When talking to most millennials about their financial goals, the conversation seems pretty unbalanced. The list of short-term goals seems to be at the top of the list and very rarely does long-term goals even come up other than buying a home. In many ways, it does make sense to focus on the goals that can be achieved sooner to get that burst of accomplishment. But at what point are we going to focus on our long-term goals other than just our short-term ones?
With social media and commercials always trying to sell us something, our attention span is getting shorter and shorter. And our time frame of achieving our goals is getting shorter as well. Meaning, most millennials are looking for the fast route for long-term success. You can see this with the number of millennials who have turned a long-term goal of buying a home into a short-term goal. Consequently, 63% of millennials who rushed into homeownership are now regretting it mainly due to unseen maintenance costs. A lot of these unseen costs could have been manageable expenses if our focus is shifted from short-term to long-term.
So, how do we stop this cycle of living short-term-to-short-term goal? Well, it comes with balancing out our mindset towards how we achieve our goals. Here are a few actionable tips I want you to practice to get out of this funk.
1. Update your old childhood goals
2. Get out of debts
3. Create goals with your present and future in mind
4. Get a balanced list of short-term and long-term goals
5. Gain knowledge