Setting financial goals you can actually follow

The difference between a financial goal and a financial wish is specificity. A wish is to save more. A goal is to save twelve thousand dollars by December two years from now, in an account that is not touched for anything else.

Write each goal with three attributes: an amount, a date, and a source. Where the money will come from matters more than the ambition of the target, and it is usually the part that gets skipped.

Then order them. Goals compete for the same monthly surplus, so they need an explicit priority: the deposit, the emergency fund, the debt, the holiday. When two compete, the one with a date attached to somebody else's decision usually wins.

Review milestones quarterly. If a goal has not moved in two quarters, either the source was imaginary or the amount was unrealistic. Both are useful things to discover in month six rather than year five.