Without the proper motivation to save money, there’s very little chance that you will stick with the personal finance journey over the long term. Maybe you’ll stick with it over a couple of months or even a year. However, there’s a good chance that you won’t stick with it over years and years, let alone decades.
The personal finance journey takes a very long time to reach the final destination. Take it from someone who’s been through the grind. It took me 6 years before I saved up $100,000. Six years is a ridiculously long time to experience.
Without the proper motivation to save money, I would have given up. Working 40+ hours a week just to save the majority of it feels very demoralizing. I really wanted the good life and what I was experiencing didn’t feel like the good life by any means of measurement.
While saving $100,000 was a commendable result, if I had given up I would have been out of the game. $100,000 isn’t an earth shattering level of wealth and it is not enough for anybody to feel secure with. Life is very expensive and has a way of costing more than $100,000 just to stay alive.
The reasons why you are looking to save money will float the boat to cross you through the river. You may have countless times throughout that discourage you from waking up and keep going. The motivations below will help alleviate some of the discouragement.
I know the struggle that you may be going through by saving more money than you would like.
However, although the journey to financial freedom is a hard one, it is a rewarding one. You will be thankful you went through with it.
Motivation to Save Money Matters
The biggest motivation to save money for me starts with my mom. Saving money was ingrained in the Asian culture and my family was no exception. The earliest memory that I crossed paths with money was when I was 10 years old and bought a $10 hot wheels toy from Walmart. It turned out to be defective.
My mom immediately told me to ask the store clerk to return it and get a refund. The following words she said impacted me forever and it is ingrained in my memory. “We need to return the toy and get a refund, do you have any idea how valuable $10 is“?
At that point, I was confused. I had thought $10 was an inconsequential amount of money. However, after dwelling on it for a day, that sparked my interest in saving money. It taught me a lesson that money wasn’t something to be taken lightly.
You need some sort of spark and desire to go out and save money to invest with. Without the motivation to save money, you will be oftentimes questioning why you are doing it. It could stem from your family. Or it could stem from your innate desire to be free at last from the corporate shackles.
Without that desire and the want to better your financial life, you will find it difficult to keep showing up every day. It was hard for me when I had a lot of motivation. It would have been even harder for me if I didn’t have any motivation.
You don’t want to keep thinking about the finish line every single day. It’s a marathon, not a sprint, and results are going to come later than most people would prefer. Patience is key.
7 Ways to Stay Motivated to Save Money
If you are having trouble staying motivated to save money, I listed some good motivators below. One thing that I do ask for you to be motivated is to SMASH that social share button for the Google algorithm, BERT 😊 . It takes hours of research into putting together the information for you, so if you could share the article with your friends, it would be really appreciated.
BERT would really like it as well!
1) Celebrate Milestones
There are countless milestones to celebrate in your personal finance journey. Celebrate them the best you can. You may be ahead or behind other folks but what’s important is that you are ahead of your yesterday’s or past self. Reaching the milestones is something to be proud of and the small but meaningful celebrations demonstrate that you are on the right path.
Celebrating the little things in life gives me a huge motivation to save money.
Some milestones to be proud of include:
- Reaching the $100,000 net worth mark
- Becoming debt free
- Getting your first credit card
- Going above 600, 700, or 800 in your credit score depending on where you start
- Saving 50%+ of your income
- Buying your first house
- Reaching financial independence
- Paying off your car
The accomplishments listed above are important milestones that you should celebrate. You earned it! I’ve completed 6 out of 8 meaningful milestones above. The final things on my list is to reach financial independence and buying my first house. I hope to get there one day.
Time will tell.
2) Take Note of Your Progress
It wouldn’t be any fun without tracking your progress towards financial freedom. It’s fun to see how your hard work pays off over a week, month, or a year. I personally use Personal Capital in order to keep track of my progress. Some days, it’s not so fun watching the balance decline by more than my paycheck.
Some days, it’s a lot of fun watching the balance increase by more than my paycheck. Over the long term, it’s been nothing but up. This is where your motivation to save money skyrockets. Making progress.
Watching you progress and move forward with your goals will give you the continual motivation to keep going. It means all of the effort that you’re putting in is actually working in the real world. It’s not theoretical.
One day, you’ll have progressed so far ahead that whether the market declines 1%, you literally couldn’t care less. It’s when you are so far ahead that a 1% decline is meaningless. That’s where you want to be and that’s where you will be if you continue to save and invest your money.
3) Surround Yourself With the Right People
Some of your friends will absolutely detest you saving money. They are happy living like a huge consumerist, which is great for them. However, the downsides happen when they try to force their ideology onto you. They encourage you to continue to spend money at all costs.
It’s fine when they encourage you once, you decline, and then you guys move on like nothing happened. However, it rarely happens like that. What’s more likely is that they continue to encourage you to spend money. Day in and day out. It is a huge dagger to your motivation to save money.
For me personally, I’ve had to eventually let go of these friends. It was getting to the point where they were harassing me to spend money. They were more interested in me spending money than they were interested in having my company.
They would get mad that I would get an appetizer because I already ate while they get a full on meal. That rubbed me the wrong way.
You might not have to get that far and cut off your friends. Maybe your friends will listen and encourage you to pursue FIRE. That would be ideal. However, at the end of the day, remember to be careful who you surround yourself with.
They influence you more than you know.
4) Read Personal Finance Blogs
People who read personal finance blogs are better with their money than those who don’t. This is an extension of 3) in that you can surround yourself with the ideas that align with your interests. When you surround yourself and read about people who normalize saving money, that’s a recipe for money success.
The community seems to go on 24/7 in bettering people’s finances and haven’t let go since ever. That means personal finance bloggers will provide you with the motivation to save money if you are going through a bump.
5) Set Reminders Around Your Apartment
I bought two small whiteboards that I hang up around the apartment. I write down my greatest money goal that I want to achieve for the year. It serves as a constant reminder of what I am trying to achieve. Of course, it shifts year over year but it helps me focus better on what I need to achieve for the year.
A consistent reminder of your money goals will serve as good motivations for you to keep going. If you consistently remember what you are trying to achieve day in and day out, there’s little chance you won’t achieve it. You will remember your goals automatically with little effort.
6) Remind Yourself Who It’s For
When we have a goal that’s greater than ourselves, we tend to put in a good amount of effort towards it. It could be to achieve financial independence for your future kids, spouse, or parents. Providing financial security to people who depend on you is a huge accomplishment to be proud of.
For me, it’s for my future children that I do want to have. While I want them to appreciate the value of money, I do not want them to grow up struggling for money. Therefore, the motivation to save money comes naturally for me.
Once you are working for somebody that you care immensely about, you will have better motivation to keep going.
7) Have Fun Money
Fun money is necessary to give micro rewards for a job well done. You do not want to work 40+ hours a week without pampering yourself once in a while. Otherwise, there is no point in saving money. There is no point in being the richest person in the grave.
Splurge and get that expensive thing you’ve always wanted. As long as you do it once in a while, everything will be fine. We are not robots. We are not wired to save all of our money without spending it on fun.
You deserve it.
Find the Right Motivation to Save Money
It’s now all up to you to find the motivation to save money. I listed seven great motivators for you to be mindful of while you make progress towards your money goals. It’s necessary to have them to have the firepower to keep going.
The start to the middle of the personal finance journey is the most difficult. There will be many moments where you want to quit and give up. If that happens, you can always bookmark this page and come back to it to remember what you are working towards. What exactly your motivation to save money is.
The middle to the end of the journey will be the easiest. It’s when everything runs on autopilot and you won’t be bothered by a $10 spending here and there. Right now, my yearly spending is close to 7 – 9% of my net worth.
That is a huge chunk of my net worth to be gone out the window. Therefore, I am still in the late early to mid stages of the journey. It’s still stressful to stick to a budget and take note of what I spend. However, with the right kind of thinking, I religiously stick to my budget without any regrets.
Because I stuck through the hard part, I can attest that I am miles ahead of my friends in building wealth. If I could do it all over again, I would continue to save as much money as I did. In a heartbeat.
With the proper motivation to save money, you too can be miles ahead of others and live a stress free life. Working hard for money becomes old very quickly and financial freedom is a meaningful goal to strive towards. The first $100,000 may be the hardest but afterwards, it gets easier and easier.
