Anyone who has worked in the corporate world has probably heard the phrase "SMART goals" before. While you may think this is just some cheesy project management term, there is actually something to learn here as it applies to investing and building wealth. SMART stands for specific, measurable, assignable, realistic and time-related. Unexpectedly, the most relevant attribute here when it comes to money is measurable. Money, be its very nature, is easy to count and track as it translates value into dollars or some other currency. 

If you are interested in growing your net worth, the first and most important step you should take is to track it. In the past, people would maintain paper-based ledgers, or Excel spreadsheets, which is very time consuming and likely not updated frequently enough. Nowadays, there are countless online or phone apps that can do all of this automatically. While I still enjoy doing tracking things such as dividend income using spreadsheets, I now use an app called Empower.