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The title of this blog seems like a simple question. What are your financial goals? Have you ever actually written your goals down and come up with a written plan to reach them? So many people haven’t.

The first step toward reaching your goals is knowing what they are. You should absolutely make a list of anything you think you might need to save for. And it might seem like an obvious thing, but it is important that you speak with your loved ones about your goals. It’s not necessarily a safe assumption to say that you and your spouse have the same goals, particularly if you’ve never set aside time to sit down and talk about them. You might even want to make separate lists of your own personal goals first and then compare those lists. You can then have conversations about which goals should take priority.

Once you know the goals that are most important to you, put them into three categories—long term, mid term and short term. Next, rank your goals as they fall within each category. Maybe your mid term goals are saving for a house and saving for a boat. In most cases, saving for the house should take priority as you plan and figure out how much you can afford to set aside.

Once you have your list of priorities, you’ll need to work them into your written budget. It’s one thing to figure out how much you’ll need for a certain goal, but you also have to be realistic about how much your budget will allow you to set aside. Make sure you’ve taken care of your necessary monthly expenses, and then think about how much you can put into savings each month. In many cases, you’ll need to adjust your goals, or at least the time it may take to reach them after you’ve analyzed your monthly budget. Once you do all these things, you will be at a good starting point toward reaching whatever goals are important to you.

As you save, keep a written record of how close you are to reaching the goals you’ve set. The point to all this is coming up with a plan, writing down the plan, discussing the plan with your loved ones, and keeping written track of your progress. You don’t want to leave things to chance.