Have you been reading about the importance of goals around your investments, but not sure what these goals are? Thankfully, investing can be done for practically any goal you have which, requires you to spend more than you earn. 

You can save for some, but savings are not the same as investing. Saving your money means not spending it, investing means growing it in value.

Put your goals into three simple buckets to start investing logically.

1. The spending goal 

This goal is there to take care of all the large spends you may have thought about for yourself. It could be an expensive phone, a car or a motorcycle or even your wedding. You may need to give each such spending goal a different time horizon and a different type of investment product, but plan your investment for each. 

A phone costing Rs 60,000 and above may require just 6 months of saving and investing. On the other hand, a car costing Rs 6 lakh may require a few years of saving and investing. Similarly, your wedding costs might have to be planned and invested for up to 3 years in advance. 

No spending goal is too small or too big to be planned for. Write it down and start planning your investment. 

2. The wealth or asset creation goal 

Another type of goal is where you want to grow your wealth and the monthly salary additions are just not getting you there. You may even want to buy assets like property or gold and need to have pool of funds for that. Liquid, flexible and transparent investments in financial securities like mutual funds will help you accumulate and grow your wealth pool to cater for this goal and for asset creation. 

If you are in a salaried job right know with the desire to start your own business, you need to assert this in the form of a financial goal.

3. The goal for cash flow in times of no income 

If you are in a salaried job right know with the desire to start your own business, you need to assert this in the form of a financial goal. To start your own business not only do you need a pool of savings but also you need to cater for the months or years of no regular income till your venture becomes successful. One of the ways to build a supplementary income is to plan ahead and start investing towards this goal. It is the security of this income from your previously planned investments that will give you the security to dive deep into working for your own business without worrying about finances. Retirement too falls in this category; once you retire you will need a supplementary income for the rest of your life. 

Think about the goal first and pick the appropriate investment, you don’t have to wait till you are older or are married or have children. There is a goal in every aspect or your life, it’s your responsibility to find the right investment to help you achieve it.