Family Finance Blog

I’m somewhat obsessive about looking at our bank account balances to see how we are doing on our path to savings. There are weeks when I’ll check four or five times. I’m not sure what I expected to see that is very different over that time, but I still do it.

Sometimes I have to remind myself to be patient. This whole frugal living thing takes time to make a huge dent. I can’t expect to look at my bank accounts after one month and say to myself “Wow, I’m only a month from retiring.” It’s a long journey to use any sort of method to financial freedom. So here’s how I am going to deal with my impatience.

Set mini-goals. Every month I will try to set myself a goal. It will be something that can be obtained in one month if we live frugally and make good financial choices. It might be “have $1,000 more in savings than last month” or “limit eating out expenses to less than $50 this month.” This will be something I can track and be proud of.

Make a frugal choice every day and write it down. I’m going to keep a little journal by my desk at work and by my bed at home. Each day I will write something I did that day that helps me to my goal (not having to work). By looking through this at any given time, I will see progress towards that goal.

Remember that these things take time. This is the hardest one for me since I really want to get to the financially self-sufficient point as soon as I can. But I have to remember that these things take time, and it won’t happen overnight, it won’t happen in two months, and it won’t even happen in five years. I’m really on a 10-20 year plan at the moment to get close to financial independence.

If I do these three things (especially the last one!), I’m sure I’ll have an easier time getting to my goal in a relaxed and happy way (not that I’m not relaxed and happy, but perhaps I’m a bit obsessive, like I said at the start.)

This entry was posted on Monday, August 6th, 2007 at 8:39 am and is filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.