Many people have a last will and testament in preparation for their death, but they don’t prepare for their lives by setting goals. You should have goals for the different parts of your life: personal, career and even investment. If you don’t have experience setting goals, it can be difficult to know where to start. Therefore, consider these tips for setting your real estate investing goals.

Create Specific Goals

At first, you should start with a broad idea of what you want. For example, you may state how many properties you want to invest in for the next one, three, five or 10 years. Make a huge list. You can even include other areas of your life because they may trigger additional investment goals. For example, if you want to travel to Palm Beach every year for three months, you may decide to invest in properties there as well.

Then, narrow down your goals. Focus on your investment goals. Take the number of properties you want to invest in, and write down the details about the properties. For example, will they be commercial or residential? How much do you hope to invest in each property? What features will they have? Visualization is a great tool here. Get specific.

Make Your Goals Believable

You need to believe in your goals or you won’t pursue them. Therefore, avoid goals that you cannot possibly achieve. For example, if you want to invest $10 million in real estate in the next year, but your job only pays $50,000 and you have poor credit and hefty consumer debt, you may not believe in your ability to achieve this goal. However, your first year could be spent learning about the real estate investment process, repairing your credit and paying off debt so that in year two or three, you can start investing.

Create Measurable Goals

As you set your real estate investing goals, make sure they can be measured. This gives you the opportunity to track your progress, which will keep you motivated. For example, if you want to earn $120,000 your first year, you should earn $12,000 per month or $3,000 per week in real estate income.

Align Your Goals

The last thing you want is to set goals for different parts of your life that conflict with each other. For example, you cannot spend 10 hours per week working on your real estate investment plans and 10 hours per week training for a marathon if you only have 10 hours of free time each week. Compare your goals to ensure that they do not conflict.

When you finish setting your real estate investing goals, prioritize them. Then, monitor your progress and make adjustments as necessary. Remember to keep your goals flexible so that you don’t get discouraged or overwhelmed.