3 things to focus on when trying to achieve your goals

Tiffany Grant, a Financial Wellness Facilitator, joins Yahoo Finance Live to provide advice for anyone trying to set and achieve personal financial goals.

Video transcript

– Well the statistics are startling. According to various recent surveys, about 60% of Americans live on paychecks. Many do not have enough funds in their account to cover an emergency bill. But despite higher wages and a failed market, many are struggling to save.

Here, with lessons on how to help change some of that, Tiffany Grant, Financial Wellness Facilitator and Money Talk With Tiff. Thanks so much for being here, Tiffany. What do you think are the barriers that prevent people from getting the savings they know they really need?

TIFFANY GRANT: Yes. So the first thing I always like to tell people is that money is psychological. I’ve come up with three things people should focus on when it comes to setting their financial goals and then achieving them.

The first – I’ll just get to the heart of the matter – is to make sure that you verify your current values, beliefs, and non-financial goals, before you even start with your financial goals. This is important because you need to make sure that your goals align with who you are as a person so that you can stick to them.

Second, it is important to move forward and prioritize these goals. If you have, say, five goals, and some of them are immediate, some of them might be in five or ten years, start prioritizing those goals. And also, to go along with that, make sure that if you have a big stretch goal – because I like stretch goals – make sure you have smaller goals to achieve it. So if your goal is to be debt free, let’s say it’s $ 50,000, that sounds like a lot. But if you break it down into maybe $ 1,000 here, $ 1,000 there, the next thing you know, you look up and you’re done.

The last thing is to make sure that you do your homework. Know who your targets are. A lot of people come to me and they might say, hey, I want to save for a down payment on a house. It’s a great lens, but what kind of a house? How much will this house cost? What type of down payment do you need?

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These are three things you absolutely need to focus on as you step into the New Year and focus on those New Year’s resolutions.

– And Tiff, something we talked about, even with the last guest – it’s so important to stay mentally well and stay sane. We were talking about networking and how to socialize a bit, but when it comes to your financial planning, how do you keep everything together in these times?

TIFFANY GRANT: Yes. The main thing to keep in mind is not to get overwhelmed. Coming back to my second point with the last part, you want to make sure that you are setting yourself up for success. You don’t want to be in a situation where you say to yourself, oh my god, it’s so overwhelming, I can’t do it, and then you fall apart before you even start. Even though there are some obstacles that could potentially get in your way, you want to make sure you’ve already planned these things in advance. A lot of what I like to do in practice is money affirmation – being kind to yourself, telling yourself that you can do it, and really understanding the mental game, because everything is controlled by your mind – l ‘money included.

– And then you say you have a savings challenge. Tell us more about it.

TIFFANY GRANT: Yes. Currently I have an ongoing savings challenge in my Facebook group. And what that entails is taking baby baby steps. We are therefore back to small steps. All you have to do– I have a few documents listed on the website, but it’s numbers one through 49 or one through 100. And every day, every week, every two weeks– whatever. – what you’re going to do is take a number from that list, go ahead and put that money in an envelope, in a separate savings account, where you need to put it so you don’t touch it, then cross it out – the from the list. And you can no longer use this number.

So this is a fun way to get people to start saving with as little money as possible. Number one – $ 1. You can find $ 1 probably just by looking around right now. So this is just a simple way to take a small step forward in pooling your savings and making sure you hit those savings goals if that’s a goal for you.

– OKAY. I know one of the biggest hurdles that bothers me is impulse buying, so that’s something that I try to avoid, and then I was also very familiar with the Joneses. I managed to stay away from it. In any case, we will have to stop there. Thank you very much. Also Tiffany Grant, Financial Wellness Facilitator, Money Talk With Tiff. Thank you and happy new year to you.