Potato Chips, Boredom and Goals

We have kind of lost track of where we are in the overall process of Project Money, but we know we are in the thick of it. We really haven’t done any shopping in quite some time, both as a reaction to being in Project Money and also because there isn’t a lot that we actually need. Last week, however, we cracked our wallets open, and it might as well have been a bag of potato chips…we didn’t just buy one thing. We didn’t go crazy, but we found ourselves slipping back a bit into our old habits of justifying (easily) the things we bought. They were all things we mostly needed or will use for a long time, but we found ourselves looking online at a number of things and discussing other purchases, when we both finally admitted it was time to put the proverbial bag of chips away.

We’ve also been feeling a little bored with our finances. Unless you are doing something big like refinancing a house, buying a new car or rolling over a retirement account, the day to day of checking your bank account isn’t really all that exciting and there really isn’t much to do if you have direct deposit and automatic transfers using Summit’s online banking. I guess that is good news because in a sense we can be on autopilot. But that can also feel kind of boring when you are in a competition about saving money and reducing debt. I think that’s a little bit where our “shopping spree” came into play…at least something was happening with our money. We are also a bit over the all the money discussions and analyzing and coming up with plans for every last penny. Boring! And we feel like we have been losing focus.

Turns out we have been crossing off some pretty big goals in the last few months, and we feel a bit like we are drifting. This means it’s time for some new goals to help us refocus. As with anything, if you don’t know where you’re going, how are you going to get there? We are working to develop some new savings goals for ourselves which we would call big goals. We are also setting quick, achievable goals that are both satisfying and can be reset. A good example of this is only going out to lunch once a week, and making our own lunches for the other four days. You can set and reset this goal each week and it’s becoming a little bit of a contest for Team Awesome. Speaking of contests…we are also refocused now on the BIG goal and winning Project Money!