Thursday, December 17, 2009

The Joy of Five Digits

First, apologies to our readers for the sporadic nature of our posts the past few weeks. My wife and I are both musicians, and this is our insane time of the year. Fortunately, our concert start winding down this weekend, so regular posts should be easier from then on out.

Second, Our mortgage just dropped below the $100,000 mark (not much -- a grand total of almost a buck). There is something very psychologically satisfying about seeing only five numbers to the left of the decimal instead of six. We really aren't all that much better off than we were yesterday or last weekend or two weeks ago, but that part of my brain that gets really happy from simple things like cookies and good coffee really has a strong reaction to seeing a 9 followed by 4 other numbers and then a decimal. No more hundred-thousands digit. Endorphins are flooding through my body even as I type this.

Any time you have a big goal -- financial or otherwise -- it helps to look for these small triumphs and victories. It's these things that help us mark time when the days and weeks all run together, when we're never quite sure if we'll make our goal or not. It's these little things which help us to keep going when we're not sure if it's really all worth it.

To help us stay psychologically on track, we have actually drawn an outline of our house, and as we pay off the mortgage, we "buy" square feet of our home. I'll actually scan in and share this in a later post, but so far, we've paid off our family room, several closets, and our deck out back. These little triumphs ("Hey, honey! We now own our bathroom!") make it less like one big goal, and more like a string of little, very achievable goals.

What do you do to keep your morale up and keep your goals on track? Share in our comments section below. We'd love to have some other tricks to use!

No comments:

Post a Comment