Over the past year, I’ve tried to keep tabs on the financial goals that people generally seem to have (as claimed in case studies, interviews, money makeovers, etc. published in leading personal finance publications). So, here’s the trend that I see. Most people seem to have the following set of financial goals —

• Daughter’s Education in A years

• Daughter’s Marriage in B years

• Son’s Education in C years

• Son’s Marriage in D years

• Retirement in Z years

The sums of money to be saved as the “Marriage Corpus” are indeed mind-blowing (I’ve always seen 7 and 8 figure sums here!). That’s a whole bunch of ERE-money if you ask me. And Z is usually far far greater than A/B/C/D.

Oh, and there’s also the occasional —

• Foreign Trip in 5 to 7 years

What do you think?

PS: I’m not in this stage yet — so, I might come back here years later and claim that these are my financial goals too. :-)