Your 3-Step Blueprint for Achieving Retirement Goals Faster

0:00When it comes to saving for retirement, do you feel paralyzed by the big picture? You need to save half a million, three quarters of a million, one million. It can feel impossible. But what if you could learn how to break it down into small, actionable pieces? That's what we're covering inside this episode is how to make goals more tangible and actionable. I know I struggle with breaking down goals and I'm hoping to help you in this episode today.

0:33David M. Jones:Welcome to the Wealthy After 40 podcast, the show for Gen X women and couples who are ready to ditch financial stress and feel confident about retirement. I'm your host, Daylene Higgins, financial and retirement coach, helping Gen Xers master their money and create a personalized retirement plan so they can stop spinning their wheels and step boldly into their dream retirement. If you're feeling behind, don't worry. Continue listening to this podcast as well as be sure to grab your free guide, 5 Must Do Steps to Start Retirement Planning Now at elevatefinances.us backslash must do. And remember, let's make retirement possible together.

1:17David M. Jones:there.

1:20David M. Jones:Welcome to the episode. So I wanted to talk about goals. And having goals, setting goals, thinking of goals, I think is easy for most of us. We declare things, I want to be able to do this, I want to lose, you know, 20 pounds, you know, start of the year, I'm going to work out whatever it is. I want to read a hundred books this year. We all know how to do that. But where I falter, and probably most of us, but definitely myself, is, okay, I've got that big goal. Now, how do I take specific action that is going to get me there, that isn't going to feel like I'm churning my wills, like I'm just doing these actions and I'm not understanding if I'm closer to that goal, if I'm closer to that progress.

2:11And there is so much information out there about setting goals. This has never jived for me. Those SMART goals, yep, I've heard it. I know specific, I know measurable, I know actionable, but it doesn't walk me through and tell me what I needed to do until I created the milestone method, specifically for money goals. That's what this is created for. this method focuses on how to turn your money goal, your big dream, your big goals into specifics and then into 90 day targets. If you're looking for specifics on how to do this, I hope you'll join my Make Retirement Possible Challenge. A small investment of$9 will reserve your spot where you will learn the five-step milestone method to help you turn your dream, your goal into action.

3:10Head over to elevatefinances.us backslash challenge to learn more and join. Okay, what are milestones? Milestones are the small steps for goals. You could call them mini goals, you can call them, you know, small steps, whatever. But I am calling them milestones. And to help you understand what that means, as you're driving on highways, so state highways, interstates, there are mile markers, they might be called mile markers, mile posts, and they have numbers on them. They usually correlate with exits as well. But this is how state troopers and state police, if you're inside of a county, your sheriff's deputies are also going to know where they're at because they get used to seeing these numbers.

4:00But these mile markers break up the 300 mile road into small sections. So you see your progress. You see it from the big picture. If you hear that there's a wreck at milepost 252 and you're on milepost two, it doesn't matter, right? That kind of is like where to give your focus. Like you might have been worried about that accident till you were able to see in relation to where you're at. And this is what milestones do. Milestones help us give focus for today, knowing that we're going to reach that end goal. And so I have determined, so this is me, that 90 days for money milestones, money targets are best.

4:58And I'm going to share more into my why in just a minute. But milestones make your goals tangible. They give you the action piece. And by giving you that action, you now have motivation and confidence because you can see what is expected. You can see how to reach this little bit and knowing that that adds up to the overall goal. These are like the little steps that in 10 years, 15 years, or even just five years, whatever it is, you know you will get there because you're able to measure on a smaller scale. It's no longer about, well, I need to save 1.5 million and I'm at 200 ,000. No, it's going to be broke down into what are you trying to reach in 90 days?

5:50Hopefully you'll have a yearly milestone, but those 90-day targets don't have to divide by four and be the same. And you're like, well, why not? You want to reach that yearly milestone. But starting out your first attempt at reaching a milestone, you're going to want to give yourself more grace. It's going to be a learning curve. We're going to be exploring. We're going to be trying to figure this thing out. Now, I'm not saying make it easy. And inside the challenge, I talk about realistic and probable. And that's what I mean there, easy and challenging. But to give you a milestone so that you can work with, like we talked last episode, you know, those challenges, those blocks, those are going to come up and you're going to want to give yourself time to work through those while you're also trying to put these other pieces monetarily together.

6:45Plus, life is still going on. As you're learning who you are and as things pop up, you want to be challenging yourself at every milestone. But that first one, you want to make sure that you're going to probably reach it. And then challenge yourself. Yes, because you build up that confidence. You gain that motivation. You know, momentum. Momentum. We see that. We want more of that. We thrive with that. It's just like eating sugar. Wow, that was really good. I want more of it. you know, and that is the same with being able to achieve these milestones, these targets, and getting there and knowing, oh, well, I did that, but I think I could do this now.

7:28Because we come with experience, we come with learning, and we're able to get ourselves closer and closer to that goal that is 10 years away. I think that is where we lose the vision of, well, can I even do it? Because I got to worry about today. Now you've heard me talking about balancing now and the future. This kind of comes with it. We're still doing that in that. Within my milestone method, I focus on 90-day targets. Why? So 90 days roughly equates to three months. That's what we think. 90 days is three months. It's not, but we know the relation. And in that time period, as an income earner, if you're a W-2 employee, even if you're an entrepreneur, hopefully you're drawing salary regularly, but as a W-2 employee, you're probably paid bi-weekly or monthly.

8:28Now thinking about that, if you are paid bi-weekly in 90 days, give or take. Again, we know how this kind of runs two weeks. You have those, you have two every month, but sometimes you get that surprise one in there. But those are opportunity cycles. Every time your money is replenished during that 90-day target is an opportunity to get closer to that target. There's six of them at a minimum if you're being paid biweekly. There's three of them if you're being paid monthly. They don't need to be shorter than that. I don't need to be telling you to save this month. That can get to be very hard and not being able to be consistent.

9:19I believe 90 days gives you the ebb and the flow, which are money ebbs and flows. We ebb and flow and it gives you that opportunities, six of them, three of them, to flow through all of your challenges, to help you understand, I have this one opportunity, what am I going to do? Oh, crap, life happened, I need to adjust. But over the 90 days, hopefully you're going to hit the target. Now we talked about giving ourself grace for the first one. But realizing that if we have now, you know, we're maybe on target three or four, because it's been, you know, nine months or a year. And we're really wanting to challenge ourselves.

10:02These opportunity cycles become very important through exploring who we are, what we want, they drive a little bit more focus, and, you know, motivating and action, and we can see it. And we know, I have six steps to reach my target. I have six opportunities to get there. I have six opportunities to learn how best this is going to work for me. That's why I chose 90 day targets. So how does this all come together? Opportunity cycles feed into your targets, your 90-day milestone target that lead into your yearly goal or milestone. Again, it doesn't matter what you call it. And ultimately to your goal.

10:55With every cycle, target, milestone, you are going to get better, more confident, and know how to make quicker progress. People that train for a marathon, they don't just run a marathon equivalent every single day so that they can do it on the day of the marathon. They have cycles, targets, milestones in their training so that on that day they can get there. No different, no different. But understanding now you can look at the small amount of time and know that if I do this, it is going to equal me getting to my goal. Instead of, well, I want to get to my goal and I'm saving money, but I don't know if this is adding up.

11:49And I've heard that so many times. I'm saving, but I don't know if it's enough. This would actually dial in to exactly what you need to know and how to figure that out. So on day two of the challenge, day two, day three, depending on how we progress through, this is a live challenge, opportunity to ask questions, get your questions answered. But on day two, you will map out your first 90-day target. This may be for retirement. This may be something that's adding to something else that's leading to retirement. But you are going to be creating a milestone that is realistic, motivating, and doable.

12:35So as your first action step in completing this 90-day milestone, I would love for you to head over to elevatefinances.us backslash challenge to get registered. right? Small$9 fee,$9 investment to help you understand how to churn out$5 ,000 to$10 ,000 a year. I'm going to walk you through my quick equation that I use when working with clients, and they are able to find that initial savings. Low income earners are finding$400. Others are finding up to a thousand, they're a little bit higher. So anywhere in there, very, very most common about 600 a month, helping you find that and then how that can feed into your ultimate goal.

13:31Because sometimes we have ideas and we're not sure that all of our pieces line up. That's exactly what we're doing in this challenge, helping you line it up, but helping you understand how to make goals actionable. I hope you'll join me in that challenge. Again, there are replays, there are opportunities to be entered into a giveaway. Did you hear me say opportunities? Options are opportunities to be entered into a giveaway for a free retirement roadmap session. As far as your participant, your entry, your answering questions, submitting homework, there's lots of different times that you will be able to get your name added to be drawn for that winner.

14:13I would love to have you there with us. Hopefully there's several of us there and being able to really help one another on this road to retirement. You're not doing it alone. I bet you could find five people by just looking around today that are on your same journey, but it doesn't mimic the same way. And that's what makes it hard, but they're headed to the same place. Let's recap. Goals are not actionable unless you make them. But knowing how to define them down into actionable pieces is where you will find success. My opinion, in my knowledge, the best length of time for money goals is 90 days, taking advantage of your specific opportunity cycles.

14:59Knowing how these elements work in tandem and pairing them with your priority for savings will help you reach your goals and dreams quicker. Thank you for being here with me on this episode. And, you know, shoot me an email. Let me know if things are, you know, hitting the right place with you. Maybe there's something I'm missing and you're like, I really wish you would do something on this subject. As soon as I get done with this challenge, I would love to support you specifically. So send me an email at hello at elevatefinances.us. Quickly send me that email. There's also a link down in the show notes.

15:41If you're driving and you're like, man, I need to do that, please just send me an email. I'm not going to sell to you in that email. I'm really just maybe just going to ask for clarity on your question so that I can really deliver. deliver an episode that my listeners need. Thank you for being here and we'll see you next episode.

16:01David M. Jones:Thank you for spending this time with me. If you're not already following the show, be sure to hit subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next. And I'd love to stay connected with you between episodes. So come join me inside my Facebook community, Retirement Ready Hub for Gen Xers. It's where we're having real conversations about money, sharing wins, working through challenges, and building a clear path toward retirement. And remember, retirement isn't just a dream, it's a plan, and you get to make it possible.