I think I’ve probably written about this before, but it never ceases to surprise me. My finances do so much better when I am paying attention to them. I’ve never been one to incur late fees, but there is a difference between paying bills on autopilot and truly being on top of your finances. When I am on top of our finances, things go so much smoother. We seem to save more, spend less, and get rid of more debt. There really is something to be said about “out of sight, out of mind.”
I go through periods of being really diligent about our finances and periods of putting them on autopilot. When we are on autopilot, our debt almost feels stagnant. We don’t usually incur more debt, but we pay almost nothing off. We just exist. However, when we are on top of our finances, we make the biggest gains in both decreasing our debt and increasing our savings. I wish it was easy to always be on it, but for whatever reason, we get lazy.
I need to make it a habit to check our credit card balances every day or so. Seeing how high our credit card balance is really motivates me to do better, but out of sight usually means out of mind. I have been very focused on our debt payoff for the last few months and I feel like because of that we are making some good progress.
What habits do you have that help you to stay on track?
October 20th, 2023 at 10:50 pm 1697842229
October 20th, 2023 at 10:57 pm 1697842635
Second, for whatever debt I was working on, I'd make some kind of a chart. For paying off my mortgage it was in the shape of a house and I got to mark of increments on it. I think for that one it was for every $1000 I paid off, I got to mark off a segment. For my Emergency Fund it was in the shape of a thermometer and I think that one was for every $500 I saved I got to color in an increment. It was fun watching that rise. I switched up the colors I was coloring in for fun.
Towards the last two or three years of my debt paydown I was watching Dave Ramsay on YouTube. I'd never watched him in all the years of my previous journey, but I'd heard some concepts he used on the blogs, like the $1000 emergency fund and the debt snowball starting with the smallest debt first and going to the next smallest, etc. And I'd always done an envelope system, but that was a pre-Dave Ramsay thing that my mother got from her mother, before Dave Ramsay was born. Then my husband and I read his books and then got Financial Peace University and went through it together and learned a lot. So I think that helped some, too. When I felt like I wanted to throw it all in, I would go on YouTube and watch one or two of the clips from his show and refocus myself.
I had a goal list of all the things I wanted to do in a future debt free life and I would read through those every time I got discouraged, because I knew when we were debt free, we could start saving up for that bucket list and go through them one at a time. If you don't have a list like that, maybe you should make one to help you keep your eyes on the prize.
October 20th, 2023 at 10:58 pm 1697842724
Second, for whatever debt I was working on, I'd make some kind of a chart. For paying off my mortgage it was in the shape of a house and I got to mark of increments on it. I think for that one it was for every $1000 I paid off, I got to mark off a segment. For my Emergency Fund it was in the shape of a thermometer and I think that one was for every $500 I saved I got to color in an increment. It was fun watching that rise. I switched up the colors I was coloring in for fun. I would tape them to my bedroom door so I had to see them every morning and every evening.
Towards the last two or three years of my debt paydown I was watching Dave Ramsay on YouTube. I'd never watched him in all the years of my previous journey, but I'd heard some concepts he used on the blogs, like the $1000 emergency fund and the debt snowball starting with the smallest debt first and going to the next smallest, etc. And I'd always done an envelope system, but that was a pre-Dave Ramsay thing that my mother got from her mother, before Dave Ramsay was born. Then my husband and I read his books and then got Financial Peace University and went through it together and learned a lot. So I think that helped some, too. When I felt like I wanted to throw it all in, I would go on YouTube and watch one or two of the clips from his show and refocus myself.
I had a goal list of all the things I wanted to do in a future debt free life and I would read through those every time I got discouraged, because I knew when we were debt free, we could start saving up for that bucket list and go through them one at a time. If you don't have a list like that, maybe you should make one to help you keep your eyes on the prize.
October 21st, 2023 at 02:27 am 1697855230
October 23rd, 2023 at 03:07 pm 1698073633