Much has been written about setting goals in your life and designing your destiny instead of relying on fate to fulfil all your dreams and desires. It is no wonder that so much has been written about goal setting, as it is very important and is often neglected. But before you can plan your journey towards your goal, you will need to know where you are.
Imagine a man who is dropped off from a helicopter in a forest and is told to find the watchtower. He has never been to this particular forest and he does not know where the watchtower is. To help him a bit, he is given a map of the forest with his drop-off position and the position of the watchtower marked – but there is a catch : the map is drawn by a 5-year old and is consequently very imprecise and perhaps even unreliable. Do you think he would have a hard time finding the watchtower? Do you think he would be faster and more efficient if he had a professionally drawn map with height contours, roads and pathways through the forest? You bet he would!
I think most people have a pretty good sense of where they are emotionally compared to where they want to be and this despite the fact that emotional awareness is neither simple nor easy to acquire. I think nobody has a good sense of where they are spiritually, as spiritual development tends to only reveal itself in hindsight. Financially there is probably only very few who have a good sense of where they are and that is really a shame as developing your financial map is more or less “a walk in the park” compared to the emotional or spiritual map.
One area I am focusing on in 2006 is to get more structured at handling my finances. I want to eliminate the idea that money is something to get (and spend!) every month, and instead develop the idea that money is something that should be used to design my financial map. I want to see progress in every area of my life and money is no exception. So the map I want to design is one that involves using money to continually increase my net worth and only sparingly for being a “good consumer”. If you are not familiar with the term “net worth”, just think of it as a number that indicates how much money you could get if you sold everything you own and paid off all your debt, this amount might be negative!.
I am currently developing a website to help me construct my financial map. It will be a place where I can weekly or monthly type in my assets, my liabilities, my positive cash flow and my negative cash flow – and in return the web-application will show me charts of my financial development and these charts will help me get a clear picture of how my finances have developed and where my finances are currently. I am not sure whether I will make this website public or just use it for my own personal use but if I make it public I will not forget to mention it in my blog 
Of course you do not need a fancy website for doing this, you can use pen and paper or a spreadsheet like Microsoft Excel, but since I plan on using this application very often to keep track of my financial progress, I want a solution that is as easy and intuitive to use as possible and making my own is the way to go for me. Whatever is your preferred method, you should make it a high priority to get clear about your finances and get rid of the headaches and frustration money trouble can cause.
