Utilizing the S.M.A.R.T model to plan your financial future ensures your goals are within reach and in-line with the future you are looking forward to, the acronym stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely (Siegal & Yacht, 2009). In this paper, we are going to use Alice as our example to on how to evaluate goals with the S.M.A.R.T method. Alice is freshly out of college and there are a few things she wants to accomplish in her future, so first thing is we need to establish what they are before we can decide how best to create goals. She wants to pay off her student loan, buy a house and save for children’s education, accumulate assets, retire, and travel around the world in a sailboat (Siegal & Yacht, 2009).
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Furthermore, she may gain a second income, from a spouse, help her save for their child’s college tuition and pay a mortgage. The remainder of her goals should be considered long-term, they are goals that are worked toward during an entire career (Siegal & Yacht, 2009). She will accumulate assets by buying a house, and starting a retirement fund. We do not know exactly when Alice wants to retire, but let’s speculate during her early 60’s. If she starts putting away a small percentage of her income, and increasing it when she can, she can retire with assets. Furthermore, she can buy a sailboat and travel the world multiple times.
There are numerous circumstances that can change between when you choose your original goals and when you complete your long-term ones, therefore, your goals need to be reevaluated periodically. 5 years later, how will Alice know how much more she can save to retirement? By evaluating her current financial standing. This leads us to another component of evaluating S.M.A.R.T. goals; assessing the current situation, and making sure they are attainable and realistic.
To understand your current financial standing you need to figure out if your expenses are higher or lower than your income. This is done by creating financial statements, the same three used in business accounting: income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow
She has a financially supportive husband who works to support both her and her children. This source of income will be beneficial for future health needs and other services they require and will ease the financial burden for them a bit.
In the beginning stages of planning personal attainable goals should be set. They can be short term or long term goals, depending on what is necessary to stay on track and maintain focused. Many retirees consider relocating due to the cost of living expenses at their current location, wanting to live closer to family, or simply to a place they had always dreamed of spending the rest of their lives at.
Alice is looking to pay off her student loans. She is setting small goals to begin her financial planning to set herself up with financial stability in her life as she ages. To do so she will need to map out the figures that make up her assets versus her debts. Being as specific as she can, Alice will or can write down approximate if not exact figures for her income after tax and her debts. The best way to do so will be creating a monthly financial plan to start to decrease her debts and paying off as much of her student loans as possible.
Most of my financial goals are long term. I plan to be able to save enough to live a comfortable life after retirement. I also plan to grow my savings by way of managing my own investments. This goes hand in hand with my job, and I feel like my job will help me manage and grow my own wealth. As far as short term goals go, I would like to
Firstly, in setting goals one has to be specific which is an important role in our lives today. Alice was very specific. After her graduation she had set some short term goals to gain more money to pay for food, clothing, rent, entertainment and gas. Also, this income contributes to offsetting her student loan of $53000 in two years’ time. After attaining these goals, she moved onto her intermediate goals of accumulating assets and buying a house. This was financed by the surplus of her annual wages. Later, Alice went on to her long term
realistic: Alice needs to look at reaching baby steps with this retirement stage of her life. Maybe not jump in full force & quit working completely?
Out of the three goals, (Personal, educational, and professional) I chose two of the goals that I am focusing on and that is my personal and educational goals. For my personal goals, I want to create a big picture of what I plan to do in life. Then I want to break them down in order to reach my goals, then once I have them together, then I would start working on them to achieve them. For example(Specific and Measurable goals), I plan on finding a job that has great benefits and the best rate of pay, and one that does not require working on weekends(Monday-Friday only), and not working overtime.
Some of the targets that I am currently committed to achieve are finding a financial planner job, because I have an aim to volunteer in the community as a financial adviser. I only can volunteer as a financial adviser if I am an experienced financial adviser, and if I am certified to do it. I am also passionate to help people in improving their financial conditions, so I set a target that I want to be an experienced
An employee wants to have an amount of money for consumption after retirement that is certain. An employee can achieve this on his own by saving or investing during his career life and for this to be achieved the employee requires discipline and knowledge about investing. However, individuals are not generally equipped to make decisions for their future retirement, nor do they want to make these decisions (Aaron, 1999).
It is important to understand that this initial financial roadmap will not stay “current” forever. It will become outdated with changes in your goals and objectives, tax laws, and other personal economic circumstances. Thus, it is important to have your Financial Plan updated on a periodic basis. We should meet at minimum annually to update; more often if life changes occur. We should also meet to address other financial planning issues still to be addressed.
As a child and even as a teenager one tends to make dreams and set goals for life. On occasion these goals are far stretched and sometimes even fairy-tale like, we tend to see life through a rose-colored glass, not taking into account the many sidetracks life throws our way. At that stage in life our goals tend to be less focused and somewhat unreachable. However, the process of growing up, or maturing, tends organized and center our goals, we learn to make compromises and set goals for our goals. There are different types of goals, short term and long term. I have learned to separate the many goals I have into three main categories: family, professional and personal.
As long as I can remember, my main goal in life was to always enjoy it. I have come to the realization that I am a simple man with simple needs. Through my past life experiences, I have determined that to obtain a comfortable lifestyle I will have to be employed in a career that is secure, but also a career that I enjoy. Deciding on a career is a personal and difficult problem for young people, however I believe my solution to this problem is to become a certified public accountant (CPA). In my Freshman Seminar, my professor, Mrs. Wilson, had the class plan their long-term and short-goals. What I learned was that my goals and values in life stemmed from my past experiences and up-bringing as a child.
I will prepare a Financial Plan for a prospect named Alice using the Smart Goals method to analyze her debt to ratio budget toward her future finances. Her preliminary focus is to pay off her student loan b. buy a house and save for children’s education c. accumulate assets d. retire e. travel around the world in a sailboat.
However, many researchers have argued to the limitation of SERVQUAL scale. For example, Carman (1990) argued that the five dimensions should be specific for each industry and it should not be general (Carman, 1990). Moreover, Fan Chan (2008) also pointed out that SERVQUAL five dimensions cannot fully evaluate service quality of the hotel, and should be integrated with other dimensions (Chen, 2008). This is consistent with the finding of Rooma Roshnee Ramsaran- Fowdar (2007) that hotel core service was not represented in SERVQUAL and therefore the five dimensions cannot fully evaluated the service quality of hotel industry (Ramsaran-Fowdar, 2007).
Saving money, improving your financial life, building wealth. It all starts when you set a goal and make a plan to reach that goal.