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While the initial stages of the process have you prioritizing your goals as
A, B,
and
C,
with
A
being of greatest importance, once you get into the process you may find that your priorities are shifting. Taking the time to check back with WHERE is an important step.
THE SIX QUESTIONS AT WORK
    Let’s look at an example to see the six questions at work and develop some familiarity with the process. Say you decide your first goal is to own a house. Start with the specifics of your goal so we can answer the WHY.
    • Why are you buying a house? As a long-term investment, as a quick-fix flipper, or as a home to live in with your family?
    • Describe the house. Is it a fully detached house, a condo, or a cabin in the woods? Is it a bungalow, a three-storeyMonster Home, or something in between? Will you pay $75,000, $500,000, or $2.1 million?
    Next comes the timeline. WHEN do you want to buy your new house? Within six months, three years, five years?
    WHAT steps will you have to take to make the goal happen? This plan might include steps like these:
    • Figure out how much house you can afford.
    • Decide where you want to live.
    • Decide when you want to move into your new home.
    • Decide how much down payment you want to have.
    • Save the down payment.
    • Save the closing costs.
    • Shine up your credit history.
    • Get pre-approved for a mortgage.
    • Find an agent to help you find the right house.
    When you take these steps and add a timeline to each one, you begin the process of creating milestones, as in …
    • I will figure out how much house I can afford by the end of next week.
    • I will calculate how much of a down payment I’ll need to avoid mortgage insurance by the end of the month.
    • I will create a plan for accumulating the down payment by the end of the month.
GAIL’S TIPS
    One milestone may lead to others. For example, if you decide you want to spend $200,000 on a house and have a 20% down payment, to avoid mortgage insurance you’ll need to accumulate $40,000 for the down payment. So you will likely have to come up with a series of steps you plan to take, and create milestones, to see you along your journey to that $40,000 down payment.
    Is your goal a pipe dream or something you can actually achieve? HOW rears its ugly head! If you’re making $40,000 a year, HOW are you going to come up with a down payment to get into the $300,000 fully detached house of your dreams in a year? HOW will you be able to afford to carry the house? HOW will you ever get pre-approved for a mortgage?
    All the way along the process of setting a goal and creating milestones, you need to be evaluating and adjusting the information you come up with. If you decide that a 20% down payment will take too long to accumulate and that you want to be in a home sooner, you might adjust your goal for how much down payment you’ll save or how much you’ll spend on a house. That, in turn, may affect where you choose to live. You might also decide to add a milestone like this: “I will work a part-time job on the weekend, earning a minimum of $100 aweek, to go directly to my down payment fund. I will have this job in place by the end of next month.”
    WHO will help you with your house buying? You’ll likely need a lender, maybe a real estate agent, perhaps a home inspector, a lawyer to close the deal, your cousin Fred and his van to move, and your mom and your sister to clean the place before you move in. Coordinating multiple resources for any goal takes a plan. Wing it and you’ll be wheeling your furniture down the road from your rental to your new home all by yourself!
    WHERE gets you to think, once again, about where in your priorities house-buying fits. There’s a ton of stuff involved in buying a house, and right now you’re stretched thin by your work schedule combined with that extra course you’re taking two nights a week. How do you dovetail what you want with your limited resources and time? Will extending