I was in Ryan’s room this morning looking for his graphing calculator (that’s my next blog entry!), when I discovered a piece of paper that, apparently Ryan needs to fill out.  It was titled, Whitney High Track and Field Goal Sheet.

Very cool.  His track coaches are making the athletes think about and write down their goals for the season.  The first goal was pre-determined by the coaches:  to have fun.  Nice.  Then, athletes need to write their individual goals and their team goals.  Individual goals were described as selfish goals and team goals were described as not selfish.  I thought that was cute.

Now that I know about this assignment, I am curious to see what Ryan writes down.  Although, proud mommy moment, he already accomplished one of his goals:  to beat the school record for a mile.  He did it in 5 minutes 2 seconds, beating the record by 3 seconds.

I’m a huge believer in setting personal goals.  And I’m just as passionate about teaching kids to do the same.  When we have goals, we have a destination.  Destinations are good.  They offer direction.

The part that we often fail to do, however, is come up with a plan to help us arrive at that destination.  Let’s say Ryan wants to run a sub-five minute mile and he wants to do it before the league meet in May.  What are the steps he will need to take in order to achieve his goal?  First and foremost, he’s going to need to practice.  Great.  How often?  What exercises will he need to do to build up strength?  What do his quarter mile splits need to be?  Etc.  He needs a plan.

It’s the same with financial goals.  So you want to save $3000 in your emergency fund.  What specific steps do you need to take in order to make that happen?  Will you automate some of your paycheck into your savings account?  Will you cut back to two lattes a week instead of five?  And when, exactly, do you plan on achieving this goal?  You need a date and it needs to be written on the calendar.

Let’s teach financial goal setting to our kids.  Start small.  I want to save $20 to buy such-and-such.  Achieving one gives motivation to set up another.  Now I want to save $100 for a laptop.  Kids learn it can be done.  That’s a very important lesson we need to teach them before they leave us for the wild blue yonder.  Unless, of course, you’d like them to stay…forever.