Master Plan for Achieving My Financial Goals
I’m going to be financially secure by age 50 (in less than six years). I’m willing to do whatever it takes to make this happen. Last month I created my master plan for achieving this goal, and I’m going to share it here:
Goal
I Will Be Financially Secure By Age Fifty
Start – 01 September 2013
Finish – 20 August 2019
Motive
I will be able to protect my family and enjoy the benefits of financial stability.
My definition of Financial Stability
I will be earning €30,000 (US $39,000) per year, and this will come from my own writing (not writing for clients). I will have no debts, and I will have bought my own house.
How Will I Achieve This Goal
• Reaching financial security before age fifty is now my main priority in life. I can’t care for my wife and son properly while our finances are so unpredictable. I will do whatever it takes to make this a reality.
• I will be self-disciplined enough to do what needs to be done. I will not stop until I reach this goal.
• I will be willing to work long hours, without complaint, to reach my goal.
• I’m going to be grateful for what I have in my life right now.
• I’m going to enjoy the process of achieving my goal.
• I’m going to celebrate my small victories because this is going to keep me motivated
• I will do something every day to bring me closer to achieving my goal
• I will stop listening to the negative bullshit inside of my head – I’m going to make this happen.
• I will gain the knowledge I need to make my goal a reality.
• I will meditate for one hour every day to keep myself in good mental shape.
• I will eat well and keep and work on my physical fitness.
• I will learn from my failures.
• I will be accountable by monitoring my progress closely – daily progress tracking and weekly progress tracking.
• I will keep on asking myself if what I am doing is helping me achieve my goal – if not, is it worth doing at the moment?
• I’m going to eliminate anything from my life that is holding me back
I’ve been using this plan for one month so far, and it is working to keep me focused. I’ve also developed a ritual where I visualize achieving my goal, and I do this ritual at least twice a day. I’m not performing this visualization to magically fool the universe into manifesting my desires (I’m not convinced this works), but to keep me motivated – this is also working really well.
Achieving these goals does mean getting out of my comfort zone, but it is definitely within my ability. I’ve already made significant progress. I’m so glad to have such a clear goal for my life. I feel strong, positive, and excited about the future – basically I feel unstoppable.
Great to hear more about this goal.
Are you going to write about how you are going to become financially secure and earn from your own writing than rather for your clients? As in the practicalities of it.
Your posts have motivated me to start focusing on my goals.
I’m 33 and am thinking of aiming to be financially secure by 40 (2020). I too work as a freelance writer (although not published). We live in Thailand now but the goal is to move back to the UK and buy (a) property.
How are you going to move from a pay per job basis to making it more passive to cover the occasions when you can’t work (sickness, family duties, holidays etc) or isn’t that part of your plan?
Good luck with your endeavours.
Joe
Hi Joe, I do plan to talk more on here about how I plan to move from wages-income to more passive income. My priority now is to get my income up to where I want it to be and to clear my debts – it shouldn’t take too long. I’m not going to stop working for clients just like that – it is more a case of slowly but surely replacing one income stream with another. As I begin getting income from sources such as eBooks, I can buy back my own time to invest in more of my own work. I want to make sure at the end of the six years, I have something sustainable.
Yes, that is what I want to do too. I used to earn enough from passive online income but I become a bit too passive and it eventually dried up!
So I’m freelancing now and when my income reaches that level again I will start trying to build more passive streams.
Client work is great for cash in hand but it always feels a bit precarious.
Hi Joe, I’m really grateful for client work. I’m going to discipline myself so that I only use passive income (at the moment adsense) to fund my own projects. This is going to slow things down, but it is more secure. I’m going to do what it takes to make this happen, so I’m not really worried about it happening slowly.
That’s a very interesting post Paul, and very inspirational. I live in Pattaya, and work as a teacher here, and I have a wife and two children. It is a major interest of mine, in how one can achieve financial independence or additional income streams to top up what one gets teaching here in Thailand. Right now I top up my teaching income my teaching martial arts, however I do need to stretch beyond this too.
I like the mental side of financial goal achievement you mention, such as goal setting and visualization. I am looking forward to following this topic on your blog. I am also recovered from drinking and did do here in Thailand via AA.
Enjoying reading your posts on here.
Keep them coming.
Gerry
Thanks Gerry, I do think having the right mental attitude is vital if we want to achieve anything in life. I think the power of visualizations is that it can give our motivation a boost and keep us pushing forward.
I’m impressed that you are a martial arts instructor. I love martial arts – I started Muay Thai training in my forties.