How To Stay Committed To Your Financial Goals

Setting financial goals should be a part of your lifestyle.

It’s highly unlikely that financial goals are achieved by chance or accident.

From paying off our debts and buying a house, to building up your investments, it all takes intentionality.

Setting money goals is how you become intentional about your money decisions.

I’d say set money goals for the short term and the long term.

For instance, you may aim to start living on less than your income over the next 3 months.

Then aim to invest £20,000 over the next 2 years.

How to Stay Committed To Your Financial Goals

Setting your goals is one thing, staying committed to them is quite another.

I’ll be honest with you, setting goals and working towards them is by no means a walk in the park.

You will face some hurdles, pitfalls and even resistance along the way, and this is where the true test of your commitment comes.

This may be from life throwing sucker punches at you and being caught off guard.

Or an issue arises that requires a substantial amount of money which would take you back to square one on your money goals.

Or, if we’re being transparent, you may just be too lazy to put in the work to make them happen.

I’ve had all three of the above happen to me and I’ve learnt some tricks and tips along the way to staying committed to my dreams.

This is how you can stay committed to your financial goals and be able to live your best financial life.

Develop Success Habits

Habits are small decisions you make and the small actions you take daily.

The majority of your life is ultimately the sum total of your habits.

You are what you repeatedly do, success is therefore not a destination but a habit.

Developing success habits involves starting a new habit and/or changing a negative habit.

Change Negative Habits

I like to tackle the negative habits first as these have a much stronger impact on my money mindset.

As a generalisation, negative habits involve being financially irresponsible.

Such as not checking your bank account balances, living without a budget, or spending all your money soon after payday.

Take the time to identify habits that will hinder you from reaching your money goals.

Early in our marriage, we were aiming to live on less than our income.

We identified that a huge part of our money went to groceries.

To add fuel to the fire, we bought whatever we wanted whenever we felt like it, which was almost every other day.

Once you’ve identified your negative money habits, you can devise a plan to tackle and change them.

Develop Positive Habits

The other side of the coin is to build new habits that will empower you to achieve your money goals.

When we were saving up for our house we developed the pay yourself first habit.

This is where you prioritise savings before other non-essential expenses such as social events, personal shopping or takeaways.

Developing the right habits that you’ll do consistently over time plays a big part in staying committed to reaching your financial goals.

Build The Right Systems For Your Financial Goals

I’m an absolute believer in systems and processes.

This simply means having the right things in place that make it easier for you to do what you need to do.

Following on from our experience of managing our food shop, we built the system of planning our meals.

This was as simple as using the Notes app on our phones to write down the meals and ingredients required per meal.

This system still required us to do some work on our part of planning the meals and writing them down.

However, the biggest game-changer was when we opened a separate groceries account and set up an automated payment from our main account into it.

This groceries account had the exact amount we planned to spend on food from our budget.

This system worked wonders as the transfers were automated without us needing to do anything.

Other Kinds of Systems

Automating payments is one way of doing it.

Other options can include cutting your credit card so you can’t use it any longer.

Removing all card details from PayPal so you can control your impulse online spending habit.

Stop saying yes to someone asking for money before you figure out if you can help them.

The Best Money System You’ll Ever Need

By far the biggest money system that enables us to reach our goals is having a budget.

A budget is how you control your money or manage your expenses.

Above that, it’s a superpower to controlling your finances and making sure you put your money towards your financial goals.

If nothing else, having a budget will be the most impactful and empowering system you’ll ever have to stay committed to your financial goals.

This is why we’ve designed a budgeting spreadsheet for you which we call Our Ultimate Money Plan. This will empower you to plan your money towards reaching your financial goals.

Celebrate Small Milestones

I don’t like the idea that you can’t celebrate until you’ve reached and achieved a goal.

Think of school. You only graduate after completing the whole curriculum, and nothing happens in between.

I prefer celebrating each milestone along the way of your journey instead.

As I mentioned before, this road can be tough and it’s hard to stay on course the whole way.

Imagine not being able to feel a sense of accomplishment until you’ve saved up £30,000 from nothing.

Despite that being a great goal to reach, you shouldn’t refrain celebrating your first £1,000 or reaching the halfway point of £15,000.

Celebrating small milestones is like getting a shot of confidence and determination to keep going.

It’s evidence that what you’re doing is working, but more than that, it shows you can do it!

Plus I use it as an opportunity to assess my journey and areas I perhaps could improve on.

Keep The Dream Alive

Often the present situation can distort your mind from the goals you set and dreams you want to bring to life.

Keeping the dream alive is when you take the necessary steps to keep the dream alive in your mind. This works differently for everyone.

At the very least, I’d say everyone should write down their goals somewhere you can easily read often.

By reading your goals often you drown out the noise of the challenges and busyness of our daily lives and just dream.

The only reason we were able to buy our house is that we kept our dream so alive in our minds we endured the pain of renting a bedroom.

Check out the more detailed post originally published on our blog, with practical tips to stay committed to your goals.