There are many ways to be smart about your future. As you work toward completing your college degree, money management is a critical part of achieving that goal and moving successfully into adult life. And setting goals is what gets you to effective money management.

Begin with an end in mind and pace yourself to reaching it in a timely, yet realistic, way.

Be smart about your financial decisions to build a strong financial backbone for your future. These goals should be meaningful to you, written down with details, viewed often and evaluated and adjusted as needed. Consider the pace of your goal and whether you can reach it in a realistic time frame.

An easy way to approach your goal-setting is to remember the SMART acronym. This strategy can be used for short-term goals of three months or less, intermediate goals of up to one year or long-term goals of more than one year. Your goals should be:

• Specific: Be clear in what you want
• Measurable: Set a specific dollar amount
• Attainable: Think seriously about wants versus needs
• Realistic: Don't sabotage yourself or your efforts
• Time-Bound: Start the countdown toward your goal

Following is an example of SMART guidelines in action for a short-term goal: