When I started working as a financial planner in 1996, I came across a man called Nick Murray.  Murray wrote a few books aimed at financial planners and spoke at a number of industry events.  One of the concepts he talked about was the ‘Five Great Goals of Life‘.

Murray has similar philosophies to me when it comes to personal finance – money is simply a means to an end.  The important part is understanding what you want your money to do – what are those things that you want to do with your money?

He suggests there are five things that people are trying to do with their money.  Some people have only one or two of these goals, others may have three or four and some clients can identify with all five.  You may not feel strongly about all of them, but I’m sure you can identify with some of these.

The Five Great Goals of Life

• 1. The endowment of a long, comfortable, and totally worry-free retirement, with no compromise in lifestyle, and no real concern about ever running out of money.
• 2. The need/desire to intervene meaningfully in the financial lives of one’s children, during one’s lifetime and/or in the form of legacies.
• 3. The ability to fund, in whole or large part, the education of one’s grandchildren.
• 4. The capability to provide quality care to one’s parents in their later years.
• 5. The ability to make a meaningful legacy to a much-loved school, church, charity or other institution.

(Source: Nick Murray: ‘The Excellent Investment Adviser)

Have a think about these five goals.

Which ones do you feel strongly about?  How will you feel when you achieve them?  What if you couldn’t achieve them – how would that affect you?

Planning for the Five Great Goals of Life

From a financial planning perspective, none of these goals will happen by accident.  They each require careful planning, and time to come to fruition.  In most cases, you may find that you need to save more today – and begin living on less – in order to have the capital to do the things you want in your future.

Take some time to think about what these goals mean to you.  Don’t impose any limits on your thinking, but think about what you’d like to be able to do if money were no object.

For most people, the first goal is a high priority. You don’t want to worry about running out of money in retirement and you probably don’t want to feel like you need to make lifestyle compromises in order to retire.

For some people, there’s a real desire to help their kids or grandchildren. This may not be financial help – it could be in other forms. For many parents, this comes in the form of wanting to make sure their children have a good education and helping to pay for school and university fees.

It’s not about the money

Importantly, these goals aren’t about money. They’re about being able to do and experience things. That’s an important thing to understand and reinforces my philosophy that money is just a means to an end.

Hopefully, some of these five great goals of life are motivating enough to you to make you start saving or making changes in your life to be able to do these things in the future. It’s all about making a plan today to make your future great.

Over To You

What do you think about the Five Great Goals of Life? Do they reasonate with you? Do you have other goals that are important to you?

Please leave a comment below to let us know how you feel about these.