How To Regain Motivation To Achieve Your Money Goals
Staying motivated to achieve your financial goals isn’t easy. Sometimes you’ll feel more motivated than other times, and your level of drive and determination will regularly fluctuate.
There are so many reasons you may find yourself losing motivation, and this is completely normal! Perhaps your goals are taking longer to achieve than expected. Or maybe you’ve experienced a major setback that’s made you wonder, “What’s the point?”
Whatever the reason, there are things you can do to ensure that you always bounce back, no matter how low your motivation becomes.
Signs of low motivation towards your financial goals
In order to combat low motivation, you first need an understanding of what low motivation looks like. This varies from person to person, so it’s important to recognise how being demotivated affects you as an individual.
When I’m suffering from low motivation, I completely give up on my money goals, instead taking actions that completely undermine them. I overspend on things I don’t care about, and I stop posting on my side hustle pages. On the other hand, there are people who continue to progress towards their financial goals despite suffering from low motivation. These people may feel drained and overwhelmed or have a negative outlook on their financial future, yet they may not realise they’re demotivated simply because they’re still progressing.
It’s important to understand how you think, feel, and behave when you’re experiencing low motivation so that you know when to start taking action to combat it. Here are a few signs you should look out for:
- Feeling easily overwhelmed when it comes to your financial goals
- Feeling confused about what you want
- Wondering whether your goals are too ambitious with no substantial reason why
- Procrastinating when it comes to any tasks related to achieving your financial goals
- Looking onto the lives of those without similar financial goals, and wondering if you should just take the “easy” route and do nothing
- Overspending or making bad financial decisions simply because you can no longer be bothered
- Acting out of character when it comes to your spending habits or general money habits
What can I do to combat low motivation?
Create a reasons why collection
A “reasons why collection” is simply a collection of content designed to motivate you when you’re feeling demotivated. This collection should include anything that will help you remember the whys. Why do you want to achieve your financial goals? Why is it important not to give up on them? Why do you believe you’ll be successful one day?
It’s up to you how you answer these, whether it be through written letters, photographs, drawings, videos, voice notes, or anything else you can think of. The only requirement is that you thoroughly cover all the questions.
Take some time to go through your collection whenever you lose sight of your reasons why. This will hopefully give you a new-found boost of motivation and re-inspire you to progress towards your financial goals.
Here is some content I’ve included in mine:
- Financial vision boards reflecting what my life will look like once I achieve my financial goals
- Images of the people I want to be in a better financial situation for
- A letter to myself listing why I know I can achieve my financial goals
- Post-it notes of everything I’ve already achieved
- Case studies of people who have already done what I’m trying to do
Find friends who support your goals
Your choice of friends can have a large impact on your level of motivation, which is why it’s important to find supportive friends. These types of friends are fairly easy to identify. They are the friends who value and respect your financial goals, whether they’re similar to their own or not. They understand why you’re spending less time with them to work on your side hustles or why you’d like to dine somewhere cheaper. They suggest doing activities that fit within your budget and do not criticise you or make you feel bad for having one. Most importantly, their doors are always open to talk to when you need a morale boost, whether that is due to low motivation or anything else. Friends like these are a necessity in building a social environment fit for motivation, determination, and financial growth. Find these friends and keep them!
So what if you don’t have any friends like this? I know that I don’t have many, and this is okay! A large portion of my friends have no opinion on my financial goals or even financial growth in general. This is either because it’s not something they know much about or they simply just aren’t interested. They’re not people who can motivate or inspire me, and I wouldn’t talk to them about my financial situation, but that doesn’t necessarily make them bad friends. In a finance-related context, bad friends are the people who completely disregard your financial goals, do not respect your wants and decisions, and make you feel as if being on a budget is an extremely bad thing. If you spend time with people like this, it can be really hard to stay motivated to achieve your money goals. Here are some signs that you should distance yourself from a friend who’s bad for your financial future:
- They constantly question the purpose of your goals and make you feel as if you’re being unrealistic
- They push you to go outside your budget for their own benefit and show no interest in ever doing budget-friendly activities with you
- They always criticise your outfit choice for being too cheap and suggest that you need to buy more designer
- They laugh at you for buying things secondhand or shopping at “basic” stores
- They don’t respect your side hustles or the time you need to put into them, often guilt-tripping you into spending more time with them
Celebrating the small wins
When working on long-term financial goals, it’s very easy to forget where you started or how far you’ve come. This can have a negative impact on your level of motivation, which is why regularly reviewing your progress is very useful. By simply recognising your achievements on a regular basis, you can stay motivated or regain the motivation you once felt.
Every three months, I set aside some time to review my quarterly goals and highlight all my wins, no matter how small they may be. Once I have these wins, I write down a plan of action for the next three months, then begin my celebration. This could be through treating myself to a mini clothes shop, dining at a new restaurant, or any other way I desire (within budget, of course).
There is always something to celebrate, so I celebrate whether I made all the progress I wanted to make for that quarter or not. And if you honestly can’t think of anything (which hasn’t happened to me so far), you can always celebrate the fact that you created a good action plan for the next three months. Here are some small wins worth celebrating:
- Bringing in some side hustle income
- Not taking money out of your savings
- Being able to cover an emergency with your emergency fund
Saving or investing every month - Avoiding unnecessary overspending on your birthday
- Growing your business’ Instagram page
- Launching a new business or product
- Saying no to that expensive holiday your friend invited you to
After reading this blog I’m feeling motivated to get back on track with my money goals. 🙂