How often do you monitor and track your financial goals progress? Do you do it once a month, once a week, once a day or once in a couple of months or are you one of those who look at it towards the end of the year? Well, I am certain there are some who never take a look at it, once it is created. Because I was one of those until sometime ago.
How often of monitoring is good practice to stay on track. There is absolutely no correct or wrong timeframe, but I think if you are starting off, then once a month, or once every fortnight is good enough. You have your payday. You know your bill amount and debt amount. And then you have your savings and then you know how much you can afford to splurge or put into an emergency fund.
But why should we monitor our progress? There are some months when I am not regularly looking at my financial progress, and it is those months that I start to lag behind.
Here are a few reasons why you might want to monitor your progress at regular intervals.
Tracking progress allows you to stay focussed on the goals
We become conscious about our spending habits and we learn to avoid impulsive purchases.
We try to put in whatever extra we have into savings. There is a lot of happiness in seeing the debt go down and when savings amount goes up.
Monitoring our progress keeps our finances organized and having organized finances leads to less stress about finances.
There is motivation to keep going since you have more control over your finances.
And over a period of time, you become smarter at managing your finances.
But, what happens when you start to take control of your finances. If truth be told, it is uncomfortable. Especially when starting out, getting out of the habit of impulsive spending might seem hard, prioritising paying off debt vs savings can be confusing. You will figure what works for you as you go along.
For many, when it comes to grocery shopping, they can go out of budget very easily. Especially, since we rarely use paper money to pay for things, there is no guilt when it comes to paying more especially when we swipe our credit cards.
Make it a habit to withdraw cash that is budgeted and leave your cards at home. You will be surprised how many of the things you pass by and realize you can do without it.
Thank you for reading.
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Photo by Karolina Grabowska: https://www.pexels.com/photo/calculator-and-notepad-placed-on-usa-dollars-stack-4386366/