Setting Goals with Your Spouse + Goal Setting Worksheets

Are you a goal setter? Do you believe in setting goals with your spouse with a unified focus?

Over the past few years, my husband and I have made great strides together in setting goals, intentions and adopting a growth mindset. In fourteen years of marriage, my goals and expectations of marriage have certainly evolved – in a good way.

But for a long time, we were just winging it. We were solid but didn’t have a plan to get where we wanted to go. In recent years, however, we have come to realize the importance of life planning and goals for our marriage.

At the end of 2017, we moved to a new town. The move was great for us as a family, but it did require adjustments.

While we felt good about our progress in 2018, we also felt a bit disorganized. Even though I took a step back from working outside the home, which gives us more balance, we still sometimes found ourselves in confused and chaotic states. We still have crazy days.

Do you ever have those days? You know, the ones where you get home from the grocery store and realize you forgot the coffee? (Around here, running out of coffee is a catastrophe.) Or toothpaste. Or (cringe) toilet paper. And I’m forever forgetting the buy the pet food. Those poor babies.

“This post contains affiliate links, which means we may receive a small commission, at no extra cost to you, if you make a purchase using this link. Full disclosure here.”

Creating a Plan for Setting Goals with Your Spouse

I have a lot of days like that, where I’m forgetful and unfocused. The thing about days like that is that we’re so busy managing the day-to-day that we forget about our goals. I think that mayhem is normal. You just have to have a plan to manage it.

As we approached 2019, we both agreed we needed a fresh plan. We realized we’ve lost some of our focus on organization, time-management, and financial goals. We wanted to take a more unified approach in moving forward and therefore began to conduct some research on how to approach goal setting as a couple.

After reading up on goal setting, we decided to take our life planning a step further than usual by digging deeper into our current financial picture and being more intentional in several areas, including quality family time, saving, spending, and career goals.

Looking for a Goal Planner? Check out this “Get It Done” Goal Planner here.

Setting Life Goals as a Couple

We sat down towards the end of 2018 and came up with a plan. We wanted to include any scheduling commitments for the week, budget items, meal planning, savings goals, and family activities.

First, we began by brainstorming some questions based on what we wanted individually and what we wanted to accomplish together. For example, my focus word for 2019 is Joy, so I made sure to incorporate the intention of Joy in my priorities.

We wrote them down and then typed them up and printed a copy for each of us. Then we gave ourselves a few days to answer them separately. Once we had both come up with individual answers, we met to review our answers together. From there, we identified our areas of opportunity, areas of focus and goals.

Focus Areas

From our answers, we identified that areas that we wanted to focus on: Faith/Spiritual, Family, Home, Personal Development, Finances, and Health. We then made notes on our goals and intentions for the next twelve months.

Goal Setting

We made our goals attainable using the SMART method.

Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Realistic
Timely

Monthly and Weekly Planning

From there, we broke it down monthly and weekly. Our approach for the coming month would list our goals, plans, steps to take, important dates and a key focus area. Then each week, we would set our schedules, activities, and intentions accordingly.

We also review upcoming budget items, track where we are regarding spending and saving and plan our menu for the week. We included the menu because that’s an “area of opportunity” where we really need to get more organized. We find that we nickel and dime ourselves terribly running back to the store when we don’t have a well-thought-out weekly dinner menu.

Being Accountable

We decided to have weekly check-in meetings. We would discuss our progress on our goals, expenses for the week, schedules, appointments, commitments and where we needed to focus as a family.

Each week, we planned to discuss what was working, what wasn’t, and how to adjust our goal plan as necessary.

We will also celebrate successes when we’re hitting goals and staying on track. It’s motivating and keeps us accountable.

How We Track Our Progress

Excited about our new plan, I started looking online for some type of goal and weekly planner for couples. I wanted something where we could write down our 12-month vision, goals, monthly plan, weekly plan and expenses. I needed something to keep us focused and on track.

But after searching all over, I couldn’t find anything that fit the bill. So I made our own workbook. It’s a simple and straightforward resource to help you write your plan and stay accountable. You can get it here:

Do you have a plan for setting goals with your spouse? What tools and resources to you use? Share your feedback in the comments!

Setting Goals as a Couple + Planner Workbook

Creating a Plan for Setting Goals with Your Spouse