On the Road to Financial Contentment

This article appears in the 164th Carnival of Debt Reduction at The Financial Wellness Project.

Deciding you want things to be different is always the first step. Unfortunately, having good intentions and making firm resolutions doesn’t always win the day. Changing your financial life is like changing your eating habits. It’s not easy. There are lots of ups and down. The important thing is not to let the “downs” completely derail you. Just like exercising, if you take a few days off it becomes even more difficult to get started again. I was dangerously close to throwing up my hands in defeat when I got back from my trip. I had so many little receipts to enter into my expense spreadsheet. I’m sure I missed a few minor ones. I could feel myself slipping and had to almost physically wrench myself back on track.

October was initially shaping up to be a really frugal month for me. Now that it’s almost over, it has turned out to be the second most expensive month I’ve had this year. No matter how you plan, a trip, even a frugal trip, adds expense to your monthly budget. In addition to my trip, I had a $360 tax prep fee, a $404 eye doctor’s visit and $300 worth of college expenses this month. I was feeling pretty discouraged, especially with the holiday season looming. Then I took another look and realized that, in addition to the extra expenses, for which I paid cash, I also paid $1,000 against my credit card debt and put $1,000 in the bank. Looking at it that way, I felt better.

It’s a good idea to think up some little motivators that you can pull out when you feel yourself slipping. Keeping your big goals in mind can be a good motivator too. I am determined to be debt free, other than my mortgage, when I move to New York. One does not really rely on the other except in my mind but the less I owe the less I’ll have to earn when I get there. So two of my goals are to move to New York and, once I get there, not to work too much. It’s important that some of your goals are fairly immediate. The detrimental effect of buying that big flat screen television for which you did not budget is a lot more obvious when your goal is to be debt free within one year as opposed to five years. Setting yourself some short term, non-monetary rewards as motivators can also be effective. Do you love nothing so much as two uninterrupted hours of lying on the couch reading a book or watching a movie? Go two weeks without eating out or whatever your problem area may be and reward yourself with that movie night. Make it something that will be effective at countering your urge to splurge.

The bigger the financial mess, the longer it takes to turn things around. Just like losing weight, a debt diet takes a lot of tiny steps to be successful. Putting down one cookie will have no immediate effect on your weight and not spending $10 on something you don’t need will have no appreciable immediate effect on your debt. Whatever your goals, it’s these tiny first steps that are the necessary start to achieving contentment. There are innumerable opportunities to quit. Things can look hopeless. Keep your head up, keep moving forward, even when you are moving backward. You will succeed, but you have to start!