The Only Goals That Matter

By Chris Winkler - Founder | Principal

When it comes to financial goals, the only ones that matter are yours.

I realize any discussion of goals can be tricky. I see this regularly in conversations with our clients. But at least for this discussion, I find it helpful to think of a goal simply as an object of desire. It’s something we want.

But here’s the issue: We are really bad at knowing what we actually want.

In fact, we often learn what we want by watching what other people want. From the youngest age, we learn to desire by seeing what our parents, siblings, and peers desire, and in recent times, by what people on social media desire.

In a very real sense, we appropriate other people’s goals because it’s actually very hard to get clear about our own.

This can wreak havoc in so many areas of our lives, but particularly when it comes to our relationship with money.

There’s an old saying that we spend money we don’t have to buy things we don’t want to impress people we don’t even like. This happens when we shop for cars or houses, or worse yet, investments.

You hear someone talking about how important it is to own municipal bonds. He must really have a good handle on this because he has a bunch of money, right? Suddenly, you feel an impulse to buy municipal bonds, too.

We hear about all the cool kids investing in startups and all the fancy people buying Tesla’s. Maybe you should do that too.

But here’s the thing: None of that matters. None of it.

The only goals that matter when it comes to your money are your goals. Not anyone else’s.

So, this begs the question… what are your goals?

-Chris

chris@aspirean.com