This week’s theme on the Retirement Quick Tips Podcast is: Financial Resolutions For 2023

Yesterday, I talked about the importance of picking the most important and meaningful goals, and ideally, the one thing to focus on that will make the biggest difference in your life. 

If you have that one, most important goal in mind, it’s time to set yourself up for success by applying the SMART criteria to crafting the goal. 

SMART is a acronym in goal setting that is meant to help you be successful with your goals and resolutions. 

Too often, when we set goals, we set vague goals, like I want to lose weight. The problem with this goal is that it’s not really clear what that means and it certainly won’t be clear when you’ve achieved that goal.

The SMART structure helps to clarify your goals. SMART stands for: 

• Specific: the goal is clear 
• Measurable: so you can track your progress
• Attainable: so the goal challenges you, but it’s possible
• Relevant: This goes back to what I talked about on Tuesday, which is the starting place in my opinion for goal setting. It actually has to make a meaningful difference in your life if you achieved this goal and it actually has to matter to you. 
• Time-bound: there is a deadline for reaching the goal or a target for how often you’ll do this thing, if it’s a habit-goal. 

Tomorrow, I’ll talk more about financial goals that apply this SMART criteria, but let’s apply the SMART goal criteria to the otherwise vague goal of “lose weight”

The goal could be rephrased to lose 20 lbs by July 1st. Small change but now it’s specific and measurable. It’s attainable if you are overweight - that’s 5 months to lose 20 lbs which is definitely doable. It’s relevant if this is something that will make a meaningful difference for you. After gaining 40 lbs with this latest pregnancy, I would be very happy with losing 20 lbs by July 1st. It would put me within 5 lbs of my pre-pregnancy weight, and it’s important to me that I lose all of this excess weight I always gain every time I have a baby. 

And lastly, it’s time-bound. I’m putting a deadline of reaching this goal, so I can get to work on it now and not put it off. 

That’s it for today. Thanks for listening! My name is Ashley Micciche and this is the Retirement Quick Tips podcast.    

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Tags: retirement, investing, money, finance, financial planning, retirement planning, saving money, personal finance