Setting Goals: Discovering Your ‘Big Why’

How many times have you set a goal at the beginning of the year?

How many times did you start that goal, but over time you didn’t end up achieving it in any given year?

I can’t even begin to recall the number of times that I set a goal to exercise and lose weight. I always set a goal to lose 10 lbs at the beginning of the year.

I failed every year.

Shamefully, I might even have gained a couple of pounds instead.

And strangely, I still insisted on setting the same goal the year after. Fortunately, this was the old me.

Unfortunately, for many people, and the old me, they don’t know why they set those goals. However, it seems we’ve become cultured to feel obliged to do so because it’s the beginning of the year and everyone is talking about setting goals.

Many people have failed to recognize that goals are meaningless unless you have a ‘Big Why’ in mind.

Today I attended Paul D’Abruzzo’s Multi-unit investing class at Rock Star Brokerage. He started off by asking what kind of legacy the participants wanted to leave behind. Paul’s legacy is to create generational wealth and massive passive income to allow him to live life on his terms.

My Big Why is very simple – I want to be my daughter, Robin’s, role model.

I want to spend as much time as possible with my daughter and my husband. I want to pay for Robin’s education, support my parents financially and travel around the world to experience all that life has to offer.

This is living my life on my terms.

Unlike previous years, I didn’t set any weight loss goals because Robin was born earlier this year and I didn’t really have much time to myself or to think about goals.

However, I joined a CrossFit gym in May. I usually go three times a week. Sometimes Robin comes along, sitting in her stroller, watching everybody exercise.

Robin is my BIG WHY. My goal is to inspire her to be active. I want to inspire her so that exercise is part of her life. I can’t do that by sitting at home relaxing, cleaning or burying myself in work all day long, can I?

Magically, after a few months of CrossFit three times a week, I started losing weight. Whenever I have a tough workout I think of Robin. She motivates me.

So, to all you fellow real estate investors and real estate professionals, before you set your goals, ask yourself, what is your BIG WHY?

If your Big Why is as clear as mine, you can achieve your goals much faster!

We moved into a new house. We decided to not go without life insurance, so we bought it off. We even looked at real estate agents near me and bought a new house for Robin this year. We set up multiple corporations so we could invest more efficiently and save as much tax as possible. The dream of finding new homes to move into should be a goal for every aspiring new family. Of course, moving in will require that you have a strategy for transporting all of your belongings from one location to the other. Perhaps something like a crate hire belfast service could help with the efficient packing of items into easily-moveable containers.

We will accumulate our assets and investments in these corporations. Our active business one will accumulate much faster, paying only 15.5% tax rate. More after tax money is available for investing in the real estate holding company.

We will roll most of our rental portfolios into the corporations. Tenants will pay off the mortgage over the years.

When Robin is ready for university, there are plenty of tax strategies available to distribute money from the corporation to her.

We can do an estate freeze, issue shares to her at nominal value, issue dividends to her paying very little tax.

We can also pay her a reasonable amount of salary paying very little tax if she can help out the business and manage the properties.

When my parents need financial help for their retirement, I can do the same thing as well. I can issue shares to them and pay them dividends.

Yes. There are costs associated with setting up corporations and there are annual filing costs. But we are not stuck with paying the top marginal tax rates, we have options and strategies.

What is your BIG WHY and are you achieving them in the most tax advantageous way?