How to identify your real financial goals

Goals like a second car are there as friends and colleagues have one and it becomes a must-have. Goals like a second home, third home etc may be investment goals. Retirement funding is a universal goal that’s very important for all of us, but none of us seems to give an adequate thought about. Most want to reach a certain corpus with which to retire - like say, Rs3 crore. Whether it would be possible to achieve this figure or whether this amount is good enough to fund one’s entire retirement phase is unknown.

The more important question is whether these are the real goals, whether these goals look like something worth pursuing and one is excited about. Let’s tackle the second part of the question first … many people I have talked to, consider their goals burdensome that are exerting too much pressure on them. Hence, these people are not able to enjoy life while pursuing these goals. Life seems to be dragging along and they feel stressed trying to keep pace with the demands needed to achieve these goals.

If many of these goals are not empowering, are these real goals? This is the question we need to ask ourselves. Do we really need the second & third houses? Does it make sense to take on multiple EMIs, be worried sick about how much loans one has & what will happen if one loses the job? Many of these goals do not add any quality to life; in fact, it detracts one from living a fulfilling life.

So, what is a fulfilling life and what could be those goals which will help us live a life of meaning, go from one day to the next in joyous anticipation, live the life one always wanted & achieve their highest potential. That could differ from person to person. But most often, they are not going to be goals like buying a second/third home. For most people such goals add to loans, brings on stress.

When the goal is achieved, it does not bring delight - it rather just brings a huge sense of relief. Why pursue such goals in the first place?

The goals or what we ardently pursue should be invigorating. We need to ponder deeply and ask ourselves as to what is truly important for us in life, what would bring us delight, vigour and vitality; what would help us experience freedom and empowerment, what is that we would truly want to achieve, whom do we want to become … Answers to this would decide what we truly want in life.

Sometimes the answers may even surprise us. We may truly want to do something entirely different from what we are doing today. Many of our so called goals from the past may not hold any meaning and may melt away, once we find out what is truly important for us.

Once we identify what’s truly important for us in life and work towards fulfilling them, life will acquire a fine quality and become scintillating. The financial goals will be there and there is nothing wrong about that. They are no longer going to be a drag like they were before. Life would then become meaningful and enjoyable.

Identifying the true goals are so important. If your destination is wrong, the direction is going to be wrong & our efforts would take us away from the goal. It would make sense to ponder over what one wants to do in life, isn’t it?