This one is for all my fellow planners! Within the last few years, my husband and I have found a tremendous amount of value in sitting down to write a five-year plan for our family. In this plan, we include personal goals, professional goals, financial goals, trips we want to take, and needs of our kiddos. Here are my top takeaways for why you should make a family five-year plan for your family!
“If you do not know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere.”- Henry A. Kissinger
Direction: It is easy to keep going along doing the same thing every year with no direction in where you are going. Taking a moment to ask what you want for the next few years helps create a roadmap of what life you want to create for your family, relationship, kids, professionally, and for fun. Mapping out your goals sets an intentionality to life.
Reflection: I tend to keep moving forward and think about the next item that needs to be completed on my to-do list (especially during the holiday season.) This is a great opportunity to look back at how far we’ve come as a couple, individually, and as a family. It also gives each person a moment to pause to evaluate what is fulfilling and how to create a more joy filled life.
Methodology: I created a spreadsheet with the year, goals, kids ages, milestones/ extracurricular activities for the kids, and financial goals for the family. From there, my husband and I discuss the timeline we envisioned from the previous year. We check off what has been accomplished and what has changed since last year. Is there a new desire to go on a trip that we need to save for? Is it time to finally work on that house project we’ve wanted to do since buying the house? This is a great opportunity to evaluate what we want, what has worked, and the timeline of achieving those goals!
Timing: We typically look at the 5 Year Plan a couple times a year to stay on track with what we hope to accomplish. Towards the end of the year, my husband and I will sit down and talk about what we want in the coming year and move around the timeline of our goals and what we want to accomplish.
“The great majority of people are “wandering generalities” rather than “meaningful specifics”. The fact is that you can’t bit a target that you can’t see. If you don’t know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else. You have to have goals.” – Zig Ziglar
