Smart Goals My Goals For The Next Five Years

Setting goals: SMART

Setting goals is an important part of moving forward in life. Martin Luther King Jr. once said: "If you can't fly then run, if you can't run then walk, if you can't walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward." Of course, all of us would like to fly forward and reach our goals easily. But often long-term goals take a great deal of work to achieve, and are the cumulation of a series of short-term goals that are undertaken step-by-step. My ultimate personal goal in life is to be a good mother to my son and to financially as well as personally support him on his journey to becoming a pilot while I pay off my house. My long-term academic goal is to complete my major successfully. I am studying to be a respiratory therapist. My long-term professional goal is to become an anesthesiologist.

All of my goals are interrelated. For example, my long-term personal goal of paying off of my house and supporting my son will be supported by my long-term career goal of becoming an anesthesiologist. These goals are important to me because I want...

To accomplish these goals, I will try to set aside more money every month, and keep to a strict budget. My intermediate goal is to identify extraneous and unneeded expenses and put more money towards my mortgage payments and my son's education. To accomplish this in the short-term, I will write down everything that I buy and make it a goal to reevaluate and reduce the discretionary parts of my budget, like food costs. Of course, one challenge is that the cost of living is increasing and I may meet with unexpected expenses that deplete my savings. If that is the case, I may need to find part-time work, sell some of my personal possessions, or take other actions to stick to my savings budget. And in the very long-term, I hope that improving my own vocational prospects will enable me to make more money and to save more money.
My second long-term goal is to successfully complete my major as a respiratory therapist. To succeed in my classes I must be very organized about completing assignments on time and setting aside time…