Posted by André Nosalsky :: December 5, 2007 @ 10:10 am

Once you have figured out where you are starting from and what resources you have to work with, the next step is to figure out where you want to be. In real running races, you would pick your next race to be a stretch from what you have done before, and have bigger goals for the long term such as a marathon or even the Ironman competition. For your money race, you need to have small goals that will lead you to the ultimate Money Marathon.

There are several ways to do this.

The progressive way is to start small and increase your goals by small amounts each time. This might entail setting it as a goal to increase your income by 10% each year or to increase your savings from your current 5% to 10% by putting this amount into P2P loan portfolios on Lending Club, for example. With the progressive plan you take small incremental steps towards something bigger or better.

With the think from the future way, you start with the end in mind and work backwards. Your final Money Marathon might be to retire as a millionaire. So you set that as the goal, calculate how much time you have to work with between now and then, and breakdown how much you need to earn, save and invest between now and then to reach this goal.

In physical running it helps a lot to determine where you want to be. Do you want to be a casual runner that once in a while runs a charity race and otherwise just runs for fun and exercise? Or do you want to be racing the ultra marathons in a couple of years? Once this is determined it will make other choices and decisions easier, such as how much time to devote to this and what needs to be done.

For the Money Marathon, you need to look at your life and determine if you just want to approach the money race in a casual way, spending only a couple of hours a week on it, or if you are going for that ultra Money Marathon and will dedicate time to it every day. The choice is yours, as are the results that follow.