Goals: Thinking, writing, modelling
POSSESSING clear aspirations is better than having none. But what subsequent steps can supercharge our ambitions? On Sept 10, 2019 I jumped off a bridge and fell 43 metres. On that crisp, clear Southern Hemisphere spring day, I was 55 years, 3 months, and 3 weeks old. More than 30 years before I had set myself a mental goal of experiencing a terrifying drop over a body of water with elastic cables tied to my ankles. But over the decades that aspiration faded into barely remembered obscurity until the opportunity arose during a holiday.
My leap of faith — in the skill set of the safety team — was a bungy jump off the Kawarau Bridge about 23 km outside Queenstown in New Zealand’s South Island. (Note: “bungee” is the more common global spelling of this extreme sport but in New Zealand and some other countries, “bungy” is used.)
Fast forward a couple of months to Nov 16, 2019 when I FINALLY solved a 3-by-3 Rubik’s cube by getting all six colours — white, yellow, red, orange, blue and green — in the correct order. My first “solve” came 39 years after I tried repeatedly, always failing, with my new Rubik’s cube while in Form 4 in Malacca High School.
The failure bothered me. Then I discovered one of my young teenage clients, the son of an established retirement funding client, is a whiz at such puzzles. So, I struck a deal with teenager David Chong to teach me cubing basics. David mentored me over four lessons spread across a couple of months.
The thrill I experienced solving the Rubik’s Cube, at a “mere” 55.5 years of age, was palpable! Admittedly, my Kiwi bungy jump and Seremban Rubik’s Cube solve will seem frivolous to some readers; yet they matter to ME. Also, I realise I would have accomplished them sooner if I had written them down instead of merely committing them to memory.
Embarrassingly, I teach clients and audiences the importance of written goals!
WRITTEN GOALS
The simple step of writing down our goals, and preferably rewriting them daily, massively increases the odds we accomplish them. That’s relevant because: “Financial planning is the process of meeting your life goals through the proper management of your finances.”
Given my preoccupation with goals, it’s easy to understand why I was intrigued when fellow Malaysian licensed financial planner Ject Ng invited me to learn about a Singapore-developed software suite called GoalsMapper.
Goals, and decisions about them, matter. Also, our personal cash flow patterns dynamically affect our net worth composition of assets and liabilities. That’s why I teach my clients that every goal we have and every expenditure decision we make affects all others. Everything is connected.
During the initial GoalsMapper presentation and subsequent training sessions I attended in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, I learnt valuable ways to graphically model and display the impact of each major financial goal on all other goals.
Serial entrepreneur Datuk Wayne Chen is the CEO of GoalsMapper Pte Ltd. After I decided to incorporate the software into certain modules of my consulting company, I requested an interview to learn more about this oddly different fintech company. (Most fintech offerings worldwide focus on disintermediation, which removes the sales facilitation and advisory layer between product manufacturers and the end-user. However, GoalsMapper was designed to proactively help financial planners, advisors and intermediaries provide higher quality advice to clients.)
HARNESSING GOALS MAPPER
At our first meeting Wayne explained: “A lot of financial planning software is focused on reporting. While we have great reports, too, GoalsMapper’s main focus is interaction.” I perked up when Wayne added: “GoalsMapper facilitates collaborative financial planning meetings.”
Much of my work involves asking questions and listening to my clients. As I delved into the nuances of GoalsMapper, I found there are modelling aspects I can harness to visually illustrate salient changes to client aspirations.
More importantly, when a client suggests a scenario change such as retiring earlier (or later) or having a child (or three) or starting a foundation to educate orphans (or feed stray animals), the ability to model such changes in real time helps me provide significantly better advice.
The guts of the software were built from the ground up by chief technology officer Pok Xiao Guo. After two years of design and testing, a beta version was launched in Singapore in May 2017 with seven or eight initial testers. Things started in earnest in Singapore in November 2017 with 30 paid pilot users.
Then in November 2018 a Goals template was added, and in September 2019 a customised Malaysian version was launched. As I write this in November 2019, GoalsMapper has 750 paid users in Singapore and 120 in Malaysia. (Malaysian licensed financial planners and other licensed intermediaries who have queries on how the software might help their clients can email my friend Ject Ng, director for GoalsMapper Malaysia, at hello. my@goalsmapper.com)
Our success in life is tied to our goal-setting abilities. While my bungy and Rubik’s cube experiences suggest even unwritten goals may eventually be attained; writing them down regularly is a potent accelerant. Arguably, building a colourful graphical representation of all your life goals along a multi-decade timeline might well be the next step in effective, high octane goal setting.