How to Stay on Track to Achieve Financial Goals

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This post will cover the important techniques to follow through and stay on track to achieve your financial goals.

Perhaps this sounds familiar:

You come up with a money saving goal, maybe a large purchase you need to make in the next few months or a family vacation next summer, and you start out super motivated and enviously thrifty. Within the first month of saving extra money, you stash away and extra few hundred dollars. Yes!

The next month rolls around and that Starbucks is looking a little more tempting. Then you go to Target and who knows why the bill was over $150 when all you needed was some laundry detergent? Somehow your thrifty spell is wearing off.

Let’s face it, saving money quickly becomes tedious when the reward is months or years into the future. Why save aggressively and feel deprived now when your end goal is so far away?

If you are paying off debt, saving money for a specific goal or planning for an early retirement, how do you maintain your frugal habits when progress feels slow or nonexistent?

How do you stay on track?

Not surprisingly, a lack of motivation to continue saving money for your financial goals is a real problem and often prevents progress and success.

But it doesn’t have to be that hard. You can reclaim motivation.

Here’s how to stay on track and to achieve your financial goals:

Revisit your why

Now is a good time to sit back and revisit why are you saving money.

Do you have debt to payoff? Do you have a specific financial goal?

Next, take this a step further. Why do you have this goal? What will it mean to you when you accomplish it? How will your life be different?

Your why needs to be very personal, powerful and meaningful to you.

Example:

As an example, my financial goal is financial independence, or FI as it’s most often referred to in the financial independence community.

Be clear about your goal and exactly how you will get there

It’s one thing to have a goal. For instance, you may tell yourself that you will pay off all your debt this year. And that’s a great goal to have. However, unless you are specific about what the goal is and how you plan on achieving it, you won’t have enough reason to stay on track.

Instead, clearly define your goal. How much debt do you have to pay off? $5,000? $75,000?

Once you define your goal, map out how you plan on working towards your goal, how long it will take you, and give yourself some milestones along the way.

Tip: When you break your goal into small, achievable steps, you get to enjoy the feeling of making progress and feel motivated along the way.

Example:

Let’s say you want to pay off your debt. Here’s how you can go about defining your goal and setting yourself up to make it happen.

Questions to ask:

How much do you need to payoff?
How long will it take to do this?
What milestones would be helpful to keep you motivated?

Answers:

I have $25,000 of consumer debt and student loans to payoff.
Since I am able to save $1,000 every month, it will take me just over 2 years to payoff all my debt.
I really like spending money and feel deprived if I can’t have fun and spend money sometimes. Therefore, for every $5,000 I pay off, I will treat myself to an extra $200 to spend however I like. This will slow my progress down a little, but keep me motivated to pay off each $5,000 as quickly as possible.

Now let’s say that your goal is spending less money so that your spouse can quit their job and stay home with the kids.

Save this post for later by adding it to your favorite Pinterest board!

Track your progress

If you have a competitive nature, now’s the time to use it to your advantage.

Be sure to track where you start and all the progress that you make along the way. Every month, mark down the difference you’ve made. See if you can set small, short-term milestones and beat them. If you are working with your spouse to achieve a financial goal, see if you can save more than your partner does. Who can cut spending the most? A little friendly competition can really speed things along!

If you manage to save an extra $50 this month, see if you can beat that next month.

Remember, if you aren’t keeping track of your spending and progress, you have no idea if you saved that extra $50 last month or spent an extra $50! Tracking your progress is essential to know how far you’ve come, how much further you have to go, or whether your sacrifices have made an impact. Without this knowledge there is no reason to stay focused.

Without focus, you lose sight of your goals and either don’t make progress, or worse, fall behind. Know exactly where you are and what you need to adjust in order to stay on track.

Action Step: If you aren’t sure where to start with your long and short-term goals, download the Big Vision to Action Steps Goal Setting Workbook. Learn exactly how to break those big, scary goals down into the smaller steps that you can take action on today.

Make a vision board

This ties into your why. If you need help visualizing what you are working towards and why it is so important to you, make a vision board so you have a constant reminder of what you want to achieve.

For example, your goal might be the purchase of a new home. A vision board could display images of what types of homes you love, architecture and landscaping ideas, neighborhoods and interior design ideas.

If you want to travel, you could make a board of all the places you want to visit, the things you’ll want to take with you, cultures you want to experience and landmarks you want to see.

Or, if you want to quit your job and retire early, make a board of all the projects you want to work on as soon as you have the time available to you. Include images that represent the freedom that you will feel once you achieve FI.

Reward yourself for achieving milestones

As I already provided in the examples, it can be super helpful to have a reward to look forward to as you make progress. Long term goals can be so hard to achieve if there is nothing to look forward to for years down the road. Instead, break each goal down into smaller steps and factor in a little extra spending for when you reach your milestones.

No one wants to be super frugal for very long. No one enjoys feeling deprived. Therefore, if you have something to look forward to, you have a much higher chance of staying on track and reaching your goals even quicker than you expect.

Tell your friends and family and hold yourself accountable

I also don’t think that anyone enjoys feeling like a failure. So if you really want to reach a certain gaol, tell everyone you know what you plan to do and how you will do it.

You may very well find that your motivation is contagious. As you make progress, your friends and family will want to jump on that bandwagon, too. Then you can all keep each other accountable and greatly increase your motivation and the time it takes you to reach your goals.

As an extreme example, this blog is my way of holding myself accountable. I am so passionate about reaching my goal of FI that I’m willing to bare myself to the world and tell everyone that will listen exactly what I’m doing and why. This pretty much means that I don’t get to fail. I’d be failing myself and every one of my readers. How’s that for pressure to stay on track?

Recap

Help yourself prevent setbacks and stay on track to achieving your financial goals by doing the following:

Remember why this goal is important to you. Revisit your why often.
Clearly define your goal and the steps you will take to achieve it.
Track your progress.
Make a vision board, which is a visual representation of your why.
Create milestones along your path to achieving your goal. Smaller steps keep you aware of the progress you are making.
Hold yourself accountable by telling people about your financial goal. They just might be motivated to work on their own goals as well.

7 Steps to Successful Goal Setting

How To: Track Your Personal Finances

I Tracked My Personal Finances For One Month And This Is What I Learned

Action Steps

Think about which area you have the most trouble with.

When you need a little forward momentum, first review the list of steps you can take to stay on track. Think about which areas you have the hardest time with and would really help you reclaim your motivation and progress.

Next, focus on just one of those steps. Keep at it until you start making headway again.

Finally, revisit this post whenever you fall behind again. Pick another area that you are struggling with and focus on that step until you get back on track.

Good luck and let me know if this has helped you!

How to Stay on Track to Achieve Financial Goals | SStoFI (2024)