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HSFPP Update # 220 — Mindless Thinking vs. Mindful Thinking (SMART Goals, Part I)

Message from Flashman: I hope all of you had a restful summer vacation. Our summer has been very productive in reaching new educators across the state at the Summit Conference in Lexington and at the Career and Technical Education Conference in Louisville.

For those educators who are new to our weekly financial lessons, we design our biweekly updates so you can copy the article In the New$..., as well as use the discussion questions and assign the follow-up activity for teens to complete. If you have trouble doing this from our e-mail message, you can always go to our Web site. Our archive of updates, including the most recent, is available at http://www.ca.uky.edu/fcs/hsfp/UPDATE.HTM. As long as proper credit is given to us and to our sources, please feel free to copy and paste material from any of these. See below for this week’s article In the New$....

Also every other week, on alternating weeks with our update lessons, members of our listserv will receive a financial video lesson. Because of the timeliness of the videos, these lessons are not archived; they are available only to those who are signed up with our listserv.

Remember, if you have ideas for a weekly topic, please e-mail me at rflashma@uky.edu. As a result of past feedback from educators, our financial lessons have received both state and national awards.

 

Message from Janet Marks: I am currently a graduate student in Family Studies. I am interested in working with adolescents, especially teenage mothers. I also have interest in policy, how it is written, and how consumers are affected. I’ll be working with Dr. Flashman and others to bring you this year’s financial lessons. I hope that what I have learned over the years will benefit teens through my news stories.

 

Note to Educators in Kentucky:

This week’s update corresponds to the academic expectations listed below:

Academic Expectation 2.13
Students understand and appropriately use statistics and probability.
Unit 2-6

Academic Expectation 2.36
Students use strategies for choosing and preparing for a career.
Unit 7

Academic Expectation 2.37
Students demonstrate skills and work habits that lead to success in future schooling and work.
Unit 7

Academic Expectation 3.1
Students demonstrate positive growth in self-concept through appropriate tasks or projects.
Unit 1-7

 

Web Site Pick of the Week:

Dr. Mark Oleson’s Financial Tips: “Financial Goals”
http://financialtip.blogspot.com/2009/08/financial-goals.html

 

In the New$... How to Set and Obtain SMART Goals

by Janet Marks, Family Studies graduate student at the University of Kentucky

One thing I have learned is that, if you don’t have clear-cut goals, circumstances will arise that might not have been part of your life plans and you probably won’t know how to deal with them. You could be living your life on autopilot and not really thinking about what you’re doing; this is called mindless thinking. The opposite of mindless thinking is mindful thinking, in which you make conscious decisions to live your life the way you really want to and believe you should. When you are thinking mindfully, you will begin questioning common practices or advice that might no longer be true. You want to be sure and follow good advice, though. It often takes time and experience to figure out which is which.

Regarding investing, which I will write more about in future stories, the common saying of many financial advisers and investment professionals is to “buy and hold.” Simply speaking, this means that you should buy stocks and expect to keep them for many years. This works well during an economic growth cycle, but not during long recessions or depressions. During economic downturns, many people are losing their jobs, home values are decreasing, and the value of investments is falling. This is exactly what has been happening recently, and market values are only now beginning to rise. Many of your parents’ retirement savings have fallen in value, and those reaching retirement age are more likely to continue working, at least part-time, to make up for their lost savings. Those who stayed in the stock market, based on the advice to “buy and hold,” are only now recovering somewhat. If they had been practicing mindful thinking, when they heard on the news that home prices were falling and unemployment was rising, they would have begun moving their stock investments into less risky types of investment or moved it to cash (a money market account, for example). Generally, the riskier the investment, the more you could earn on it if things go well; but you can’t count on things always going well, especially in hard economic times.

Mindless thinking affects teens in more ways than with their money. Those who believe that there is such a thing as safe sex could have a rude awakening. Using condoms during sex does not guarantee that you will not get pregnant or become infected by a sexually transmitted disease, though it certainly reduces the chances of both. And just because you consider yourself a good driver does not mean you can safely drink and drive or use your cell phone while driving. People tend to believe that good things happen to them and bad things happen to others; what other explanation can you give for playing the lottery when your chances of winning are less than one in 3,000,000? This type of mindless thinking keeps people broke.

My goals I had set while in school were to finish high school; go to college; graduate college; and lastly to find a good paying job, settle down, and have a family. However, that all changed at the end on my ninth-grade year.

I was fourteen years old and in the ninth grade when I found out I was pregnant. “What in the world am I going to do with a baby?” was my exact thought. I had no idea where my life was going at that point. I decided to have my baby and it was at that point that I set some goals for myself and stopped my mindless thinking. Of course at that time I did not know that I was beginning to think mindfully.

My goals at that point were not unreachable, but I knew they would be harder to accomplish. I attended the Florence Crittenden Home so that I could keep up with my school work. Once I had my daughter (who is now 21 and a junior at Western Kentucky University), I went back to my high school and graduated. You not only need to set goals, but also to act on them. My first goal was to graduate high school. My second goal was to attend college. Sometimes in life, situations will occur that will cause you to have to shift your goals. Because of mindless thinking early in life, I had to put some goals off for a number of years, but I never gave up on them. And you shouldn’t give up, either.

SMART GOALS: What are smart goals? Smart goals stand for: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound goals. Goals are your key to success. It is best to sit down and think first about short-term goals; for example, where do you want to be in three months? Reevaluate your goals every three to six months. If you keep your short-term goals and priorities in line with your long-term dreams, and keep them always in the front of your mind, you can hardly go wrong.

When setting your goals, make sure they are ones you can stick with; they must be very important to you, or you will not stick with your plan. The first step toward making smart goals is to identify your goal. Second, analyze information that you are able to gather. (For example, if you are trying to save money for something you want to buy, you will want to look at where your money goes: track your spending by keeping all receipts for items you purchase.) The third step is to create a plan. (Once you have tracked your spending for a couple of weeks, you will then want to plan on how to minimize your spending habits.) The fourth step is to implement the plan. (This would be exactly how you’re going to save enough money.) The fifth and final step is monitor your progress toward your goal and modify course as necessary. This will help you stay on track. If you see that you are not reaching or getting close to your goals, you might need to reevaluate your goals; remember, part of making smart goals is that they must be attainable and realistic.

Another example of a short-term goal would be to save money for your prom next spring. Let’s say you’ve gone to the mall and seen some shoes you would like to wear with your prom suit or dress, but you don’t quite have enough money for them. Begin by thinking about how can you save enough money to buy those shoes; and remember that the shoes aren’t all you’ll need. Make plans on how to save your money, beginning with how much you can save in 30 days. After 30 days, adjust your goals; or, if you’ve saved enough for the shoes, make plans for the next step, possibly the suit or dress.

Long-term goals are goals that you make for a year or longer, such as going to college or becoming a millionaire. (And don’t think you can’t become a millionaire. It’s a realistic goal if you begin saving early and regularly throughout your life.)

Whenever you reach a goal, celebrate. Once you get in the habit of setting goals and you find you can make steady progress toward them, you will always have the ability to live the life of your dreams.

Sources:

Ellen J. Langer. (1997). The Power of Mindful Learning.

Ellen J. Langer. (2009). Counterclockwise: Mindful Health and the Power of Possibility.

 

Discussion Questions:

1. Do you know the difference between needs and wants? Explain your answer.
   
   
2. Goal setting is not just for financial purposes, so what are some of the goals you would like to achieve in your life?
   
   
3. Are there any decisions that you need to make in the near future? How can smart goals help you with your decisions?

 

Kentucky High School Financial Planning Program

http://www.ca.uky.edu/hes/fcs/hsfp

The purpose of the HSFPP financial updates, video lessons, and Web site is to assist county Extension agents, credit union educators, high school teachers, and parents who home school their teenagers so that they may improve the economic well-being of our teenagers; and also to show educators how the HSFPP, updates, and video lessons meet Kentucky core concepts. The Web site, updates, and video lessons are provided by the University of Kentucky Cooperative Extension Service, and are free to all educators. The list of core concepts and order form for free program materials including the student guide and instructors manual can be found on the Kentucky HSFPP home page.

If you are not already on our listserv:
The video lessons are available only to members of our listserv and will not be posted to the HSFPP Web site because of the timeliness of the information. If you would like to receive our video lessons, which are sent to our listserv biweekly, on alternate weeks from these updates, please sign up at the following page of our Web site: http://www.ca.uky.edu/hes/fcs/HSFP/response.htm.

The use of any trade names or products does in no way constitute a recommendation for this product.