Reaching Your Goals With Better Money Habits

This article will help you understand how to have better money habits using discipline and willpower and hard work, persistence, and perseverance.

Goals Should Be SMART To better reach our goals, a SMART approach can bridge the gap to better habits. George T Doran first introduced the acronym in Management Review in November 1981. You can adapt this approach to personal finance.

A SMART Example: Saving For An Emergency Fund You want to establish an emergency fund to cover essential living expenses for unexpected events like a potential job loss. While you haven’t lost your job yet, you haven’t set any money aside. So it is time to open up a high yield savings or money market account. Save by automating weekly transfers of your paycheck here until you get to a six months target.

Setting Goals Are Not An Achievement

I have started with a pledge to lose 20 pounds, eat more healthily and exercise many a year. I would even get part of the way some years there, but my bad eating habits would kick in. It is then easy to give up than starting from scratch.

Our Targets May Be Unrealistic

Our Targets May Be Unrealistic After a spate of wasteful buys, my spendthrift husband, Craig, will declare his big purchase days are over. Of course, that is not a sensible goal. He loves to read as I do, and we often go to the library to save money and space.

The Need For Discipline And Willpower

The Need For Discipline And Willpower To carry out your goals, you need to be diligent. Without discipline and the will to succeed, plans are unsustainable.

Habits Allow Us To Be Efficient

Habits Allow Us To Be Efficient Once formed, habits allow us to do things automatically in everyday life. Our practices begin through repeated actions that may come with rewards.

Habits May Exceed Your Goal

Habits May Exceed Your Goal Goals may limit you, whereas good habits may allow us to go beyond our targets. I am at fault for setting 30 minutes as my time on the treadmill and jumping off. Limiting the time happened because I had to make a call or go to work.

Habits For Life

Habits For Life I sometimes envy daily runners plowing on in the heat, snow, rain, and sleet. They have formed healthy fitness habits that will last all their lives.  According to Duhigg’s research, habits control 40 percent of our conscious activities. Taking showers and brushing teeth are activities; we just do it. That’s a good thing. Our lives would be far more chaotic if we couldn’t form habits.

Keystone Habits

Keystone Habits Building a single habit can be modeled into other practices, having a compound effect on our lives. Through the years, I have added small activities into my day, usually at the same time.

Our privacy is costly when we lose it. We have a lot of freedom in our lives and benefit greatly from the wondrous interconnected digital world we live in but we need to protect all we have. If and when we are violated, we are robbed monetarily, we lose trust and we lose our piece of mind. Our job is to be aware, be more protective and continue freely and well.

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