Before you can make the right financial decisions for your situation, first of all you need to translate what financial security means to you. In other words, what, exactly, are your personal financial goals? Think of it as building a house: you wouldn’t think about putting up the walls and moving in without a solid foundation, would you? The same goes for your finances.

Not sure where to start? Try making a list of all of your goals, such as “buy a new car”, or “save money for retirement”. Next, classify them as “need to haves” vs. “nice to haves”. Label each of them as short-term, medium-term, or long-term.

You can shift your priorities around and use lots of numbers to even rank them. The most important part of this exercise it to think seriously about your goals, try to gauge what expenses are coming up (soon or in the distant future), and what is realistic. Wherever you can, try to attach specific, quantifiable labels to each goal. It’s a lot easier, for example, to plan for “X dollars in a retirement account by age Y” than “financial security”.

Great! Now you have some useful goals that you can build upon according to your priorities. By writing your goals down, not only will you be motivated to achieve them, you’ll also be able to clearly calculate what you need to do start doing today, savings- and investment-wise, to meet them. You’ll also quickly see that budgeting will become key to distributing those limited resources among your competing goals, but that’s where a plan can really help get you there.