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Defining Your Goals

 This is more or less a dream I had about teaching a youth class about money. Using a blackboard, I had me on one side and a cloud on the other "hopes and dreams." 

The class is about Defining our Goals

Drew an oval in the middle, this is a face. Added eyes, nose, mouth. We're defining the face a bit. Hair, shadows, neck etc--an artist knows that adding details provides DEFINITION.

"Car hits tree"--as journalism student I learned this is an event, but to make it a story you gotta add Who What When Where and Why. This is DEFINITION.

So we have a cloud that is an undefined hope and dream. In high school I maybe didn't know what I wanted to do like some kids did already, but I had some NEGATIVE definites! 1. I did NOT want to spend the rest of my life waking up to an alarm clock and grinding away at the same job. 2. I did NOT want to marry a sugar daddy so as to be supported all my life--that would be tantamount to slavery. 3. I did not ever again want to dissect a frog, so a career in biology was out.

This feeling, negative though it was, defined the WHY--my motivation--for aiming for my hopes and dreams. But now, we can't hope and dream that we DON'T do something, how can I define the hope and dream positively? Alex came along and he nailed it--he called it financial independence. Because, you see, here are some definitions of the WHAT which is the cloud:

I want to do whatever I want whenever I want. (The flip side of NOT living by the alarm clock). Meld that together with the reality check that everything in this mortal life needs MONEY, and you see that "financial independence" equates to "doing what I want" independence.

More to follow, I gotta eat breakfast...

OK, now it's almost bedtime--the day flies. So, defining the what is better if it is a positive, not a negative. I've got "doing what I want." Now for the HOW steps in between the WHY and the WHAT on the board.

It's a series of engineering "How" questions!

Alex started: HOW we get to do what we want is tempered by having money, so now we further define Doing what we Want into Being Financially Independent. Because you can't just do whatever you want unless you have the money to do it with.

Next: HOW can we be financially independent? What is that, more specifically? We discussed it and decided that if we had a regular stream of income falling from the sky, as it were, without having to directly work for it, that would be financial independence. We decided that we didn't need to be rich or wealthy, but having our monthly budget taken care of would do it.

We looked at what we were spending and (at the time) thought $500 a month would do it. If we could generate $500 a month we'd be financially independent! I had thought that if I were an author, I could get royalties and that would be it. Further examination revealed that I'd have to be one heckuva great writer with one book, or a hack writer with 50 books a year to get that kind of money. Other people think that if they buy old houses, fix them up and rent them out, that rents would be their income-without-having-to-do-anything. Again, not really true. Alex pointed out that interest in the bank, or dividends from owning stocks, wouldn't involve much "tending" compared to writing or being landlords. So, HOW to get $500 a month got further defined as being $500 a month in interest. That's $6000 a year. Now the next step:

HOW much money's gotta be in the bank to get $6000 a year interest on it? Well, it depends on interest rates! At the time, if we could get Certificates of Deposit at 6% interest, that meant we could invest $100,000 and it would yield $6000.00 a year.

OK! Big gulp!!! HOW are we going to save that, and HOW long will it take? Based on Alex's income at the time, if we lived on $500 a month we could also save about $500 a month (that was FIFTY PERCENT savings rate!) and reach our $100,000 goal in six years. We did it in eight, by the way.

NOW WE HAD A PLAN. Putting this all on the board, I get to re-emphasize to the class that the HOW steps, iteratively attacking the problem and defining it into smaller and smaller pieces, is how we got from our motivated WHY WOULD WE DO THIS to WHAT IS IT WE WANT TO DO.

So, isn't this what personal trainers do in the gym? You want, what, giant biceps? Don't just dream, boy, make a plan! Here's what it's going to take, step by step.

So, the dream isn't about something new, but it did give me an idea that I'd like to present to kids who may not know what the process is of turning dreams into reality.

And that's all I've got to say about that.