money motivation

How to Remain Financially Motivated the Entire Year

December 9, 2013 By Danielle Warchol 3 Comments

With the New Year fast approaching, many begin to think of what they would like to accomplish during that time. That motivation is usually quite high in the first few weeks and months, but many encounter difficulties or have trouble staying focused and motivated for the entire time period. Keeping yourself on track can be difficult, but there are a number of different ways to keep yourself motivated as you’re trying to save money:

Write a List

Writing a list can be a great way to keep yourself focused throughout the year. This list can account for any number of things, from how much you want to save each week to what accounts you want to deposit your savings into. Even keeping a list of monthly expenditures and finances can help keep you on track. If you’re someone who works better when you have a list to focus on, this should be your first step.

Set Long-Term Goals

One of the best ways to keep yourself motivated is to set long-term savings goals. Having a specific goal at the end of the year will make you more eager to put money away. Whether your long-term goal is to save over a year or two years or even five years, having something specific in mind to save for is a great motivator.

Set Short-Term Goals

Additionally, having a list of short-term goals is a great motivator as well. Many times it seems easier to aim for fulfilling short term-goals because they’re more feasible than the ultimate long-term goal. Creating a number of “baby step” goals that can be achieved over a shorter period can be another great way to keep yourself focused and motivated to save money.

Keep a Financial Journal

It really helps to write things down to maintain long-term motivation. Just as making lists helps with this, so does keeping a financial journal. Having one will help you keep track of what you earn, what you spend, and how much you save each month. Sometimes writing down how much money you spend or save per week can do a lot to make you realize your spending habits and adjust them accordingly.

Allow for Bad Days

No matter what you’re trying to accomplish, you always need to allow yourself room for bad days. There are going to be days or weeks where you can’t save money, and that’s okay. Don’t let the frustration from a few setbacks derail you from your overall goals. You don’t have to be putting aside money every day or even every week. Sometimes you may need to put money towards an emergency instead. Even if you plan on making yourself follow a strict schedule, you have to make sure to allow yourself some breathing room. If you can’t save one month, maybe put aside a little extra the next time you can save. When you are able to let the inevitable setbacks happen without them making you feel like you have failed, you’re much more likely to stay motivated.

Reward Yourself

It may seem counter-intuitive, but you also need to reward yourself. Sometimes people can go overboard with savings money, thinking only about the future and completely disregarding the present. Everyone needs to reward themselves or splurge on an item they want or need every once in awhile. Plus, rewarding yourself along the way is a great way to keep yourself motivated.

Focus On One (Or More) Motivational Factors

Focusing on a motivational factor can also be a great way to stick to a financial plan. You may want to pay down debt or find a new form of income. Or you may want to buy something nice for yourself after you’ve saved a certain amount of money. Focusing on these factors will help you keep your eye on the prize.

Read Financial Literature

Reading financial literature can also be a great way to keep yourself financially motivated. Plenty of articles, journals, and magazines focus on different savings or investing tips, and they may give you a few new ideas on how to better save your money. Plus, it’s a good idea to keep up with current news and events. You never know what new article or piece of information will help you out.

Find Yourself a Support group

One of the best ways to stay motivated is to have a group of people who will support you and your financial goals. it’s great if you can find one in your local community, but it’s not essential with the Internet. Start hanging out in a personal finance forum, ask questions, help others and become a part of the community. They will help cheer you on with your successes and be there to pick you back up and steer you in the right direction when things don’t go as planned. These groups can be a great motivational base to have as you travel your journey.

Give Yourself Weekly Challenges

If you’re someone who enjoys challenging yourself, why not challenge yourself when it comes to saving money? This can be something as simple as a weekly savings challenge or to go a day or two without spending any money. There are plenty of different, creative ways to challenge yourself when it comes to saving money. Set weekly or monthly goals to keep yourself interested and motivated in your financial plans for the year.

Try Money Related Apps

There are also a great many computer or phone apps that are geared towards helping you make and save money. Having an app that tracks your spending and savings habits can be a good way to keep yourself on top of your game, plus those that can help you make money may thicken your wallet.

(Photo courtesy of Steven Depolo)

Small Money Amounts Matter

September 26, 2012 By Jeffrey Strain 18 Comments

I have always been one who believes that it’s important to get all the big personal finance issues in order before you start looking at the small stuff. If you are losing several hundred dollars a month paying too high of an interest rate on your house payment and decide to spend your time trying to earn a few extra dollars in other ways instead, you have your money management priorities a little out of whack. That being said, once you have taken care of the big stuff, I believe that saving those small amounts is important. Earning small amounts is often referred to as snowflaking and the ways that you can go about creating these income streams is limited only by your imagination.

While many people focus solely on the amount of money, they often forget about the psychological benefits that saving small, additional amounts can have. Most people have all the money in their budget accounted for, so being able to earn small amounts outside their regular income streams allows them the flexibility to tackle the money goal that they have their sights set on. Whether it’s paying down credit card debt or building an emergency fund, being able to add more (even if it’s a small amount) than budgeted provides confidence and motivation to get to that goal that much more quickly.

While I have a number of ways that I snowflake, the one constant seems to be finding coins while I walk. I find over $100 a year on the ground. This most certainly isn’t the typical way that most people snowflake, but it seems to work for me and it’s a wonderful example that shows you are only limited by your creativity when it comes to this exercise. I encourage you to enter this contest, I truly hope it gives a bit of inspiration to help you think about other ways that you can possibly put a few more dollars in your pocket than expected.

To help with that creativity, one of the ways to enter is to explain one of the ways (feel free to share more) that you snowflake. I think by getting people to share and to see the wide variety of ways that people are already doing this, it can help get your creative juices going that much more. I think you will be pleasantly surprised at how motivating it can be when you get into the habit of snowflaking in your spare time, and all those little triumphs of paying a little more against debt or toward the emergency fund will make the personal finance journey that much more enjoyable.

If you’re a blogger and you would like to participate in these no cost giveaways in the future like all those in this one, you can get more information here.

Can Envy Be a Good Thing for Your Finances?

March 14, 2011 By Jennifer Derrick 1 Comment

Financial gurus usually tell people not to envy the financial successes of their family and friends. Don’t envy their nice cars or big houses. Don’t envy their great vacations or their early retirement. After all, you may not have their means or good fortune. The conventional wisdom is that envy simply leads you to try to compete and you may dig yourself into a deeper financial hole if you try. Even if you don’t try to keep up, envy can eat at you and turn you into a bitter, hateful person. But is this always the case? Are there times and circumstances where envy can be helpful? I think so.

Envy is helpful and motivating if you channel it positively and responsibly. Let’s say that your neighbor, Joe, just bought a great car. (And let’s assume that Joe can easily afford the car and didn’t go into debt to get it. A truly enviable situation.) Simply saying, “Hey, Joe has a nice car and I really like it so I’m going to go get one, too,” isn’t helpful. Unless you have a ton of cash lying around, it’s downright destructive. However, if you look at Joe’s nice car and think, “Hey, I like that car. I’d really like to have one like that someday,” it can be motivating.

If you really love Joe’s car, it can be a reminder to you every day that you need to get your finances into good enough shape that you can easily afford that car. Seeing Joe drive by your house every day can serve to remind you that you need to pay off that credit card that’s been hanging over your head for five years. Maybe it reminds you to forego some other unnecessary expenses so you can save more for the car. Maybe your envy of Joe’s car encourages you to go back to school and finish your degree so you can get a higher paying job. Whatever happens, if your envy leads you to make positive financial changes, that’s a positive use of the emotion.

Be careful whom you envy, though. You want to envy people who really have their financial acts together. Envying the person who has a cool car and big house and a negative net worth isn’t good. You can be like that, too, if you’re willing to take on enough debt. But you don’t want to be that guy. You want to envy the people who have nice things and good lifestyles but yet live well within or below their means. While it can be hard to know the health of someone else’s finances, you can usually pick up a clue or two by their complaints or stress levels.

Of course the car in my example may not be something you would ever envy. Maybe you envy a nice home, or two-week vacation at a spa resort. Maybe you envy more intangible things like being able to retire early or how some people seem to breeze through financial emergencies that bring other people to tears. Whatever you envy in others can be motivating to you. As long as you don’t just try to blindly compete, you can use your envy to better your financial situation. Ask yourself, “What do I need to do in my own life to achieve that level of freedom or have those kinds of possessions?” If you are honest with your answers, you’ll create a blueprint for financial success.

Finding Motivation: A Life Without Debt

May 18, 2010 By Sadie Morris 8 Comments

I’m frequently asked how I stay motivated to remain out of debt. After all, there are so many temptations and so many fun things that I could blow my money on. People assume that it is hard for me to remain motivated and disciplined. Sometimes it is. Like anyone else, I have days when I just want something and I want it now. I just want to go blow money and forget the consequences. To remain debt free, though, I have to check the worst of those impulses.

When you’re trying to get out of debt you can see the end goal and that provides motivation. You know that when you’ve paid off $X amount of money you will be debt free. You keep going to reach that number. You’re fired up and motivated to make the necessary sacrifices. But when you’re debt free, you don’t have that magic number to shoot for. When there’s no concrete number staring you in the face it’s easier to lose motivation. Sure, you want to save but for what and how much? You want to have money to spend but do you really have to watch every penny anymore? It’s easy to just drift, spending and saving aimlessly or, worse, spending with so much enthusiasm that you land back in debt. It’s like losing a lot of weight. You’re motivated to get it off in the short term, but once you’re there the enthusiasm drops off and it’s easy to fall back into bad habits.

So how do I find the motivation to remain debt free when there are so many options for my money? How do I keep my bad habits and ugly urges in check? Here’s how:

Set goals

Just because I’m debt free doesn’t mean that I don’t have financial goals. I want to buy a new(er) car someday. I want to retire comfortably. I want to be able to give to charities that I value. I want to travel. I want a new computer. All of these things take money. I write down the things I want to accomplish and assign dollar values to each. Then I track my savings progress toward each goal. Seeing those numbers add up and those goals reach fruition provides me with the motivation to remain out of debt.

Keep one big goal in mind

In addition to the smaller goals, I always keep one big goal in mind. At one time it was a home. Once I got that, I changed it to having a comfortable retirement. Now that that goal is well on track, my current big goal is financial independence. I want my investments and activities to provide enough passive income that I don’t have to work for an income, unless I want to. The big goal is not something that is easily attainable, but it is possible. It’s something that will keep you motivated and working toward it for several years. Even if you’ve managed to mark off all your other goals, the big goal will still be there. As long as it is, you’ll keep striving for it.

Remind yourself about the benefits of being debt free

Whenever I want to blow an unreasonable amount of money (as I did recently when some terrific travel offers came across my desk, plus some property that I’d been looking at came on the market), I remind myself what I love about being debt free. My love of security and freedom go a long way toward keeping me on track. I don’t want to end up in a position where someone else dictates where my money goes, or where someone else controls my decisions because I owe them money.

Know what matters to you

When you’re debt free, you get to know what really matters to you and it usually isn’t stuff. Maybe it’s your ability to be home with the kids, security in the event of a job loss, the freedom to choose work you love, the ability to give money away, travel, a special hobby, or cultural experiences. Would you be able to do, have, or enjoy those things as much (or at all) if you went into debt? Probably not because your time and money would then be spent servicing the debt. When I’m tempted to spend too much, I remind myself of the things that would have to go by the wayside if I had debt. I’m not willing to give them up, so I remain motivated to keep the things that really matter to me.

Staying motivated to remain out of debt is different from the motivation necessary to get out of debt. Getting out of debt takes (usually) a relatively short period of time. The flame of anger and frustration can burn long enough for you to accomplish that goal. Staying out of debt is a long term adventure and something that you’ll (hopefully) have to work at the rest of your life. No short term fire will last long enough to keep you on the right path. You have to seek other forms of motivation. This is what works for me; what works for you might be different. Experiment until you find the right combination of motivational tactics.