How To Write Future Self Journals To Achieve Long-Term Goals

Future self journaling is an intuitive way for young professionals to keep them motivated for long-term goals. The whole process brings positive changes in your presence through a message from the future you. It may sound weird, but it is highly effective in aligning the lifestyle with financial goals.

To practice future self journaling, you must have set goals. A clear picture in mind about the investments, house, income, or car your future self should own.

Here is how you can start writing journals for the person you want to be in the future.

Writing Future Self Journals

You are not writing a regular journal where the daily activities are mentioned. As the name suggests, the writer is the future version of yourself. Therefore, style and aim are entirely different.

By keeping in the goals in mind, you must act in the present. Increase your savings each month if the future self is living in a bigger house. Use a blank journal and follow the steps mentioned below to write the perfect future journals.

Present Evaluation

At first, you need to evaluate the present financial situation considering the financial goals. There are plenty of questions that need to be answered to get a clear insight into the current situation. Your budget, savings, expenses, and career progression all need to be evaluated to get the right idea.

Your career is what leads you to achieve the goals. You must start as early as possible on the journey to your dream position. It may take a while to settle on a profession, but you must keep exploring at any cost.

A budget is essential to save enough for financial freedom. Check whether the current budget helps you save enough money in the end. If not, it is time to make changes in your spending habits.

Present evaluation is not a one-time job. You must do a regular assessment to track progress and find areas that need improvement. There is always some room for improvement, no matter how perfect the plan looks.

Use Motivation

Long-term goals require commitment and dedication for years. It is easy to give up and return to the living, paycheque-to-paycheque lifestyle. Therefore, you must have a plan to keep yourself motivated.

A reward after a small milestone is an excellent way to keep the motivation. For example, buy yourself dinner in the favorite restaurant for every £1,000 saved. Make sure the gift doesn’t end up as an unnecessary purchase that too over expansive.

Put motivational quotes in your room or mobile phone wallpaper. They will remind you of regular intervals about the changes needed to make. A motivational song each day can be beneficial in keeping the morale high.

Induce Positive Habits

The personal evaluations should have listed a few bad habits that put needless stress on your finances. You need to target these habits and replace them slowly but surely. Too many changes at a time can be overwhelming and derailing.

Start your day early, do a little exercise, eat healthy food, and increase the efficiency at work. All these habits will help progress in professional life directly or indirectly. Remember, without progression in your career, and your long-term goals may never come true.

In the end, change the habit of overspending and the use of a credit card each month. It is wiser to take bad credit loans with an instant decision in Ireland. The reason is a much lower interest rate and installments to repay the loan.

Work on Strategies

Creating strategies is not a strong suit for many people. It may sound intimidating at first, but it is essential to make amends in the current lifestyle. You can start with some short-term strategy as a start.

Target the liabilities and create a plan to repay them aggressively. Also, the money saved on installments will give a boost to the savings each month. Try debt consolidation loan or mortgage refinancing to pay off the high-interest loans.

Keep an eye on every expense to curb the overall spending. Act like the future self to control the temptation to buy stuff that brings no value. An effective strategy while shopping can save you hundreds of pounds each month, even on the essentials.

Set Realistic Goals

Unrealistic goals are a significant reason for the failure of future self journaling. You cannot expect to reduce the outings from daily to zero. They create excessive stress on budgeting which may lead to loss of purpose.

Spend at least 30 minutes brainstorming realistic financial goals. You will find many of them don’t require a true minimalistic lifestyle.

To Conclude

In the end, you will have the content to the right in your future self journal. It will take some time before you find the tone. After that, it will be a fun activity that will push you toward financial freedom.