Blog | Personal development, Personal Finance

How To Achieve Your Financial Goals In 7-10 Years

What if you could get what you truly want and you could do it in less than the 30 years that the financial planners say it will take? What if you could do it in seven to 10 years?

Financial planners always ask: How much do you need to retire? My question always is: What do you mean by how much do I need? Do you mean how much do I need in order to not live under a bridge?

Wall Street says: We'll get you 3 to 5 per cent over 35 to 40 years and you can retire at 65 or 68. You can golf in the municipal golf course. You can ride public transportation and fly discount airlines.

What if you had a choice?

By the time we're 11 years old, it's been drummed into us that we can't get what we want. What about our dream of becoming a fireman, a pilot dream or a world-famous singer? Oh, no. We have got to focus on getting a job so we will be secure, which is a total falsehood anyway.

Seriously, who was ever secure in a job? You have one client; you have a job. You get a 401K with an employer match. Oh, that's great. After 30 years, we have no idea what we're going to even have.

What do we do instead?

Take the time to dream. I heard on a radio show a while back, the announcer had asked her three-year-old daughter what she wanted to be when she grew up. Her daughter says: “Mommy. I want to be a tiger.” When do we lose that dream of being anything we want?

Do we really dream to work an eight-to-five job or eight-to-six job, five to six days a week? Most people aren't even taking the time to dream. We're actually going to do a little dream right now.

Close your eyes and enjoy the quiet. Think about that perfect place where you would like to be. If you had all the money you needed, where would you like to be? Picture that in your mind.

For me, it's on the beach on the big Island of Hawaii. Next, picture who you’re with. Now, what are you doing?

Open your eyes and write that down your dream place. And I want you to describe it in great detail. It's not just a beach in Hawaii.

What does it look like? What's the weather like? What does it feel like?

I did this exercise in a class a few years ago and this woman stood up and said her dream is to create a charity to save the bats. She says they're the second most important pollinator on earth and they're dying out. It's worse than the bees. I don't know about you, but I still get emotional about that. Here's a woman who knew what she wanted.

Science has proven that the clearer we are on our vision of the future, the more likely it will be happy. Anticipating that future will get you to that future. Now let's talk about having enough money. What is enough money to reach your dream? It's all about the numbers.

How do I get to that beach house in Hawaii? I don't know where I'm going unless I know how much that's going to cost. What is it going to cost? What do I have today? Where am I going?

Let's say you want to golf at first-class golf courses. Let's say you want to fly first class. You may want a plane. Mathematically, these things are not out of reach.

I'm a dreamer, but I'm an accountant so I understand numbers and I understand the math and the roadmap to get from where you are today to where you want to be sooner than 30 to 35 years.

What do you want your legacy to be? At one of the most powerful presentations I’ve ever seen, by Robert and Kim Kiyosaki at an event recently, they talked about their dream to leave enough money to charity to fund a $100 million a year. Not a $100 million total -- a $100 million a year.

Once you have your dream, it's time to develop your roadmap. I love road trips because

you stop in little towns and it's about the journey itself. The journey for investing should be fun.

Wealth Ability is all about helping you create the map. You're going somewhere different than I'm going. Your dream is your destination.

Think about the vehicle we're going to get in. Sit down and go through a wealth and tax strategy to figure out how to reduce your taxes so you have more money to invest. We don't have a Google maps for this. We can't just plug in that we have that much dollars and then we want to get to X amount of dollars down the road. That's actually a fairly simple computation. You can go to wealthability.com and get for free.

Or pick up Tax-Free Wealth: How to Build Massive Wealth By Permanently Reducing Your Taxes to learn more.

Reduce your risk, while increasing returns and control while reducing taxes.

If you need help finding a CPA, let us know at wealthability.com and we'll help you find somebody.

Remember, it's your dream. It's your money and it's your life.