4 Painless Ways To Stay Motivated To Save More Money
Struggling to save more money or stick to a budget? Here are 4 painless and easy ways to stay motivated to save more money in 2021!
Hello frugal friends!
Today I want to talk a little about motivation. Specifically, I want to talk about how to stay motivated to save more money.
I see blog post after blog post about genius ways to save money.
Actually, I’ve written a handful of those very posts myself.
If you’re interested in tangible ways to scale back and save more money you might find the following posts beneficial.
- 99 Crazy Easy Genius Ways To Save Money Series
- 10 Things You Can Do Right Now To Save Money
- 10 Ways You Can Start Living A More Frugal Lifestyle Right Now
- 12 Realistic Expenses You Need To Cut Out Of Your Budget
So back to the topic of motivation.
The internet is full of awesome posts about ways to save money.
Most of them are super informative, provide solid ways to scale back and genius hacks to save you a TON of cash.
I’m telling you, the teeny tiniest changes you make to your budget add up big time over time.
The issue is that it isn’t easy to stay motivated to save more money. Making changes even small and being consistent can become daunting.
Bad money choices are just that: bad. And, like most other bad habits they are hard to break.
Changing the course of your relationship with money isn’t a change that happens overnight.
Instead, it takes conscious effort and persistence to continue trudging along when the urge to spend on small extras creeps up on you.
A perfect example is my post about brown bagging lunch. That post goes into a ton of detail (with frugal math included) about how much buying a restaurant lunch costs over the long term.
It’s a relatively small change you can make to your budget that will save you heaps of money. In theory the idea is simple: you pack your lunch thus you save money.
In practice though, it can get difficult am I right?
Staying motivated to save more money by brown bagging lunch every day seems simple but in practice it can get difficult and impossible to sustain. Life, kids and obligations have this insanely efficient ability to get in the way of our best efforts.
So, how does one stay motivated to save more money permanently?
It’s really easy to tell you to pack a lunch every day, stop eating out or stop making fancy coffee runs on your lunch hour.
If adopting new habits were that easy, people just wouldn’t over spend.
The reality is that sticking to a financial diet is hard hard work and so I want to share some painless ways to stay motivated to save more money with you today.
It takes planning, persistence and consistently.
Below are some of my best tips to stay motivated to save more money. These are all tips to stay motivated to save more money that we relied on to help us remain consistent with our frugal lifestyle.
4 Painless Ways To Stay Motivated To Save More Money
Get Organized To Stay Motivated To Save More Money
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Do you know that awesome feeling you get when you’ve decluttered a room and feel in control of the space?
I get that when I delve in deep and organize every square inch of a room.
.Knowing that every item in a room has been neatly tucked away in its correct place provides a sense of control and calmness.
It’s such the BEST feeling am I right?
Well, the first step to stay motivated to save more money is to get insanely organized with your finances.
A disorganized financial life is messy, confusing and overwhelming.
That disorganization sucks and can lead to avoidance and excessive spending.
If you’re anything like I was, I actually had no idea where my money was going.
It was better not to know then to face the reality that my spending was out of control.
I rarely checked my bank accounts and when I did I intentionally avoided looking at each withdrawal individually.
My lack of organization made me nervous and unwilling to really track and take control of my spending.
It was far easier to ignore the situation than it was to face the fact that I was living far beyond my means and spending irresponsibly.
Getting organized can be a scary, shocking and perhaps even shameful experience.
Using those negative emotions and using them to fuel your desire to change your financial lifestyle for good is key.
Use that shock, shame and disappointment to build an intense desire to change and by consequence stay motivated to save more money.
Sometimes, facing our worst habits and tackling them head on gives us the power to take control of the situation.
The sense of control that comes from finally getting your finances in order provides a wonderful source of motivation to keep you on track to make changes to your relationship with money for good.
If you’re looking for tips on getting your financial life organized head on over to this post for some tips & tricks: 5 Ways To Fix A Failing Budget
Get Fired Up To Stay Motivated To Save More Money
Excitement is the best source of motivation folks.
When you’re fired up about something you become driven, unrelenting and devoted.
These are all qualities that help rock the challenge and help you stay motivated to save more money.
These qualities are what will help you commit to a money-wise lifestyle and stick to it long-term.
When you’re in the first stages of organizing your financial life it’s easy to be driven, unrelenting and devoted.
Fear, embarrassment and urgency are all very effective emotions when it comes to taking on a new lifestyle change. But, eventually those emotions will wear off.
What then?
Maintaining the drive needed to keep on keeping on when you’re in the process of transitioning to a more money-wise lifestyle can be difficult.
Saving money is easy in theory but hard to sustain long term unless you’re fired up about your lifestyle change.
A few things that help remain fired up when you’re looking to stay motivated to save more money
- Creating a financial vision board that highlight reasons why you are committing to saving money. Ours included: buying our first home, living debt free, having a solid emergency fund and providing our little girl with financial stability.
- Set Small, Realistic and Logical Goals that are attainable. If you have a large amount of consumer debt it would be unrealistic and self-defeating to set lofty goals that are unattainable like paying back the debt and saving a million dollars within a year. Instead focus on creating goals that you can achieve in the short-term. Paying back 50% of your consumer debt in a year or saving 30% of your take home income for 6 months are great starting points. The more attainable the goals, the higher the likelihood that you’ll stay on track and stay motivated to save more money!
- Don’t Procrastinate Avoidance is a huge motivation killer. It’s insanely easy to avoid things in our lives that cause us discomfort or create uneasiness. Facing the reality of our financial situations isn’t always easy and it’s natural to want to avoid dealing with the problem by procrastinating. Forcing ourselves to tackle money issues whether it be creating a budget, paying bills on time or finding a source of supplementary income is essential. Putting things off is a guaranteed way to kill your motivation folks.
- Seek Out Motivation When things get especially difficult and you’re motivation is seriously waning it’s essential to seek outside sources to get you fired up again. Whether the source is a podcast, Ted Talk or one of the many success stories you can find online, it’s imperative to refuel your motivation to stay motivated to save more money. I often turned to Ted Talks to get fired up. One of my favorites is Saving For Tomorrow, Tomorrow by Shlomo Benartzi. These outside sources motivation are guaranteed to get you fired up and motivated to keep on keeping on.
Be Realistic About Goal Setting To Stay Motivated To Save More Money
Setting small attainable and realistic goals is vital when you’re making a conscious effort to stay motivated to save more money.
If the goals you’re setting for yourself are unrealistic you’re setting yourself up guaranteed failure.
Don’t set goals that you know you can’t achieve.
Creating a goal to reduce your grocery budget to $50 per week for 4 people likely wont work.
Saving 80% of your take home income every month probably wont work either.
Instead, create goals that are realistic and attainable.
If you’re consistently failing at attaining the goals you set out for yourself you’re guaranteed to lose your motivation.
Reevaluate and establish goals that although challenging make sense for your lifestyle and financial situation.
Don’t set goals that are too restrictive for your lifestyle. In a perfect world we’d set a goal and easily achieve it regardless of outside factors.
Overly restrictive lifestyle changes aren’t always the best idea folks.
Sure, it would be great to vow that you’ll never eat out again. But, life happens and sometimes the avoidable becomes unavoidable.
Instead of creating crazy restrictive financial goals that will be hard if not impossible to stick to think about setting limitations instead.
If dining out is something that you enjoy doing and can fit it into your budget there’s no sense in eliminating that splurge entirely.
Rather than eating out 3 times per week why not reduce it to once weekly or bi-weekly.
Overly restrictive goals and lifestyle changes are a guaranteed motivation killer. Maintaining your motivation is all about establishing goals that make sense for your lifestyle.
Don’t set goals just to set goals. Make your goals count.
Goals are highly individual folks.
They depend on our personal financial situations and should vary from person to person and household to household. With that in mind, avoid setting goals to just set goals.
Saving for a down payment on a house may not be an appropriate goal for everyone depending on a variety of different individual factors.
Instead, evaluate your own financial needs.
What financial goals are YOU seeking to achieve, why are you trying to save money?
Don’t base your goals on societal standards of financial well-being.
Instead focus on what is important to you and your family and work from there.
Don’t Jump Ship When It Gets Hard To Stay Motivated To Save More Money
Adopting new habits is always a challenge.
Whether you’re committing to eating better, working out more or saving more money it takes drive and consistency.
Slipping up happens.
Nothing in life is perfect and certainly at some point on a lifestyle change journey you’re bound to “slip” up or fall off the bandwagon.
The key here is getting right back on the horse, learning from the mistake and moving forward without jumping ship altogether.
Life is all about balance and finding that sweet spot that always you to live your best life without living outside your means.
For some the transition to living a more money-wise lifestyle is easy.
For others it’s considerably more difficult.
Regardless of which situation you’re in it’s vital to keep on keeping on even if the going gets tough.
I love this! We have budgeted our entire married life, well, at least I have. I’ve been budgeting for the both of us and when he goes over budget I immediately get the urge to say FORGET IT! If we’re over budget I might as well spend some money too! Pretty terrible thinking, I know. Staying motivated and not jumping ship has always been a struggle for me but a struggle worth fighting. I love your suggestion to seek out motivation! Sometimes you just don’t have that motivation in yourself and I love the thought of finding it wherever you can to keep yourself excited about finances. Thank you for such a great post!
Great advice. I find small goals really work for me. It might be a stepping stone to a larger goal, something I can achieve in a few months with good decision making. It really helps when I’m on the verge of an impulse buy, do I really want this random thing or do I want that goal achieved.