To download a printable version of this transcript, click here.
 
iQuestions Faculty, Ron Blue 
 
 
Question: 
 
Why don’t people set financial goals? 
 
Answer: 
 
It’s been estimated that only 3% of Americans have written goals. It 
has been my experience over the years as I have dealt with people, 
that there are probably four primary reasons people don’t set goals. 
 
The first one is a fear of failure. You know, if I don’t set a goal, then I 
can’t fail. So, I would suggest that, first of all, you deal with this whole 
issue of a fear of failure. 
 
The second one is the concern that it may take a whole lot of time. 
When we start thinking about goals, we think about, “My goodness, 
this is going to take me forever.” But I would suggest to you that 
everybody already knows what their goals are, and when I have 
spoken to audiences, I have said, “I’ll give you three minutes to write 
down your life-time goals”—most people don’t take the full three 
minutes to do it.  
 
The third reason that they don’t set goals is, “Well, what goals do I set 
and how do I set goals?” Setting goals is really nothing more than 
recording what’s in your heart and what’s in your mind—so, what’s in 
your heart and what’s in your mind are the goals you should have.  
 
And then lastly, from a financial standpoint, is, “What goals should I 
set financially?” And I would submit that are only five things you can 
do with money. You can give it away, you can pay your taxes, you can 
 
pay off your debt, you can save it, or you can spend it on your 
lifestyle.  
 
And so, the question is, when it comes to setting goals is, “How much 
do I want to give?” “How do I want to do my tax planning?” “How do I 
want to handle my debt?” “What type of lifestyle should I have?” and, 
“What do I want to save for the future — how much do I want to set 
aside for the future?” 
 
When you think of the future, there are just a few things that are big 
in the future—perhaps it’s financial independence, perhaps it’s a 
college education for your children, perhaps it’s retirement, perhaps 
it’s paying off your mortgage, perhaps it’s increasing your giving. 
There’s only about five or six things in the long term that are really 
important to people.  
 
So, there are four reasons that people don’t set goals, and I would 
suggest to you that you could overcome those four reasons just by 
starting the process of recording your goals. 
 
Page -2- 
To download a printable version of this transcript, click here.