I'm not a patient person, just ask the personnel in the lab at my hospital. This lack of patience carries over into my financial life. Many financial goals, such as paying off student loans, becoming a millionaire, eliminating a mortgage, acquiring a sum of money for a college education, or reaching financial independence require literally years to accomplish. Smart financial management, like maintaining an appropriate weight, is literally the sum of thousands of tiny decisions over the course of your entire life. Sticking to something for decades requires a rather large dose of patience, and that makes it hard for people like me.
A lack of patience can lead to all kinds of financial trouble. For example, if your investments have not performed as well as you had hoped, you may abandon them just in time to realize you have sold low. Likewise, you may get sick of depriving yourself of the fruits of your labors (in order to reach financial goals) and splurge on expensive stuff like a wakeboat. For me, I just get frustrated that it takes so darn long to reach my goals. I can't believe I make as much as I do and STILL have a mortgage. Or that I've been working hard and saving for years and I STILL have to go to work. Or that it's already mid-summer and I still haven't maxed out my 401(k)s for the year. Do you ever find yourself getting impatient? I bet you do. Today's post contains five strategies I use when I'm feeling impatient financially. Share your favorite in the comments section below.
The summit of Teewinot, with the North Face of the Grand Teton and the East Ridge of Mt. Owen in the background
# 1 Life Is the Climb, Not the Summit
I have been climbing for a long time. Non-climbers often think people ascend mountains in order to reach the summit. But the truth is that the best part of a climb is almost never the summit. Occasionally it is, such as Teewinot in the Tetons, but usually the best part of a climb comes long before you reach the summit. In fact, I often only spend a few minutes on the summit of a mountain I have spent all day trying to reach.
I don't go climbing to stand on the summit. Neither do I manage my finances just to reach my goals. I also enjoy the feeling of moving toward the accomplishment of those goals. If you learn to enjoy the actual process of budgeting, investing, making a plan, and spending intelligently, it will be a lot easier to be patient.
It also helps to remember what you're going to do after you achieve your goal. If I had my mortgage paid off today, it probably wouldn't change a single thing in my life. I'd still go to work. I'd still save and invest each month. I'd do all my same hobbies and hang out with all the same people. If I'm not actually going to change anything when I reach a goal, why the impatience to reach it? Or as my wife would say, “You just want to call Dave Ramsey and scream that you're debt free.” Sounds dumb when you say it out loud, doesn't it?
# 2 Distract Yourself
Have you ever lost yourself in a monotonous task by thinking of something else? I often do this while on a long run. In fact, a surprising number of the posts on this forum have been conceived while I was out running. I actually hate running, but I do like that it keeps me in shape to do the things I really enjoy. If you're frustrated that you haven't reached financial goals that you are on track to eventually reach, then feel free to distract yourself. Spend your time thinking about your patients or your next vacation or your last vacation or whatever. Personal finance and investing isn't so time-consuming that you even have to think about it every month, much less every day. Readers may be surprised to learn that I often go weeks at at time without writing a post and months at a time without looking at my investments. This website gives the appearance that I'm always doing personal finance and investing stuff, but that's not the case. If you're fixating on this stuff more than I am, you're going to drive yourself nuts. Get a hobby or go work on your relationships or serving others or whatever makes you happy.
# 3 Break It Up Into Smaller Chunks
If you wait until you reach your huge massive financial goal to celebrate, you only get to celebrate once. Why not celebrate once for every $10K in student loans you pay off or every $100K in net worth you achieve? Mountains are climbed one step at a time, but if you keep moving, eventually you'll get there. Sure, you might not have become financially independent this year, but you did pay off the car, start a 529, and get your insurance sorted out. Well done!
# 4 Focus On Other Financial Issues
If you're getting impatient with one financial goal, switch your focus to another. Leave your investments or insurance on autopilot, and go work on your estate plan or asset protection or budget or whatever. Mix it up and when you come back, things will be fresher.
# 5 Live Your Ideal Life Now
This is probably my most important tip, and also the one I need to pay the most attention to. The reason you get impatient is that you aren't doing exactly what you want to be doing. Why not examine your life, figure out why it isn't your ideal life, and then take steps to make it closer to your ideal life. For example, I think I'd rather work 10-12 shifts a month, and no overnight shifts than the 15 shifts including 3 overnight shifts I currently work. That would be my ideal. If I were financially independent, that's probably all I'd work. Maybe instead of feeling impatient, I should just do what I can to live my ideal life now. How could I do that? I could plan to work longer, cut spending, or even save or give away less. There is nothing to be impatient about when you're doing exactly what you want to do. Just like with budgeting, the key is to set a budget on which you don't feel deprived, because if you constantly feel you're sacrificing something, you're far more likely to give up.
Patience may be a virtue, but there is more to it than simply hiding your impatience. Take these steps and you'll find it easier to stay the course with your financial plans.
What do you think? Do you find yourself impatient to reach your financial goals? Why or why not? What do you do to avoid failure due to impatience? Comment below!
Now, you know you don’t really still HAVE to go to work. Even if you stopped working and shut down WCI the same day, you’re in pretty good shape, no? I don’t have to go to work either, but I choose to build a larger cushion, build up the charitable DAF, etc… nothing wrong with that.
You make a great point about the climb. I’ve never been without a lofty goal. Get straight A’s. Get a good residency. Survive residency. Earn a good living. Gain financial independence. Double that. I contemplate retiring early, but I don’t know if I’ll be content to stop climbing.
I’m not sure how wealthy you think I am, but you seem to be overestimating it. My family would have to cut our spending significantly without the income from one of my two jobs. I’m financially independent of medicine, but not of work. It’s great that you don’t have to work, but I still do, at least for a while more unless we want to face a significant lifestyle decrease.
I see, you’ve got to be pretty close to being fully FI, I would imagine. If you do give up one day job eventually, please let it be the E.D. Outsourcing some of the WCI work would be reasonable too, of course. Just don’t give it up completely. Your readers would miss you!
Are you volunteering? You write pretty well. 🙂
I suppose I could contribute a guest post or 2. Why didn’t I think of that earlier? 😉
You’ve got to keep in mind I might be 10 years out of residency this summer, but I spent the first four in the 15-25% bracket. It was a big deal when we hit the 28% bracket.
Yeah, the military med has it’s pros and cons, for sure. I finished residency at the same time, but hit the locums trail right off the bat, giving me a head start. Also, you bought a boat. It’s been hours since someone brought up the boat. 😉
Doh! Unfortunately the difference between what I have and what I need for FI is far more than the price of that boat. I’m itching to get it out of storage and back on the water.
I read an article once that stated that the reason that small business owners are among the happiest and most satisfied with their lives is the concept of incremental improvement. The slow march up in income, slowly building a business, and learning new things among the way.
Humans quickly get used to static wealth, fame, and achievements, and soon it no longer makes them happy. See lottery winners, athletes, etc…
As physicians, we are often saddled with a fairly static income and job once we obtain partnership or a certain academic level. We need to find ways to manufacture this incremental happiness, and for me the slow climb out of debt, saving/investing and planning for retirement fits the bill.
Absolutely. The way we get that incremental improvement is by slowly growing into our attending income. I cannot preach that strongly enough.
I somewhat fell into this incremental jump by accident. First I was a med student and my wife a resident. Then I was a resident and her an attending. Now we are just about to reach both of us as attending status. There is definitely a lot of excitement making that next jump and also the financial success ( paying off more debt, increasing net worth, and saving for retirement). I think we have a few more years to continue to grow into and enjoy our income. I like the idea of celebrating each financial milestone… seems like a way to trick your mind into enjoying the incremental progress towards your ultimate goal and financial freedom. Hopefully in a year or two, we will celebrate a huge milestone… a net worth of zero!
To: WCI
I am not sure if you are aware, but at times I am unable to access your site b/ of “too many redirects”
Thanks for the heads up. I’ve seen that happen once in the past. Try clearing your browser cache, it worked for me.
Especially pertinent to #1:
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0715/housel_finished_with_financial_goals.php3
You can have any kind of financial goal, but if you don’t have the way to get there figured out, it’s more of a fantasy than a goal.
Imagery helps keep me patient. Using WCI’s example of mountain climbing, I consider my life the climb and finance a tool. Like a mountain climber must perform upkeep and maintenance on his tools, so must I perform maintenance and upkeep on my finances. I have lived through times when my finances have been a safety rope that kept me from falling. Thank goodness I took care of them. But, they are not my goal, just the tool. Best wishes in finding your own imagery to help your journey.
Nice article Jim. Two things that have helped me immeasurably with patience:
1. Gratitude
2. Mindfulness meditation
Both are free, simple and take almost no time.
Needs versus wants. The eternal dilemma, isn’t it? Rapidly accelerating lifestyle after reaching “Attendinghood”. Infernal internalized competitive nature, even a sense of entitlement and high expectations for themselves and others around them. Sound familiar? All help to facilitate to tendency to create mental state of “never enough, always a little bit more–to paraphrase the legendary John D. Rockefeller, Sr.”, albeit at a much lower level. Patience, Gratitude, Frugality and Loyalty–admirable qualities often lost amid a difficult gestational process and perhaps toxic (although very lucrative) practice situation. The zeitgeist of our time in light of the storm clouds above medicine’s uncertain future sets us up to make some poor choices (“chasing false rabbits”). It’s not the destination, it’s the journey that counts–WCI hits home a home run, again!
This article is really interesting! Great topic and excellent advice. I get VERY impatient as well, even as I’m making great progress and good decisions. The day to day progress is small and I find myself getting bored and impatient.
I have been trying to change my thinking and internalize the concepts of this article as well as a MMM article from 2012.
“Congratulations. That odd, slightly bored feeling you have is the feeling of becoming rich.” ~MMM
Article definitely spoke to me, I feel the same way.
I keep moving from one goal to the next, hoping to be fi as soon as possible.
But at some point if you keep planning for the future and don’t live in the now, you miss something.
I’m having a huge mental issue with that. I just can’t loosen those purse strings, I don’t want to lose net worth, don’t want to delay retirement by a few months just to have a boat.
It’s a struggle… I’m not sure how to get past it.
This article and many of the comments brought to mind Robert Hastings’ The Station http://robertjhastings.net/ Well worth 3 minutes of your day if you’ve never read it.
Start learning about behavioral finance. A good place to start is The Upward Spiral by Alex Korb. It was recommended on another financial website. Maybe WCI can add it to his list if he likes it as much as I did.
For me, learning to be a better Physician keeps me patient, and humble too.
This would probably be a great distraction to have for a Physician. The attitude of a perpetual student who wants to solve own problems, instead of blaming, and venting, and bad-mouthing Medicine.
Most Physicians I know stop learning and they don’t realize it takes at many years after formal training to be any good at practicing Medicine.