By now you’ve put in a lot of work defining your goals, prioritizing them and calculating the costs. It’s finally time to implement!
Here’s the steps we’ve already covered:
Step 6: Track Your Progress
Create a tracking chart. One of the best ways to make sure that you are making progress on your new dollar plan is to hold yourself accountable.
Calculate planned values. Copy the grid that you set up previously but add a new line for each goal. One line will be planned, the other actual. Replace your current columns with columns for each year of the plan and fill in the planned total at the end of each year.
Enter actuals each year. A year from now, fill in your totals and make sure you are on track. I like to use graphs to track my changes over time.
Revisit and refine your goals. Periodically you’ll want to update your goals as they change over time. I usually like to update ours every year or every other year.
My Example
Here’s what my new grid would look like in the example. I skipped right from year 6 to the final year in the example; you’ll have as many columns as you have years in your plan.
| Goals |
Year 1 |
Year 2 |
Year 3 |
Year 4 |
Year 5 |
Year 6 |
Final Year |
Early Retirement
Planned |
$22k |
$46k |
$71k |
$99k |
$129 |
$161k |
$1 million |
| Actual |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Build a new house
Planned |
$22k |
$45k |
$69k |
$94k |
$120k |
|
|
| Actual |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Buy a new car
Planned |
$1875 |
$3778 |
$5710 |
$7671 |
$9661 |
$11,681 |
$13,750 |
| Actual |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
That’s it! Now it’s just a matter of saving the money for your goals! Enjoy the process of saving and you’ll have fun working toward your goals.
For those of you that created plans, I’d love to hear about them!
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