12 Days Of Finance, Day 2: How to Hit Every Financial Goal You Set

It’s time to stop wishing and start winning with your finances! In this episode, Kia breaks down the art of setting financial goals that you’ll actually achieve. Using the SMART framework, she shows you how to turn your big dreams into actionable plans that deliver real results. 💸

Here’s what we’re covering:
✨ Why vague goals won’t cut it and how to get specific
✨ The power of progress checkpoints to keep you on track
✨ How to set goals that are realistic, achievable, and life-changing
✨ Breaking down your financial journey into short, mid, and long-term wins
✨ Staying motivated and disciplined when the going gets tough

If you’ve ever felt stuck or overwhelmed by your financial goals, this episode will give you the tools and confidence to take charge.

Chapters

• 0:00 Financial Goals
• 7:31 Community Accountability for Financial Goals

Transcript

Speaker 0: 0:00

Hey guys, welcome back to the Penance Plans podcast with your host, kia. This is a podcast where you aim to dispel your myths, simplify difficult financial jargon and rectify your own personal problems. Happy Tuesday, everyone. I hope you are very, very excited for Christmas. Today is Christmas Eve and I honestly have to say Christmas is one of my favorite times of the year. Second to my birthday, my birthday's number one. Christmas is number two, and I can't believe Christmas day is tomorrow. I hope you've bought all the presents that you need. I personally am running out to go and get some more presents, but I'm super excited for Christmas day.

Speaker 0: 0:31

Today is financial goals 101. And I'm here to talk about how you can actually set financial goals that you are going to achieve. Notice, I said going to achieve because sometimes we set pie in the sky goals that aren't actually realistic and almost feel impossible to reach. So in the next eight to ten minutes, I'm going to aim to help you to reshift, reframe and hopefully put together some goals for your finances for 2025 and beyond. Now, goal setting is something that I very much believe in and I've been doing for absolutely years, ever since I was in secondary school. The reason being is it gives you a milestone to work towards. I started doing it during my GCSEs because I realised going from wherever you're going, for example in science I remember I was on a D in science, so going from a D to an A or A star feels near impossible. But if you have incremental goals, it now feels more achievable. And you want to know? Spoiler alert, I did get my A in science and having goals really helped me to do that. The exact same can be said when it comes to your finances. If you're currently, for example, in debt and you wanna go from having two 3,000 pounds in debt right to having 5,000 pounds in savings, it feels near impossible, but if we set realistic goals, then you can do that.

Speaker 0: 1:37

First things first. What we're gonna do is use. One of my favorite frameworks ever is to set SMART goals. So SMART stands for specific, measurable, attainable, slash, achievable, realistic and timeframe. So specific. You need to set a specific goal. And when I say specific, it's not just I want to buy a house, it might be, I want to save up £10,000 for a deposit. Or it's not just I want to buy a car, it is I want to have £3,000 saved to buy my first car. That is a specific goal, so you know exactly what you're working towards. Then the second one is measurable. So how are you going to measure your success for this goal? So for me, I like to do checkpoints along the way. So if we took the deposit amount of £10,000 in one year, maybe you want to say, well, every month I want to put away X amount, then every quarter I want to have X amount saved. This helps you to measure how far or close you are from your goal and help you to stay on track towards reaching that bigger goal.

Speaker 0: 2:31

Next one is achievable. So the way that I interpret this one is how achievable is this goal? And it also ties in with the R point that's coming on next Is it actually achievable? Look at the £10,000 goal with your deposit. Are you earning the money to do so? Is that a bit too high? Do you need £10,000 or do you need more? Working at how achievable it is within your time frame? That you've measured is going to help you when you actually come to analyse and reach your goal.

Speaker 0: 2:55

The next one is the art, which is realistic, and this is oh such a big one. If I had a goal, I said I want to save up £50, pounds in six months and I currently have zero in savings and I'm on 30K. How realistic is that? Is highly unrealistic and setting wild goals although I encourage thinking big and dreaming big you need to be realistic when it comes to financial goals. If it's just physically not realistic and not possible either in your timeframe or in the goal that you set, you might want to go back and rethink that goal. And then the last one is timeframe. And what timeframe are you going to work towards your goals in? So, for example, deposit is it going to be £10,000 in a year? Are you going to save about £3,000 for your car in two, three years? What is that timeframe that you're going to work towards when it comes to your goals? So that's number one. My favourite framework, smart, and it really does help when it comes to crafting your goals, not just financial goals, but any goals you have in life. If you have personal, physical, spiritual goals, you can definitely incorporate the SMART framework into your goal setting there.

Speaker 0: 3:52

Next one is to figure out the type of goal that you're working towards. So there are three different types of goals. There's short-term, mid-term and long-term goals. So example of a short-term goal might be saving a thousand pounds in your emergency fund in the next year. An example of a mid-term goal might be buying a car in the next three years. It's something that you're working towards. Takes a few years to get there and you can work towards that. An example of a long-term goal might be saving for your retirement. Now, retirement, depending on what age you are, might be 20, 30, 40, even 50 years away. So that's an example of a long-term goal that we're planning. So, once you've used a framework of SMART and you've figured out your goals, figure out what type of goal have I put down? Is it short-term, mid-term or long-term goal?

Speaker 0: 4:34

Next up, you're going to want to track your progress. I've done it in a number of different ways and this is absolutely key. I've done it where I've had a poster on a wall and I've physically marked off each day that we were saved or invested, depending on what my goal was. You can have spreadsheets that will help you to track every single day, maybe the amount and how much is in your investments or savings, or whatever your financial goal is, or there are apps that can help you stay on track. Whatever you choose to do, tracking your progress is going to be absolutely key. But I want to also mention here that if you have a day, a week, a month or even a year sounds like I'm singing the Friends intro but if you do have a period of time where you do fall off, it's okay it. But if you do have a period of time where you do fall off, it's okay.

Speaker 0: 5:17

It's all about how you get back on and how you push forward and things, because we are human. There are months where I spend more and there are months where I spend less. But it's being kind to yourself on the months or weeks or days where you don't reach the goals that you have and figuring out okay, how do I get back on track to still reach that bigger goal? And then, lastly, is staying motivated. Oh my gosh, this is the biggest thing.

Speaker 0: 5:35

I always talk about the importance and the difference between motivation and discipline. Motivation is that feeling that you get where you're like right, I'm so motivated I want to achieve this goal. I'm going to save all my money or I'm going to go to the gym and be in the gym for three hours. Whatever your goal is, that is when you're motivated. However, motivation is fleeting. I'll tell you one thing I didn't want to come in front of the camera today. I had zero motivation. However, my discipline meant that I showed up and I achieved my goal of recording this podcast episode.

Speaker 0: 6:09

So staying motivated is not always easy, but I'd say there's a few things that I do to stay motivated on my journey, whether it's financial, physical, whatever goals I'm trying to achieve. Number one is that I break down my big goal into smaller goals. Usually, weekly and monthly is my favourite, so I have a week goal and a month goal that both feed in to the overarching year, two year, five year goal that I have in mind. On top of that, I usually get an accountability partner, so that is someone that I've said right. This is my goal. Can you help me stay on track to reach X, thing that I'm working towards? And also, on top of that, I love to vision board. Vision boarding is something that I've been doing for years and I love it because you can visualize what you're working towards.

Speaker 0: 6:49

So I usually have on my wall by my bed the things that I'm working towards, whether it's in my work, whether it's personally, what I'm trying to save up for knowing what I'm working towards and those days where you're like oh I can't be bothered to put money away, oh, I could just go out and spend it. Having it on your wall or even on your phone wallpaper is a reminder as to why you're doing this journey and why you're working towards this goal. So I'd highly recommend that you incorporate one, if not all of these things help you stay motivated on the journey and just remember that discipline is gonna be the thing that carries you to the end. Motivation is great when you have it, but the chances are you won't have it a lot. So try and stay disciplined on this journey.

Speaker 0: 7:31

Hopefully that helps you to really hit your goals this year. I'm so excited. Let me know in the episode comments what goals you're working towards. That will also help me to know what content I can give to you to help you to reach those goals and maybe create a safe space in the community where we can all come together and motivate each other and be digital accountability partners. So, yeah, let me know in the comments. If you're listening on Spotify, drop us a message on Instagram or TikTok and we'll be back again tomorrow with another episode on Christmas day of the 12 Days of Finance. Bye, guys.