Identifying meaningful long-term goals
Understanding your financial goals is central to your financial plan, but identifying goals that truly matter can be difficult. A simple master list exercise might help you identify your top financial goals and uncover goals you might have overlooked.
Identify your meaningful long‑term goals.
Master lists may help you identify your goals.
Master lists may help you refine and focus your goals.
Master lists may help you uncover meaningful emotional connections to your goals.
Sometimes the simplest things make the biggest difference.
Behavioral science shows that people can sometimes be strangers to themselves. We have been long term advocates of the level of personalization goals-based planning provides, and this approach is becoming increasingly popular. Yet, it hinges on a person really knowing their financial goals and being able to communicate them clearly. Defining these goals can prove a lot more difficult than asking clients to identify their goals off the top of their heads.
It is important to us that we help our clients make good choices and develop plans that make long-term objectives possible.
Research has found that about 73% of participants substituted at least one of their top three goals with goals from the master list.
Master lists may help you identify your goals:
The majority of people studied changed one of their self-selected goals after considering the master list, so we see clear benefits when they use a master list to identify and discuss goals with our clients.
Master lists may help you refine and focus your goals:
People’s self-reported goals are often vague, and that’s a recipe for disengagement. The introduction of a master list seemed to help them better understand the purpose of their goals, and this led them to adjust their goals to ones that were clearer and more precise.
Master lists help our clients uncover meaningful emotional connections to their goals:
Many people updated their goals to ones that were both sensible and aligned with emotionally driven motivations after viewing the master list. This showed that viewing the master list might have illuminated personal connections to goals that they might not have realized when they listed goals off the top of their heads.
Sometimes the simplest things make the biggest difference.
It’s our belief that by developing goals that our clients have thoughtfully developed and defined themselves, we have a solid foundation to deliver a goals-based financial plan which builds engagement and helps them stay on track and a reaching successful outcome.
Click here to download the Goals Checklist Tool from Morningstar.
To find out how we can help you with goals-based financial planning and investing contact;
