Financial Hacks for Millennials: Defining Your Priorities

It’s a weekly dilemma: as you finish dinner with friends on Friday night, where to next? You could continue on to the party with everyone else, but you’re tired after the workweek. Then again, it will be tough to scroll through social photos of everybody together, without you there. Or maybe you should go to your cousin’s art opening across town. Or wait – didn’t your dog just want to hang out and watch shows online – always an appealing option, right?

What’s important?

It’s nice to have varied possibilities, but sometimes it’s hard to know what to do next. This is true whether you’re trying to avoid the pangs of FOMO or setting financial goals. You want to look your best for the party, build an art collection, take a dream vacation, eventually get married, save for a home and retire some day. But which of these things is most important today?

Steady Progress

As many of us have learned on Friday night, you can’t do it all at once. Over the course of your lifetime, however, you can potentially seize many opportunities. It’s a matter of defining your priorities and developing a plan. One way to attain life goals is to begin by taking stock of what matters – and then check how it matches up to your current behaviors. For example, a life goal, especially one like retiring well, may feel distant. Yet it’s the steady accumulation of savings that can help toward retirement..

Making a Plan

If retiring well is a long-term goal, there are other goals, of course, that are more short- and medium-term. Climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, for example, could fall into the short-term category, while having a child or buying a house might fall into the medium-term category. All these goals can be defined and mapped out in a grand plan, so you work toward achieving them — rather than assuming that one day they’ll “just happen.”

Defining Your Goals

When you define your goals and create a written plan, you are adopting the behaviors of financially and emotionally confident people. Another key behavior is to enlist the help of a financial professional. Just like your life priorities are personal to you, your relationship with a financial professional should match your style. For example, do you prefer to discuss your financial goals over email or with an in-person meeting? If you’d rather talk with a financial professional face-to-face, you’re not alone. Contrary to popular lore about digital zombies who never look up from their phones, research shows millennials like to communicate in person.

Reflect Your Values

In any relationship, it works best when you “get” one another. This holds true in working with a financial professional. Does your financial professional reflect your values? For instance, millennials are known for a desire to give back and create community. It’s no surprise then that people value financial professional’s community involvement, including hosting events to bring people together. Indeed, 74 percent of the millennials surveyed are likelier than other generations to attend an in-person financial seminar, facilitated by a local advisor. Further, 55 percent like the idea of having their parents join in a meeting with their advisor.*

So where do your priorities lie, and do they align with your behaviors? There’s no one size fits all, here, and once you figure out what matters most to you, you’ll be on the way toward your goals and objectives– FOMO no more.