I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…

Keeping Up Motivation In The Good Times, Too

When things were very tight and times felt tough, motivation to keep on the course and eliminate our debt was easy for me to come by.  Easing the burden of our debt load felt less like an option and more like a necessity for continued survival.  Anything, any little blip on our radar screen was the potential for utter financial disaster.  Once we established a way to get out of debt, it seemed like it was the only real viable option to not only improve our financial future, but merely survive it.

Now, a little over a year later from starting this blog and really charting our course, the straits are not quite so dire.  Yes, we’ve had our share of setbacks, but we’ve had many successes and celebrations along the way as well.  My spouse and I have both not only cut back in the amount we spend, but increased our respective incomes, giving us the ability to reduce our debt faster than we originally anticipated and creating some breathing room in our day to day finances.  When the immediate pressure is lessened, or even removed, it can be difficult to keep up the same level of motivation.  But to me, keeping up that motivation is critical, because it would be all too easy to slide slowly back into old habits and stop making forward progress.

So how do I stay motivated?  By artificially creating that same level of financial pressure in our checking account, necessitating my careful eye and adherence to our budget to maintain.   I do this in two main ways.  One is through paying the absolute most possible towards debt each month.  I don’t leave an extra cushion, and I don’t hold back.  Every month I add up all of our alternative income, and I send that to our target debt.  There are exceptions to this - for example, when our furnace needed to be replaced, I diverted that month’s extra debt payments towards that instead, but generally, it all goes to debt elimination.

The second way is by keeping our savings in a less accessible account.  I do keep our emergency fund in a savings account linked to our checking account for easy access in case of an emergency, but saved money above that $1000 short term emergency fund goes into a separate ING savings account that takes several days to transfer money from to our checking account.  That way, there isn’t instant access to savings, and decisions about the savings account have to be thought out.  I could use the emergency fund to bail us out of budgetary jams - but if I fell into that habit (so far, so good) I would move that to an ING account as well to restrict access to it.

When the immediate pressure caused by a feeling of desperation dissipates, that doesn’t mean it is time to start spending and to lose focus.  In fact, there is no better time than the present to refocus and get back in touch with why your financial goals are important to you and what they mean to your life to complete them, not just start them.

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