My father is originally from Taiwan and smoked cigarettes like his brothers, his father, and nearly every adult male he knew.
Back in those days, no one knew that smoking could cause lung cancer… so kept smoking.
Then he had kids. Those kids grew up and we grew up in an era where we knew smoking caused cancer. So when I was a kid, I asked my dad to stop smoking. I vividly remember my sister and I making signs and putting them around the house. I don't know if it helped but my dad stopped smoking when we were little and never restarted.
Anyone who has ever tried to reach a goal, whether it's to stop smoking or pay down debt, knows that it's hard. There are a bunch of different strategies you can use to improve your chances but the biggest one is accountability.
Accountability is fundamental.
How do you force accountability? Make it public. Tell your friends.
That's why I have a public page on my blog with my One Money Goal. wallethacks.com/omg
(in addition to the goal itself, I share my why)
That's the financial goal the rest of my money decisions revolve around. It's an audacious goal but it's the big OMG. It's meant to be big and presumably out of reach today, but not in five years. But it's where I aim to devote my work time.
Someone comes to me with a new financial opportunity… does it get me closer to my OMG? If the answer is no, I pass.
If my OMG were to pay down credit card debt, then all financial decisions are up against that mission. Do I buy that new gadget or do I put it towards my OMG? Active decisions are the cornerstone of mindful spending, put your goal out there for all to see. Friends invite you out? I will pass this time, I'm close to hitting my goal. It's as simple as that.
What's your OMG?
Share your One Money Goal in the comments. If you have an OMG page on your blog, put the full URL in the comments so others can see it.
Our biggest money goal is to become financially independent. I know that’s pretty cliche these days, but we do have a plan to get there! We’re 35/36 now and we are around 10 years from having our two rental properties and our primary home paid off. We also save a ton of money for retirement and have watched it grow over the years. I have to be partially financially independent at age 46 and possibly scale back my work by then.
It might be cliche but it doesn’t make it less good!
My one money goal is to reach financial freedom. And for me that means being able to work when I want, from where I want without being influenced by how much I’m being compensated. So, I working on generating multiple streams of revenue. I don’t have an exact number in mind. But I’ll know when I’m there.
I’m a firm believer in systems rather than goals. A lot of folks believe in setting a target – like FI = some amount in the bank. I believe in systems, which is like you saying your goal is to build multiple streams of income and not so much a target $ for them. Your system will guide you to the end result you want.
We’re similar in that we’re working towards FI as well. A key part to that, from a business perspective, is scaling our business so we’re doing largely the management aspect and giving us more freedom from the day-to-day work. Financially, that means us being entirely debt free (we only have our mortgage currently) within the next 8 years.
Yes, when you free yourself from the day to day it feels less like “work” even though you’re still responsible. It’s the grind that is less appealing, at least to me. 🙂
Our Big Money Goal is to build a Net Worth of $10M that generates $50,000/month in passive income.
That’s a big money goal, if you get to $50k/mo in passive income I suspect your net worth will be well north of $10mm.
Our money goal is to build wealth. We completed our debt repayment last year and moved on to wealth building, which includes retirement and college funds.
Any quantifiable targets for you?
Not at the moment. A job loss has put a little hold on things.
You can have a target number without a target date, which would understandably slide outward after a job loss.
We want to walk out into our front yard, stand in the (fake) grass, and rip up our mortgage into a thousand pieces. We have about 3-5 years left to pay it off, and the dream is starting to become a reality. I think about that moment will feel like almost every day. That’s the goal and the dream.
It feels good to not owe anything to anyone – I personally will keep the mortgage around just because the rates are so low but I see the appeal for sure.
I’ve always wanted to build wealth to a point where we can literally give away every penny that we earn in a year. We’re definitely working on growing both our giving and our investments, but I think giving everything away would be so cool!
I’ve had the same thought but my feeling was that it’s probably better to build wealth (with some smaller donations along the way), have it compound, and then give a larger sum at the end.
I’ve also then had the thought, it’d actually be even more powerful to build up a trusted tribe and then inspire them to donate as a community so you leverage your tribe for good – like what Ramit Sethi and Pat Flynn did for Pencils of Promise.
Love this, especially since it’s OMG – lol. 🙂 Thanks for sharing Jim. I think we can all benefit from accountability.
So… what’s yours? 🙂
I probably have too many OMGs. The overall goal is to be financially independent, but that seems so lofty that I try to break it down into chunks. Our primary focus right now is paying off our mortgage. We have a LONG way to go, but knowing that it is focus helps a lot.
There’s that saying, “When eating an elephant, take one bite at a time.”
In your case, when eating a herd of elephants, take one bite at a time.” 🙂
Great advice here. I think accountability is really the key to any lasting change that I’ve had in my life, be it weight loss (was doing that alongside my wife) or the first time that I got out of debt (with another good friend).
Our main goal right now is to pay off the wife’s school loan + start working on more ways to generate passive/active income. Think that is key to long-term financial independence these days, esp as healthcare keeps rising and unknowns about SS/retirement accts.
Accountability is a huge piece because it also plays a role in feedback loops. If you put it out there, people will ask you about it and so you’ll be more aware of the goal and more likely to keep after it.