Starting from the Bottom: Staying Motivated to Reach Your Goals

Update: Check out the podcast episode inspired by this post:

033 | How to Stay Motivated When Your Goal Seems Impossible

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My husband and I attended a dinner at our church this weekend in connection with a fundraising campaign.

During one part of the dinner, some of our middle school members provided tours of an unfinished space that is planned to be finished with the funds raised.

It struck me during this dinner that these middle school students have a higher net worth than us.

Pretty sobering, right?

It’s no secret that we’re paying off a massive debt load. Granted about $200,000 of that is our mortgage. (Check out Brad Rosley’s excellent post about how your decisions about home purchases can make or break you financially.)

The rest is our student loans.

I can’t deny we’ve made great progress so far. We paid off $50,000 last year and have already paid nearly half that amount as of February.

Still, our ultimate goal is financial independence (FI). We can’t even think about that when we’re so far behind the eight ball.

Starting from the bottom

When I say we’re starting from the bottom, we’re literally at the bottom. Check us out on the Rockstar Finance Net Worth Tracker. Scroll alllll the way down where you’ll find us—#535 out of 536 bloggers who publicly disclose their net worth.

I haven’t updated our net worth on RSF since January. We’re around -$234,000 as of the beginning of this month. (Much better, right?)

It’s tough to think about having such a long way to go just to get to zero. We need to get out of the red before we can even think about saving at the level necessary to reach FI.

Staying motivated

With such a long way to go, we have to find ways to keep ourselves motivated to reach the goal.

This is true of anything in life, but it’s especially true of large financial goals. It’s easy to get discouraged and give up.

Here are my best three tips for staying motivated to reach your goals.

Remember your “why”

One of the best ways to keep yourself motivated is by keeping the reason behind your goal in mind. Why are you doing all this?

For me, my kid is the biggest “why” there is.

My husband and I both have very demanding careers (He’s a doctor, and I’m a lawyer). I don’t want to spend our son’s entire childhood behind a desk. I don’t want to miss games, competitions, plays, or any other activities he’s in because of work.

Both of our current employers offer reduced schedules. The plan is to pay off all of our debts and eventually reduce our hours at work.

We both love what we do, so we can’t see retiring any time soon. We’d just like a little more time to do what we want outside of work. (My ideal schedule would be something like 8 to 1 or 9 to 2!)

That’s what financial freedom means to me. It’s the ability to take control of our lives. It’s buying back our time so that we can focus on what matters most to us: our family.

When you find your motivation waning, think about your “why.” It’s truly a major driving factor to reaching your goals.

By the way, if your only goal is money, you’re missing the point.

Celebrate progress along the way

Although we still have over $600,000 to pay off, we’ve already paid off $70,000, and $20,000 of that was in January and February alone. I’m very proud of our progress so far.

Celebrating smaller achievements on the way to a larger goal is crucial. It’s easy to get discouraged in the face of a monstrous goal and feel like you’ll never make it, but you just take it one step at a time.

Megan Nichole at The LaziMILLENNIAL talks about the importance of micro-goal-setting, and she’s so right. Setting smaller goals inside a larger one helps because the smaller goals don’t seem so impossible to reach.

By hitting all of the smaller goals, however, eventually you hit the larger one. That’s the beauty of micro-goal-setting. You almost trick yourself into accomplishing the large goal because your focus is on the smaller steps that get you there. Pretty cool, right?

Break your ultimate goal into smaller, easier-to-achieve targets and celebrate as you hit them. The quick wins will keep you motivated to keep going.

Don’t compare your beginning to someone else’s middle

It can be discouraging to compare our -$250,000 net worth to the net worth in the #1 spot, which belongs to Keith Schroeder of Wealthy Accountant. Keith is sitting pretty at $12,600,200.

In looking at the top three bloggers’ net worth, I also note that they’re decades further along than we are.

While they’re multimillionaires, they likely didn’t start there. Slow and steady wins the race.

They kept their spending in check and kept saving and investing over time. Those good money habits compounded to yield the results they have today.

Just like them, we have to keep practicing good money habits and keep chipping away at our debt. Before we know it, we’ll have it paid off and can move on to the next phase in our plan.

We currently live on about $4,000 a month. As long as we don’t fall into the traps of keeping up with the Joneses and lifestyle inflation, as is prone to happen in both of our professions, we should have no problem reaching our goals.

Don’t be discouraged by people who are further along in their journey than you. Don’t allow people who don’t share your beliefs to throw you off track. Stay true to your values and goals, and keep your eye on the prize.

Bottom line

We’re starting from the bottom and have a huge mountain to climb. Getting to the top will take persistence, perseverance, and focus.

We have all three.

By staying the course, eventually we will reach our goal of paying off $670,000 and reaching FI. I can see us hitting FI in the next 8 to 10 years.

For anyone who is trying to accomplish a seemingly insurmountable goal, just keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Remember the reason behind your goal. Recognize and celebrate the small wins along the way. Don’t compare yourself and your progress to others.

Focus on your plan, and the rest will take care of itself.

What huge goal are you striving for? Where are you in your journey? How are you staying motivated to reach your goal?