I have the pleasure of being the featured blogger on Geezeo discussing tracking financial goals. I have also agreed to write a monthly update for Geezeo. You can track my progress on their blog and I’ll link to it as they are posted. Thanks for the invitation Geezeo! Goal setting and tracking has become a personal passion of mine, partially born out of the fact I use to set a lot of goals and never reach them, and I wanted to share an excerpt from my post:

“...First, my goals are time-specific to achieving certain goals by year-end. I avoided front-loading all my goals to a short period of time for a reason: good goal setting is not a short-term exercise. If I set out long term goals, I am consistently thinking of them and working toward it.

I believe I am setting myself up for failure if I set goals which I have to achieve in a short period of time. Life happens. Something is always going to come up which hinders our abilities to reach our goals whether it is a health issues, family emergency, changing jobs etc. If we set goals that have to be met short-term, and we fail to achieve them, it can shatter our confidence. Goals which have to be achieved in longer periods of time allow me to think about them one day at a time and in more “bite sized” pieces. As I meet each bite sized piece in the larger goal, I am gaining more confidence every day.

The other point I wanted to share with your readers is the Pareto Principle also applies in goals setting. Most of us know this principle as the “80-20” rule: 80% of our results are from 20% of our efforts. There may be long stretches of time where I may not be doing anything to reach my goal. As I stated above, I am waiting out the market. It is not necessary to always be in motion in goal setting. A lot of goals can be reached in short spurts of activity.”

Check out the rest of the post. Thanks.

Geezeo is part of the growing trend to offer on-line personal financial tools. If you are not familiar with it, a user uploads their bank account information to the site, sets personal finance goals and as your bank account information is updated daily, so is your progress towards your goal. There are also groups and discussion forms you can join. I would review the security features of the site and do your own due diligence to determine whether you are comfortable using this site.

I also mentioned Stickk in my interview which was first brought to my attention in Money Sense magazine. You make a contract with yourself on-line on your goals, appoint referees and make a wager that you can reach the goal- if you win the wager, you keep your money. If you lose your wager, it gets donated to a charity.

One last link which isn’t an on-line goal tracking tool per se but a great visualization tool. Dividends4Life posted a workable spreadsheet which allows the user to picture their net worth based on contribution and assumed rate of returns (please read his disclaimer before you use it). It is a great illustration of the power of contributing even a little early rather than a lot later. For those who often worry about their cash flow and do not invest even small sums of money, the model should illustrate that this short-term thinking has long term ramifications.

I did notice one theme in a lot of on-line tools- goal planning being a social activity. Peer pressure and being accountable to others keeps us focused and honest. My only caveat is please don’t delegate achieving goals to your social group/accountability partner. It is still your responsibility to set goal setting meetings and put an honest effort into reporting. Do not presume that because it is now a social activity someone else should push you along.

I am a real Luddite. I still prefer personal contact to meet my goals. I have accountability buddies to help me out on that. No matter what methods we use (telephone, lunches, round-tables), we always stress that it is up to the individual to take responsibility.

The above links are presented as information only and examples of tools available. Everyone has a favorite goal tracking tool so find one that you can work with best. Good luck.

Are you using any on-line tools for goal planning and setting? If so, what are you using and how is it working?