be a security supervisor. When it was my turn, I said I just want to be a technician. He looked at me and said, "why not an engineer?" This sentenced changed the way I think. It triggered a response in my brain to think higher. Eventually, I passed all my subjects and went on to be an engineer for 6 years. I may have been just a technician if not for that challenge.
The key to success is opening up our minds to greater things. If you've watched Bling Empire on Netflix, you'll realise the 2nd generation kids, who have rich and successful parents, are also very good in earning money themselves. They have seen their parents make a lot of money and believed they too could make a lot of money themselves. On the contrary, a child from a poor family may be limited by their thinking as they see their parents struggling to make ends meets. They would think they can only make a limited amount of money in life. But, the good news is this can be changed by changing the way we think and conditioning our mind to see greater things.
Failure is not when we set too high goals and can't achieve it but it is when we set too low goals and achieve it. This phrase changed the way I think into believing greater things. Setting higher goals can really propel us to reach it even if it seems impossible.
How To Set Goals To Achieve What You Want?
1. Think about what you want to achieve
This first step may seem like common sense but it is critical as this is the stage you should open up your mind and imagine the impossible. There are many advise out there which recommend setting realistic goals but this will again limit our minds.
If you want to set a goal to achieve $1 Million in your 40s, put this in your mind first and don't think about how it is impossible or how tough it is to achieve it. Just put in on paper first and start imagining the possibilities.
2. Make your mind believe it can happen
When you set a goal and make your mind believe it can happen, your subconscious mind will start to think of ways to achieve it. The best way to make your mind believe it can happen is to look at other real life people who have done it before. Source from the internet those who have become millionaires at a young age and this will make your mind believe it is possible as others have done it before.
3. Set milestones to know you are on track
The next crucial step is to set in between milestones so that you can review every 3-5 years to see if you are on track. Setting a goal of 1 Million by your 40s can have $100K, $300K, $500K in your 20s, 30s as milestones. For example, you can set $100K by age 28, $300K by age 33, $500K by age 38 before hitting $1 Million in your 40s. This is just an example of financial goals setting but the same principle can be applied for any other personal goals which you can to achieve. If you want to be healthier, you can set a goal to lose 10kg in 5 years and achieve 2kg in year 2, 5kg in year 3, 7kg in year 4.
4. Make it specific to visualise how it can be achieved
Achieving goals now lies in the details of the specific ways to achieve it. Let's go back to the example of achieving $1 Million in your 40s. You'll need to know exactly how much income, how much you need to save and invest to actually reach this target. Without this visualisation, you will not know what to do. If you look at my financial goals, I break it down into specifics of how much income I should be earning, how much I can spend, how much I should save and how much investment returns I should be getting.
Once you write down the specifics, for example, earning $5K income, your subconscious mind will think of ways to achieve it and go along that path. In the midst of your journey, your mind will let you know which is realistic and which is not. For example, if you put an investment return of 15%, then along the way you may realise that it is not sustainable and focus on earning more income or controlling some spending instead which is more attainable. Your specific steps on how to achieve your goals will change along the way and that's ok because your end goal is still the same, just the strategy changed.
Setting a goal of $100K annual dividends. Is it achievable?
I now have a dividend income target set for myself below. The dividend income goal should reach $60,000 per year, equivalent to $5000 per month when I reach the age of 50. If I continue working till my 60s, I would be able to achieve a more than $100K dividend income. Is this achievable? Yes it is as I've seen many people who have achieved it and I've also put it in a spreadsheet on how much I need to earn, how much I can spend and how much investment returns I need to get to achieve it. The dividend yield is based on 5% to achieve what I have set out below.
