Your Money Reset Part 3 - Envision Your Dream Life and Set SMART Goals

Let’s do a quick recap.. By now, you’ve already laid the foundations of your financial reset.

In Part One, you reviewed your financial year - the wins, the challenges, the patterns that shaped your decisions.

In Part Two, you explored your money story and defined the values that matter most to you.

Together, these steps have given you something powerful: clarity.

Clarity about where you’re starting, what motivates you, and what you want to carry with you into the year ahead.

Now it’s time to take that clarity and look forward.

A new year invites us to dream bigger. To imagine a life that feels more aligned, more intentional, and more you.

But dreaming alone isn’t enough.

To bring those dreams to life, you need a financial plan that turns intention into action.

Not a long list of resolutions you’ll forget by February. Not a vague hope that “this year will be different.”

But a roadmap rooted in who you are and where you want to go.

Today, we take one of the most exciting steps in your reset: envisioning your dream life and transforming it into SMART financial goals that will guide your next chapter.

To show you how this works in practice, we’ll walk through one example step by step so you can follow along and apply the same process to your own life.

Ready? Let’s get started!

From Vision to Direction: Start With Your Dream Life

Your financial plan becomes powerful when it stops being abstract and starts being personal.

Before setting goals, start with the bigger picture. And that’s starts with envisioning your dream life.

A great way to start, is by looking at the core values you wrote down from part 2 of this series. What do you want more of?

Step 1. Envision your dream life

Imagine:

• Where you live
• How you work
• What your days feel like
• What financial freedom looks like

Let yourself picture the version of your life you desire without shrinking.

This isn’t about perfection — it’s about direction.

Step 2. Write down all your goals

Next, take everything in your head and put it on paper.

Nothing is too big or too small.

Now it’s your turn to write down all your own goals.

At this stage, there’s no structure just honesty. And that’s intentional because everything belongs.

Step 3. Sort your goals

Now we add clarity by sorting your goals into must-haves and nice-to-haves.

Must-haves = are goals that create stability or deeply aligned with your values

Nice-to-haves = are meaningful, but flexible.

Must-Haves: Build Stability First

Must-haves are the goals that protect you. They create stability, reduce stress, and give you room to breathe financially.

These are the foundations that make everything else possible.

Typical must-haves include things like building an emergency fund, paying off high-interest debt, or covering upcoming unavoidable expenses.

Nice-to-Haves: Build the Life You Want

Nice-to-haves are the goals that add joy, freedom, and possibility to your life.

They’re meaningful and important but flexible.

This might look like a longer trip, upgrading your home, starting a passion project, or giving yourself more lifestyle freedom. They’re also important but they don’t need to happen immediately to keep you financially secure.

Now it’s your turn:

This step helps you stop treating all goals as equally urgent.

Step 4. Sort by timeline

When you sorted your goals into must-haves and nice-to-haves, you already did the most important part of prioritising.

Must-haves come first because they protect your financial stability.

These are goals that reduce stress and risk like building an emergency fund or paying off high-interest debt.

Without them, everything else feels fragile.

Nice-to-haves come later because they’re flexible.

They add joy, freedom, or growth, but they don’t need to happen immediately to keep you safe.

Now, it’s your turn to add a timeline to your goals:

‍‍Step 5. Turn each into a SMART goal

Now to the final moment where your vision turns into something real!

Big goals often fail because they’re too vague.

“Save more” sounds good but it doesn’t tell you what to do, when to do it, or how you’ll know you’re making progress.

That’s where SMART goals come in.

SMART goals are:

• Specific — Clear and concrete. What exactly are you saving for?
• Measurable — A number you can track. How much per month?
• Achievable — Realistic for your income and life right now.
• Relevant — Aligned with your values and priorities.
• Time-bound — A clear timeframe that creates momentum.

When goals are this clear, they’re easier to act on and easier to stick to.

This is where dreaming becomes doing. Where your financial reset stops being an idea and becomes a plan you can actually follow.

‍Step 6. Take Action: Turn Your Goals Into Progress

Finally, decide how these goals work together. But don’t try to do everything at once.

• Choose one or two of the must-haves goals to focus on first. The ones that would make the biggest difference right now.
• Break it down into a simple monthly amount or step.

Now, it’s your turn:

You don’t need to work on everything at once. A good plan is focused, flexible, and realistic.

From Goals to Daily Action

With your goals now clear, intentional, and aligned with the life you want, your roadmap is beginning to take shape.

You’ve done something powerful: you’ve decided where you want your money to take you.

Head to the discussion threads to share what you’re working toward, ask questions, and learn from others on the same journey.

What’s next?

Goals don’t live in a journal. They live in your everyday life. In your rent, your groceries, your subscriptions, your spending habits.

That’s why Part 4 is all about budgeting.

In the next part of this series, we’ll show you how to build a budget using the 50/30/20 rule.

A simple, flexible framework that helps your monthly money support the goals you’ve just set!

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