How do you keep focused and motivated for your long term financial goals?

[Nai]

I have run a lean budget for over 7 years now so that we could pay our mortgage while on maternity leave initially but then so that I could go back to work part time, then have another baby etc. we've just kept it going.

[Astrid]

Nice to know others out there have some kind of financial plan in place. Thanks for sharing

BTW I was not after any budget/savings advice, just more about the emotional focus of having a plan

[Livinthedream]

I have decided to do it 1 debt at a time.
Pay the minimum on them all, and put any extra on that one debt.
Currently, we are working on my car.
I prob makes more sense to spread the extra over all of them, but the rewards are so small then. I need more short term goals than long term gain KWIM?

[Nai]

It's hard to keep focus but I think or person has to be tough and be the controller to make sure things don't go off track. once you do it for a while you get used to it and it becomes easier.

[chody47]

I keep focussed purely by setting yearly goals and then checking each month how close to them I am. I decided that last year I wanted to get debt down to x amount. We made it and I've sry a slightly bigger goal this year (figured I wouldn't need to pay extra and that the reduced interest should do it for us). I always put our tax refund into our debt - it's nice to are a larger chunk of debt disappear one month.

[Liviam]

What I have done is print out a photo of my "dream" house and I have it sitting on the fridge to keep reminding myself of what we are doing this for.

DH & I also talk/plan what we want in our new house and look at real estate to keep us motivated too.

[Liviam]

We have just paid off a credit card & car lona so I printed out the zero balances and stuck it to the fridge so we can see them because it's so nice to look at a zero balances and I can't wait to put the next one up there too

[~Raven~]

It's hard. No doubt about it. Feeding the neighbors dog while they go to Fiji or watching our cruddy old box TV after visiting someone with a 50" plasma really burnt sometimes. And then the neighbor on the other side gets a pool and we're like WTF we can't even afford curtains.

I think we got through it my telling ourselves that we can lash out later. We would have the occasional splurge but the more we got paid down, the less we wanted to lash out IYKWIM. When we finally cleared out personal and CC debt and just had the mortgage it felt brilliant

[Sopdet]

Astrid - I know how you feel. I'm planning on a few major things next year and I have to kick myself into gear getting budgeting stuff all organised. I'm trying to pay off a credit card, am about to look at the balance transfer offers of other banks to swap it to one with minimal interest on the transferred balance. I'm lucky I've only got one credit card and that currently is my only debt. But I do things like OS trips every year. I also want to have a bigger emergency fund/nest egg. I think the major thing for me is once this contract is over, I bite the bullet and temporarily go back to my skill-set work-wise and deal with the pressure and just think of 3-6 months of the money coming in to get me set.

I want to buy, but have no idea where or when, so have to start factoring in savings for that.