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To immediately improve how you handle your finances and make a giant leap toward becoming a millionaire, one of the most important things you can do is to write out your personal goals. This one act alone will help you build a foundation for a lifetime of wealth. If you are married or in a committed relationship, I suggest you do this exercise with your partner. Write your individual goals first, and then share your goals with the other person. Ultimately, we are all individuals with our own unique dreams and ambitions. Yet, for those of us involved with significant others, it's crucial that you make a habit of setting- and reaching-your goals together.

I want you to think of your goals in the context of how long it will be before these goals can be realized. Short-term goals should be something that you can accomplish in a relatively brief period of time, say in one to two years, at most. Medium-term goals can be classified as those that require two to ten years to accomplish. Long-range goals are those that require ten years or more to fulfill. To jump start your thinking, I've included a laundry list of goals below. Some of these may be relevant to you; others may hold no significance. The idea, however, is to give yourself permission to focus on the things you want to accomplish in the future-goals you may never have acknowledged to yourself, let alone written down or verbalized to someone else.

One of the most important things you can do to reach your goal of becoming a millionaire is to write out your personal goals.

The Write Way

A compelling example of the power of written goal-setting is represented in a 1979 survey of Harvard University students which found that 84 percent of them did not set goals. Another 13 percent of them did set goals, but didn't bother to write them down. And only 3 percent of the graduating class had written goals and an action plan. Ten years later, researchers resurveyed the group. The 13 percent with unwritten goals were earning double the income of those with no goals. But here's the whopper: the 3 percent of the student population with written goals earned 10 times as much as the other 97 percent!

Clearly, written goals are important. But do you realize how it is that written goals are able to propel you to reach success? Here are a few reasons why goal-setting works:

■ PURPOSE: Goals give your daily and long-term actions meaning and purpose. This helps you stay motivated when you realize that you're engaging in certain financial behaviors for a reason and not just randomly acting.

■ ACCOUNTABILITY: Goals also make you accountable. If you find that you're regularly falling short of your goals, it could be that you're not really committed to them.

■ STRUCTURE: Goals provide a framework or structure from which you can operate and achieve your objectives. Many of us need this structure to plug away at reaching our goals, especially long range visions.

■ DISCIPLINE: Goals spur you along to be consistent and disciplined in your actions since you know that a lack of discipline on your part will cause you to deviate from your plans, thereby jeopardizing your chances of hitting your goals.

■ SPECIFICITY: Goal-setting forces you to not just think about what you want in general terms, but to write down your aims in concrete terms. Adding the element of specificity to your goals makes you far more effective in taking the practical steps required to reach your objectives.

Written goals give you purpose, make you accountable, make your financial plan concrete, supply you with a discipline to follow, and identify specific areas to focus on.

Setting Smart Goals
Your goals have to matter to you. They have to be achievable. You want to push yourself and stretch to achieve a goal without putting it so far out of reach that you become disillusioned and give up. Remember, failure is not an option for a Millionaire-in-Training. And I believe that's what you are if you're reading this book and taking this advice seriously. I'm also a believer in setting the appropriate type of goals. SMART is an acronym that describes goals that are: Specific, Measurable, Action-oriented, Realistic, Time-bound.

■ Specific goals are the exact opposite of vague, hazy dreams. With the latter, someone might say, "I want to be rich," or, "I want to save money for my kid's college education." Those are just general wishes, and chances are they won't be fulfilled. But the person who sets a specific goal would define (in writing) exactly what "rich" means from his or her point of view, as in "I want to have a net worth of $5 million." A specific goal regarding college savings might be: "I want to save $80,000 for my son's college tuition."

When you make goals measurable, you quantify the objective you're seeking. In doing so, you ensure accountability and track your progress. For instance, to know where you're going, you have to know your starting point. So if one of your goals is to have no debt, you need to know how much debt you currently have. If you add up your credit card bills and they total $20,000, then you make your goal measurable by writing down something to the effect that, "Over the next two years, I want to eliminate my $20,000 in debt." In light of this goal, you know that after one year, if you're staying on task, you should be able to measure your progress and find that you've knocked out half of your debt, or $10,000.

■ Action-oriented goals require you to do something, not just think about doing something. Not weigh your options. Not analyze a certain situation. Not research possibilities, and so forth. No, in |order for the goal to carry weight, you must act upon it. So let's say you initially thought that, "I want to start a business," was a goal. That's far too vague. You have to amend that statement and write something along the lines of: "By the end of the month, I want to create a business plan for my new interior design business." This way, you know you actually have to draw up the business plan. If you look up sample business plans on the Internet or investigate what lenders want in a business plan, that's fine as a prerequisite to what you have to do. But ultimately, it's the actual writing of your business plan that you need to accomplish.

■ Realistic goals are neither too ambitious nor too easy to accomplish. If you set the bar so high that it's impossible to reach your goal, you're only setting yourself up for failure and disappointment. By all means, make your goals challenging to reach, but be realistic in your expectations. Here's a case in point. Let's say one of your goals is to return to college and obtain an MBA. You already have a Bachelor of Arts degree, and you know that the MBA program you want to attend typically takes two years for the average fulltime student to complete. If you work 40 hours a week, will take courses only part time, and can study only on the weekends, don't expect to finish the MBA program in 18 months. Given the confines of your situation, a more realistic yet still challenging goal might be: "I want to earn my MBA in two and a half years."

Any worthwhile goal is time-bound and includes a deadline by which the goal should be met. When you include a deadline, you make your goal time-bound. Therefore, it's not good enough to say: "I plan to buy a new home." Instead, when writing out your SMART goal, put down something like: "Two years from now, I plan to put down a 10 percent down payment toward the purchase a $450,000 Tudor home with four bedrooms and two bathrooms." This goal is clearly specific, measurable, action-oriented, realistic for many people, and time-bound.

About the Author
From The Money Coach's Guide to Your First Million by Lynnette Khalfani; Published by McGraw Hill April 2006; ISBN: 0071470816 copyright 2006. Lynnette Khalfani is a personal finance expert and the author of the New York Times bestseller Zero Debt as well as Investing Success. An award-winning journalist and former Wall Street Journal reporter, she has also worked as a television reporter at CNBC. She has appeared on "Dr. Phil" and "Tavis Smiley," and she has been featured in The New York Times, USA Today, Redbook, Essence, and Ebony. To find out more, visit The Money Coach.

10 Ways to Help People Settle Their Differences
by Jeffrey Krivis

When friends, coworkers, or family members are fighting, you can step in and help solve the problem. Here are some tricks of the trade.

Conflict happens. It happens a lot. And whether or not you are directly in the line of fire, when people around you are fighting, it doesn't feel good. That's why if you're like most people, your first impulse is to "stay out of it." Sound approach, right? Not necessarily. Indeed, helping people settle their disputes is a skill whose time has come.

Here are ten insights and tricks of the trade I suggest you use

Let people tell their story. When a person is deeply upset about something, she really needs to get her story out. This is a basic principle of mediation, and one that's important to remember when trying to resolve a conflict with an angry spouse, co-worker, or neighbor. Yes, allowing people to speak their minds can increase the level of conflict with which you must deal. That's okay. You have to get through the conflict phase to find the solution. Feeling that she has finally "been heard" can dramatically change an angry person's outlook. Plus, as she tells her story, new information may come to light that allows a solution to naturally emerge.

If someone refuses to budge, take the spotlight off him. Isolation tends to create movement. When you are mediating a multiparty conflict, you will often discover that there is one person who insists on taking a hard line approach. He refuses to compromise, shooting down every solution that's presented and holding out for what he wants. My suggestion? Take the attention off the "last man (or woman) standing" and begin settling around him (or her). It's amazing how well the isolation technique works. You'll find that the holdout starts to anxiously call and send e-mails, trying to get things going again. When his perceived power is neutralized, he quickly sees the value of compromise.

When someone seems "locked up," dig for the emotion behind the stone face. I recently mediated a situation in which a famous television producer was on the verge of being sued for plagiarism. Essentially, the plaintiff claimed that the producer had "stolen" his idea for a successful situation comedy TV show. When anyone talked to him about his case, he gave short, robotic answers and showed no emotion. So I asked the plaintiff, "What is it you really want to achieve here?"

     When people are picking flyspecks out of pepper, come in with a reality check. Often in a conflict, the various parties are so focused on minutiae that they lose sight of the big picture and all its implications. As the mediator, you need to bring people back to reality by wrenching their attention away from the grain of sand and having them focus on the whole beach. Doing so may help resolution arrive at a startling speed.

     Identify the true impediment. In every conflict, ask yourself What is the true motivating factor here? What is really keeping this person from agreeing to a solution? When you can identify the impediment, you can predict how the person will respond to certain ideas and you can shape negotiations accordingly.

     Learn to "read minds." Mind reading is not magic. It is a combination of observation and intuition, which is born of experience. You can learn a lot about how each party sees a dispute by paying attention to body language and listening closely not only to their words but also to the emotional tone behind their words. If you give them the opportunity, most people involved in a dispute will gladly talk about themselves, which gives you a chance to ask more questions and gain more information about their perspective. Once you see things from their point of view, you can stay one step ahead of them by anticipating how they might react and managing the negotiation accordingly.

     Think creatively about ways people can cooperate rather than clash. In every negotiation, there is a tension between the desire to compete and the desire to cooperate. Be on the lookout for signals that support a cooperative environment. That's where the most creative solutions are born. These kinds of "joint gains" are often born of conflict.

     "Edit the script" to help people see their situation in a different light. People tend to get "stuck" in their positions because they are telling what happened from a narrow viewpoint and in a negative and hopeless tone. They've relayed their story over and over again and their perception has become their reality. They can't see the situation any other way unless you help them to do so.

As the mediator, you can take a larger view that looks not at one party or the other "winning" but at both parties working toward a mutual goal. One way to help them get to this goal is to edit their script-retell their story about the dispute as a positive, forward-looking construction. In this way you literally give them the words to see their options in a new light.

   Avoid the "winner's curse" by carefully pacing negotiation. Believe it or not, it is possible to reach a solution too quickly. We all have an inner clock that lets us know how long a negotiation should take. When a deal seems too easy, a kind of buyer's remorse can set in that leaves people with second thoughts about the outcome. One or both parties may be left with the feeling that if things had moved more slowly, they might have cut a better deal. Here's the bottom line: don't rush the dance or the negotiation will fail. Even when you know you can wrap things up quickly, it's to everyone's advantage to keep the negotiation proceeding normally, for a reasonable amount of time, before the inevitable settlement.

     Finally, realize that every conflict can't be solved. What if you've tried and tried to help two warring factions find a fair solution and you just can't? It may sound odd coming from a mediator, but some conflicts just aren't winnable. Not every negotiation is going to have a win-win outcome. Not everyone can live together in harmony. Look at Israel and Palestine. There are times you just have to accept that both parties are going to leave the table equally unhappy. When you've mediated enough conflicts, you will know in your gut when that time has arrived. Isolate the participants if possible and just move on.

Negotiation is all about going with the flow and seizing opportunities as they arise. Improvisational negotiation is kind of like jazz. You have to know your chords, your scales, your patterns, your licks. But ultimately, these are building blocks, not formulas. The chords you use depend on the chords you hear from the other participants, and vice versa. It's a conversation. It's organic. There are no limits on what can come out of mediation, and that's what makes it such a powerful skill.

About the Author:
Jeffrey Krivis has been a successful mediator and a pioneer in the field for sixteen years and has served as the president of the International Academy of Mediators and the Southern California Mediation Association. Krivis is on the board of visitors of Pepperdine Law School and serves as an adjunct professor of law at the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution. In 1993 he received the Dispute Resolution Lawyer of the Year Award. Contact him at his website, www.firstmediation.com