4 Smart Ways To Meet Your Financial Goals

Setting financial goals is very important in life because this way, you can work on them. To make the most out of your financial goals, it’s important that you put a time frame and price tag to each goal. Then identify the appropriate investment strategies to meet your goals. Though circumstances in everyone’s life are different, there are few steps to create a strategy to meet financial goals such as:

1. Identify your short, medium and long term financial goals.
2. Make an estimate how much the goals will cost you.
3. Make a separate savings accounts and investment for each goal.
4. Pick the investment strategy that is best suited to meet your goals according to your risk tolerance and time frame available.

Short-term goals are relatively easy to plan than long-term goals. For long-term goals, you need to consider the impact of inflation. There are many available investment plans that can help you in reaching your financial goals. Here are some of the investment plans beneficial for you:

1. Saving investment plans – Savings plan is popular because it offers good and steady results. These are also called as endowment plans because they provide guaranteed returns. This investment option is best suited for the people having the risk appetite. People investing in endowment plans also enjoy tax benefits.
2. Unit linked insurance plan (ULIP) – A few years back, ULIPs were not very favoured investment options as there are various charges like allocation charges, policy charges, etc related to it. However, it has evolved now, and now there are zero allocation charges for this type of investment. In addition, it lets you have complete control of the money. You also get to switch between the funds according to their market performance. These kinds of investment plans are suitable for long term investments, as they are disciplined and systemic. There are triple benefits of investing in ULIPs – life cover, great returns and tax exemptions.
3. Public Provident Fund (PPF) – PPF is one of the most popular investment options in the current time. Investing in PPF allows you to enjoy – exemption, because the contribution, maturity and interest proceeds are tax exempted. However, PPF is linked to government bonds, so it is a good investment option but not the only one.
4. RDs- For short term goals like vacations, RDs are the best kind of investment. This is a good way to form a regular saving habit. The interest rate is decent, and it has some tax benefits.

Sometimes people delay investments and wait to have enough money for the investment, but no matter how small the amount is, starting investing early is highly beneficial. There is no right time to start investing, the earlier, the better.