Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now, while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.

Today in the show we continue our financial goal setting series, how to set

financial goals and we're going to talk today about counting the cost. Before you

start something you've got to count the cost.

And don't begin until you count the cost.

For who would begin construction of a building without first calculating the cost to see if there's

enough money to finish it.

There are two components that I want to talk to you about today, the financial cost and the

opportunity cost. But basically it works like this. When you set a goal for yourself, that goal is going to involve a price tag in order for it to be achieved. In the first show in the series series I used the quote by oil billionaire H.L. Hunt who famously said

that in America you only need the two things to be successful.

First, to decide exactly what you want and then second to determine the price you're going to have to

pay to get it and then to resolve to pay that price.

And goal setting is as simple as that.

You decide what you want, you determine the price that you'll have to pay to get it,

and then resolve to pay that price.

Now that quote, as I applied it in the first show in this series,

is well applied to any goal, even those goals that have only a peripheral connection to finances.

Something like I want to lower my body fat by an extra 50 pounds. Well, you

count the cost of what's going to have to be required and you do it. And although

there may be some financial component to it, perhaps changing the amount of money that you spend on food or perhaps purchasing some kind of coaching or exercise access to a gym, something like that, those costs are more peripheral.

But most of our goals involve costs that are more direct. Much more direct. Our goals could be things like consumption goals. Let's say you decide I

would really like to buy a different car. I'd really like to buy a new car. And so you clarify the type of

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