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Goal Setting

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FINANCIAL PLANNING SERIES – Part 3

  • 3-minute read

In the last part, we talked about the importance of planning. In this part, we will now discuss the first step in financial planning, which is setting your goal.

Every plan starts with a goal.

A goal is what you are planning for. It is your WHY, WHERE and WHAT: Why do you do what you do? Why do you want to invest? What do you want to achieve? Where do you see yourself 5 or 10 years from now.

Goal is like the location in your map that’s marked X. It’s what you want to achieve at the end of your journey. For example, your goal every morning is to get to your office on time. Thus your office is your X.

However, when planning, you cannot simply put just any goal. It has to be a SMART goal – it must be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic/Relevant, and Time-bound.

For example, when buying a car, you don’t simply say, “I’ll buy a car”, and then buy just any brand and model you set your eyes on, unless you have unlimited resources to splurge on.

Usually when we buy a car, we first check out the brand and model that we prefer. We also factor in our budget, and to some extent, a justification of why we need to buy a car.

Let’s say, all things considered, you’ve finally decided to buy a car. You then set your goal as follows:

To buy a red 2020 Perodua Bezza 1.0 Standard G – A/T in 2 years time.

Going back to the SMART Goal test, you should be able to answer these questions:

  • Is it specific?

The color of the car is specified, as well as the brand, model and other specifics such as the year it was made, the transmission, and etc. The timeline of the goal is also mentioned, which is 2 years.

  • Is it measurable?

It is measurable as you can easily track your progress as to how much money do you need to save to buy this car that you want and how much time do you need to save that money.

It is measurablel because other specifications of the car that you want are already mentioned, such as the color, the engine type, transmission type and etc.

  • Is it attainable?

It’s not like you’re planning to buy a spaceship in 2 year’s time given your current salary. It’s a car that’s below RM 40,000, which you plan to buy after 2 years of saving up.

  • Is it realistic or relevant?

It is realistic as you know you are capable of buying this car. It is also relevant, especially if you work and live in Malaysia, wherein owning a car is somehow a necessity.

  • Is it time-bound?

It is time-bound. You are giving yourself a deadline of 2 years to buy that car.  

When setting a goal for your financial plans, you can follow the steps above. Don’t simply set a goal such as “To have a better future”. Your investment or financial goal could be to pay off your RM20,000 loan in 3 years or to set up your milk tea franchise worth RM100,000 in five years time inside Queen’s Bay Mall – the key is to be specific as much as possible.

Next we’ll be talking about assessing your financial situation to achieve your goal. We will discuss the steps on how you can do it and some tools you can use to make this process easy and quick for busy people like you.

You can check the second part of our Financial Planning Series, “Financial Habits in Malaysia and Around the World”, here.

You can also watch the first video of our Financial Planning Series here.  

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Importance of Planning

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FINANCIAL PLANNING SERIES – Part 2

  • 3-minute read

We all do planning in our lives. Even the simple listing down of our day-to-day tasks is an act of planning.

However, when it comes to financial planning feels like a painstaking labour that we oftentimes opt not to do it. Perhaps, some simply lack the knowledge and understanding of how to do it. Others, may think that financial planning is only for those who have the monetary resources, to begin with. While the rest probably think it’s not necessary as they’re busy already busy with their lives.

Why do we plan?

Planning is an essential part of one’s journey — investment journey included. A plan gives you a clearer view of the end you want to achieve. If along the way you lost sight of your goal, your plan will keep you on track as this serves as your treasure map. A plan will help you understand why you started the investment in the first place, where you want to use this investment and how do you want to use it.

Like a map or blueprint, a plan lets you visualize where you’re at now, where you want to be or what you want to achieve in the future (could be in the next few weeks, months or even years), and what you need to do to get to that endpoint. 

That said, planning is how you draw your way to your end goal. It gives you a picture of how you can get from one point to another, your other options, and what you need to bring with you as you go along your journey.

Conceptually, planning itself is simple and easy. For example, if you need to go someplace you haven’t been to, you’ll find out how to get there, which routes will take you there the fastest and the most cost-efficient way, and what time you should set off to go there. Once you’ve decided all of these, then all there’s left to do is to execute the plan – so you go there following the route, the mode of transportation, and the time you’ve chosen.

Planning or a plan only gets complicated when there are obstacles along the way or when a part of the plan turns out to be not viable.  It is because of these very roadblocks that we actually plan.

During the course of planning, you’ll also get to list down or at least get familiarized with alternative routes and solutions. Remember that a plan is not just always Plan A – there should also be Plan B and Plan C and so on.

For example, when following the recipe of a dish, you get to see what ingredients you already have and what ingredients you still need to buy. If for some reason a particular ingredient is hard to come by, you can immediately assess whether it can be substituted with another ingredient or not and whether you can do without that ingredient. With the recipe as your plan, you need not waste so much time, effort, and money guessing the next steps.

Now that you have a clearer understanding of why planning is an essential part of your investment journey, we’ll now list down the steps you can follow to commence your financial planning in the next parts of this financial planning series. Stay Tuned.

You can check the first part of our Financial Planning Series, “Financial Habits in Malaysia and Around the World”, here.

You can also watch the first video of our Financial Planning Series here.

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Financial Habits in Malaysia and Around the World

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FINANCIAL PLANNING SERIES – Part 1

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In 2020, a survey launched by the financial literacy platform Multiply showed that 70% of Malaysians require financial literacy support[1]. Of the areas where Malaysians need help the most, budgeting and savings were noted as the most common issues.

Another survey conducted by Ringgit Plus in 2021 shows that 50% of Malaysians cannot survive for more than 3 months on their savings alone. The same survey, also, shows that only 15% of the Malaysians believe that their Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF) is sufficient for the rest of their retirement years.  Of those who believe their EPF won’t be enough, 45% of them have not even started planning for their retirement[2].

Around the world, financial literacy seems to be a major issue, too.  Based on a survey conducted by OECD in 2020 across 26 countries from Asia, Europe, and Latin America, only 26% of the adults surveyed were able to answer questions on simple and compound interest correctly[3].

As the Covid-19 pandemic continues more people are losing jobs or getting pay cuts; as such financial literacy has been put at the forefront and the need to learn financial planning has been underscored.

The low financial literacy rate globally is such an irony given the efforts by international private organizations and charities to improve the global financial literacy rate[4]. Some countries such as the United Kingdom integrate financial literacy into their early education programmes. There are efforts in the United States, as well, to make personal finances a part of the early education curriculum, improve mitigation and retirement planning. Some financial institutions, fintech or software firms, financial advisors, and even some private individuals are developing platforms, apps, and/or online sources that aim at educating people about financial planning. In the video-sharing and social media platform, YouTube, alone, one can find about 388 million videos that talk about financial planning and how to do it.

If you are a part of the statistics that haven’t started thinking about your future and finances yet, the current global outlook should be motivation enough for you to consider financial planning. While we’re all starting to live our lives amidst the Covid pandemic, we never know when this will end or if we will need to brave another storm in the near future.

As a gold investment company, EION Management is joining the efforts in upskilling people’s financial knowledge and skills. In the next parts of this series, we will walk you through the steps in financial planning and we’ll be giving you tips and available tools online to make this process easy for you.

You can check the second part of our Financial Planning Series, “Importance of Planning” here.

You can also watch the first video of our Financial Planning Series here.

  • [1] https://www.theedgemarkets.com/article/creador-70-malaysians-need-financial-literacy-support
  • [2] https://ringgitplus.com/en/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/RinggitPlus-Financial-Literacy-Survey-2021.pdf
  • [3] https://www.ft.com/content/45f075ba-eb9d-4fb1-b5d9-454d435a5e55
  • [4] https://www.ft.com/content/45f075ba-eb9d-4fb1-b5d9-454d435a5e55