Dream Big

Who are the first people you think of when I say “successful person”? Chances are, you think of the famous people: Steve Jobs, Abraham Lincoln, Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Phelps, Tom Hanks, Adele, etc. Maybe you’ll swing back around to including a relative that isn’t so obviously successful, but more likely, you’ll think about the big names first. There is an endless amount of resources telling you about the habits, routines, diets, and life hacks of “highly successful people” so you can mimic them and be successful too. You’ll even find amazing stories of the failures of successful people that they overcame before they succeeded. But let me focus on the obvious element to success that we hear a lot: Successful people dream big.

Let’s look at what some of goals these people did NOT set. Steve Jobs never said: “I’ll get a job with a good pension, and I’ll comfortably retire at 65.” Michael Phelps never said: “I’ll just learn how to swim across the pool without drowning, and then I’ll stop swimming.” Adele never said: “I sound pretty good in my shower. But it’s a good thing no one else can hear me!”

Dreaming big changes you. It breaks down walls of “I can’t” and helps you explore possibilities with confidence.

So let’s talk about money and big dreams. Sure, you can dream about becoming an Olympic gold medalist or to have a chart-topping album, and those dreams will lead you to being financially successful in some ways, but there is another way to be financially successful. It’s called: saving money. Mr. T and I are working toward quickly saving lots of money so that we can dream big in anything we want to do and not have to worry about the money part of the equation. But our path to financial awesomeness doesn’t involve becoming famous. It involves simply saving money. Successful people in finances are people that have managed their finances well and have made money multiply, right? And you want to be a successful person. So, dream big.

Set your financial goals high. Maybe you want to retire with $10 million. Or maybe you want to retire with enough money to live AND buy a yacht. Or maybe you’d like to retire in 5 years, or 7 years, or 10 years. Maybe you just want to get out of all that debt once and for all. Break down the walls of impossibility and set your goals high. Our goals involve paying off our mortgage in 3+ years and having $500,000 in savings in 6+ years.

The problem with finances is that we are often guilty of not choosing a path at all. We know we want to have lot of money at some future date, but we fail to pinpoint how much we actually want and set at date as to when we want it. Sometimes we make large goals, but do nothing more than declare “I will be rich someday.” A lofty goal is only achievable by degrees. You will not declare yourself a millionaire and find it to be so without any other effort. Start with your big, lofty goals, and then break it into chunks. How much can you save this year to get there? $10,000/month would get you to $10 million in 28 years and $1,000/month will get you to $1 million in the same amount of time (assuming 7% interest). $6,000/month will get you to $1 million in just ten years and $500,000 in six years. Each month you’re able to save high rates, the more attainable your lofty goal becomes.

What if you Fail?

The awesome thing about saving money is that you can’t ever fail. Sure, maybe you won’t actually be able to retire in ten years with $10,000,000. Maybe Mr. T and I will fail, too. Maybe in 2022, we don’t have $500,000. What happens then? Then we’ll have a whole bunch of savings and a paid off house. Doesn’t sound like a total failure to me.

What we’ve discovered in less than a year on this lofty financial journey is there is no reason not to try. Nothing is stopping you. And setting big goals activates the mindset shift necessary to rethink priorities and evaluate what you really want in life. If the goal isn’t difficult, it won’t make you question anything and then you won’t be capable of achieving greatness. If Michael Phelps set a goal to go for a swim once a week, he would probably be able to easily achieve his goal. But he also wouldn’t be an Olympian. It’s the undertaking of something difficult that transforms us into beings of possibility rather than negativity. You can achieve great things. And that includes your finances.

What are your lofty financial goals?