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Financial Goals for a Richer Life

Financial Goals for a Richer Life

Jenius Bank Team
Updated 12/1/2025
• Originally Published 12/28/2023
Financial WellnessMoney Management
Woman hiking on a mountain.
Celebrate every step and milestone along the way to achieving your financial goal. When you think about your future, you likely have goals that you’re trying to achieve. These could be personal like getting promoted at work or making time to exercise each morning. Or they could be financial, like paying off your student loans or buying a house.Setting financial goals for yourself may help you improve your financial wellness and live life to the fullest without needing to constantly check your bank account. That said, not all financial goals are created equal, and some may take longer to achieve than others.Not sure where to start? Let’s go over some common financial goals and tips that you could use to set and achieve the goals that matter most to you.

Key Takeaways

  • Your financial goals should be tailored to your unique needs, wants, and hopes for the future.
  • Your goals may change over time, so revisiting them and making sure they still align with your future plans is a must.
  • Monitoring your progress and celebrating milestones could help you stay motivated to achieve your goals.

What Are Financial Goals?

Financial goals are intentions that you set around your spending, saving, investing, and any other aspect of your money management. They’re something you work toward over time, and they could help you to keep your finances on track. When setting financial goals, aim for them to be clear, measurable, and most importantly, trackable. The easier it is to monitor your progress, the more potential you have to stay motivated.Setting goals may not seem like a huge priority when you’re trying to balance everything else in your life, but doing so may have benefits beyond your account balance, such as lowering your stress levels, creating healthy financial habits, and growing your wealth over time.1

Short vs Mid vs Long Term Goals

Financial goals can be a range of lengths, and most people choose to have one or two in each time frame. Here’s one way to think of goals in terms of timing.
  • Short-term financial goals: These tend to take anywhere from a few weeks to a year to achieve and are likely very tactical.
  • Mid-term financial goals: Typically, these take between one and five years to achieve and are designed to help you achieve financial stability while still focusing on growth.
  • Long-term financial goals: These goals often take five or more years to achieve and focus on preparing for the future.
Remember, these definitions are fluid: one person’s short-term goal may take longer for another.

Financial Goal Examples

Your financial goals should work to help you better your situation and may be different to the ones your family or friends have set. If you’re not sure where to start, here are some common goals.
  • Paying off credit card debt: Before most other money goals, it’s important to pay off your credit card balances until you no longer carry a balance on any of your cards. Getting out of high-rate debt may help you save on interest and could free up funds for other purposes.
  • Building a rainy day fund: Setting aside money for minor, unexpected costs—such as repairing a leaking appliance or fixing your car—is known as building a rainy-day fund. Simply put a bit of extra cash into an easily accessible savings account to protect your budget from month-to-month surprises.
  • Building an emergency fund: Emergency funds are put in savings for bigger emergencies, like losing your job, paying a surprise medical bill, or replacing an old car that died. Including an emergency fund among your financial goals could lower the chances of falling into debt due to unexpected costs and help keep you on track with your longer-term plans.
  • Saving for a vacation: Everyone has a list of dream destinations and bucket-list trips. Creating a travel fund may make these trips a reality sooner. You may place this goal in the short or mid-term bucket, depending on the overall price tag and when you plan to go.
  • Saving for a down payment: Saving money for a down payment on a house may take a few years, making it a great mid-term goal to set if you’re looking to exit the rental market.
  • Saving for retirement: Growing your retirement savings is an important long-term goal, whether you put money in a savings account, investments, or plan on opening a designated retirement account like an IRA. How much you save depends on the lifestyle you desire to have in retirement, and your ideas about this may evolve over time.
These are just a few of the most common financial goals you could incorporate into your personal finance strategy. If you still have questions about goals that would work for you, it’s a good idea to consult with your financial and tax advisors.

How to Set and Achieve Financial Goals – 4 Tips for Success

Every situation is unique and that means you should tailor your financial goals to meet your needs. Here are four tips that could help you set—and reach—your goals.

1. Specify What You Want to Achieve

Make your goals clear and exact. For example, instead of setting a generic goal of “save more,” consider making the goal “save $5,000 by the end of the year”. This makes the goal measurable and gives you a time frame. If you are setting goals with a partner, take time to discuss your individual and combined goals.

2. Use Time as a Money Advantage

It’s easy to assume that long-term financial goals can wait… after all, they are far in the future. But when it comes to any type of savings or investment, time is an important factor in the benefits of compounding. Therefore, don’t ignore the bigger picture when setting financial goals.Here’s an example using a compound interest calculator.2
  • Person A invests $50,000 at age 30 and the rate of return is 6%. Their balance at age 65 is $384,304, a gain of $334,238.
  • Person B invests $100,000 at age 40 and the rate of return is 6%. The ending balance is $429,187, a gain of $329,187.
In this example, all things being equal, if you were Person B, you’d be investing double and still have almost $5,000 less in gains.This example is only an illustration because, as we know, markets and their rates of return fluctuate.The key takeaway is that retirement savings need time to accumulate. Although retirement might seem far off, starting early gives your money more opportunity to grow. When deciding how to divide your savings between short-term and long-term goals, and determining when to begin saving for retirement, it's important to factor in how your earnings may increase over time.It’s certainly a delicate balance, and it’s important to consult a financial advisor to help you navigate your investment decisions.

3. It’s Smart to be Flexible

It’s always important to prioritize your efforts when goal setting. You’re likely to pursue multiple goals at once and knowing what’s most important helps in tough decision-making. But it’s also ok to make short-term tradeoffs here and there that make sense to you based on new information, timing, or your gut. Remember, you’re in the driver’s seat.You may decide that urgency trumps all other things. Perhaps the economy is unstable, and you feel you need an emergency fund. You may decide that all your savings flow into that fund until you’ve reached the goal. There’s nothing wrong with that call.Without an urgent need, you may instead decide to contribute equally to all your goals at once. For example, you may have a new car fund, a retirement fund, and a vacation fund. If they’re all equally as important to you, then you would likely split your savings equally.But let’s say you’re saving for a vacation in two months and want to have a down payment for a new car in the next year. Since the vacation is sooner, it makes sense to put more aside for that goal and less toward the down payment. Once you take the trip, you could reallocate the amount you put toward the trip towards your car goal. Of course, if your old car starts to make strange noises, you may choose to fly economy on that vacation!

4. Constantly Re-evaluate and Re-align

It’s good to check in on your goals from time to time and ensure they are still consistent with your money values. As you grow and evolve in life, your priorities and what’s important to you change too. It’s your life, and what you do with your money should work for you.

Tips for Attaining Your Goals

Setting goals is one thing. But reaching them is something else altogether. Here are a few tips that may help you achieve the goals you set.
  • Make them achievable: While it might be tempting to set goals that feel like a true reach, don’t set every goal to top difficulty. Instead, set goals that you’re reasonably able to accomplish and consider breaking larger goals into smaller tasks or milestones.
  • Track your progress: It’s typically easier to stay motivated when you see how much you’ve achieved. Get into the habit of tracking progress for each goal you set and celebrate when you reach different milestones.
  • Leave room for adjustments: Setbacks and roadblocks may pop up from time to time. Don’t let those setbacks derail your determination. Try to have a plan on hand for any obstacles you hit or give yourself space to reset your goals after you encounter a setback.

Final Thoughts

Setting financial goals may help you stay motivated to make smart money moves that impact your financial well-being in the long run. One solution that may help you achieve your financial goals even faster is choosing a high-yield savings account with a great rate. Open a Jenius Savings account and start saving today!