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It can be very difficult when you’re just starting out to not get discouraged that things aren’t happening faster. I check in on other dividend investment blogs and often the authors are making a handful of purchases each month. Because I’m focusing primarily on my down payment fund, dividend stock purchases are few and far between. A huge portion of my monthly savings are going into the down payment fund, and just a couple hundred dollars a month are going into a money market holding account that I use to purchase stocks. The stocks are the more exciting part of investing (though when my down payment fund gets big enough that I can start looking at houses, that will be pretty exciting!), so it’s a bit discouraging to see the months pass by without making any new purchases. And while I am making a significant contribution to my down payment fund each month, the housing prices in my area are so high that it will still take me several years to get a sizable down payment. So it seems like nothing is happening.
The relative inactivity makes me question a lot of things. Are my long term goals really realistic? Should I be doing more to reach my goals faster? What the hell should I write on this blog when I’m doing nothing with my money?
Well I should probably write about my frustration so I can try and channel it into something more productive. I’m sure there are many other Gen Yers out there who are just as frustrated as I am that they don’t see their net worth growing as quickly as they’d like. So what should we do when our goals are still so far away and every step we take toward them seems infinitesimal?
There are two primary ways to turn our frustration into determination. First, we should be looking for ways to increase our income and save more money. My last post described how I finally switched my cell phone onto my company’s plan, saving me about $100/month. I’m also going to be selling a few larger ticket items on eBay before too long, so that will bring in some more money, though it will just be a one time spike in income. The second, and much easier, way to channel that frustration is to focus on more appropriate goals. When I first started this blog last month, I set out some year end goals for myself. These goals are great, but to keep myself motivated, I need to focus on much smaller goals on a day-to-day basis. Some good micro-term goals would be going three days without spending any money, watching less TV, making a great dinner out of leftovers, etc.
These small goals give you an opportunity to accomplish things every single day, so you’re not waiting until the end of the month to see how much your net worth creeped up. You may already be doing a lot of these day-to-day savings tactics without even thinking about it, but treating them as small daily accomplishments helps you to let go of some of the frustration.
So no, on a month-to-month basis things are not happening very quickly. But every single day I’m making progress and accomplishing little goals. Don’t ignore those small accomplishments, you can’t get to the big accomplishments without them.
Just like that another year is gone and it’s time to make some new year’s resolutions. For the next month gyms all across the country will be overcrowded with people who made the resolution to get back in shape. By mid-February things will revert back to normal as over-zealous resolutionaries (best made up word so far this year!) lose their enthusiasm and return to their sedentary lifestyles. One of the nice things about having a blog is that by writing out my goals for the new year and keeping a link to them right at the top of my blog, I can’t pretend they don’t exist once my fervor has waned.
