How I’m Staying Motivated Through a Setback

This is a guest post from paidtwice. When I asked for help with guest posts early this morning, she had one in my inbox before this afternoon. Thanks paidtwice for guest posting!

I’m a planner. I plan and plot and calculate and plan some more, but sometimes life throws a wrench into those plans. Recently, my mortgage company sent us a letter letting us know as of February 1st, our payment would be going up by about $58 a month due to a miscalculation of our property taxes last year and another property tax increase this year. To many, a $58/month increase would not be a huge deal. For us, it is – we are working our way out of significant debt and have a budget so tight it squeaks. When I got the letter a few days ago, I honestly felt sick to my stomach. We have been doing so well focusing on our debt reduction and clearing our credit card debt – what will happen now? It seems every time we pick up any kind of momentum, life throws a wrench in our plans. After letting my feelings sit in my head overnight and percolate, I came up with 5 ways to keep motivated through this setback as well as ones in the future and even feel not so bad about it as well.

First, I gave reality time to sink in. I had expectations from before I read the letter that I had to give myself time to let go of. This can be a short or long process depending on the severity of the setback (having my contracting position unexpectedly end in October took me a lot longer to adjust to), for this, it generally took overnight for my brain to accept that the new situation was now reality.

Next, I kept my eye on the long term. This change in our monthly bills certainly affects our budget, and may slow down our debt reduction progress as well. But when you are looking at a scenario of 36 months to being all but mortgage debt free, a few months change doesn’t necessarily matter as much as it might. I don’t honestly know if this change will result in our missing the goal date, but we have a lot of time to make adjustments and push to make that goal date regardless. Time is on our side in this.

Which led me to remember why I’m doing this in the first place. This isn’t some kind of contest with myself and I’m not doing it for bragging rights. If the setback results in us not getting out of debt until a few months later than we planned – that’s okay. Because the overall goal is to get out of debt. And if we accomplish that, everything else is just gravy.

Another step I took was to adjust my short term goals as soon as possible and focus on those new benchmarks. One of our short term goals is to completely eradicate our credit card debt by August 2008. We have a car loan and two student loans to deal with after that, which is why our overall debt reduction goal is three years from now. We are actually on pace to completely eliminate the credit card debt by April of 2008, so even with this setback, we should be able to accomplish our August 2008 credit card debt gone goal. Focusing on that fact has helped me to be calmer and more settled about possible fluctuations in the long term picture.

And most importantly, I’m not giving up. This isn’t all or nothing. We have budgeted $810.40 to send to debt every month, plus any alternative income we can raise to supplement that. If one month, we can only send $752.40 because we haven’t raised any alternative income, then so be it. That is still more than our minimum payments, and we are still moving in the right direction. And you never know what is around the next corner – and sometimes it actually turns out to be good!

Overall, this focus on and journey through debt reduction has been an amazing learning experience for me and has even taught me more than a few things about financial planning and personal finance in general. I can’t say I would have chosen to be in debt to learn those lessons, but I can say I am grateful there were lessons to be learned in the process. And we will accomplish our debt free goal – early, on time, or late, it will happen. Our perseverance will see us through.

Thanks again to paidtwice for guest posting!

Posted by Tricia on December 6, 2007 at 3:51 PM in General Debt | 10 Comments »
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JvW responded:
Posted: December 6th, 2007 at 10:22 pm
This is going to come in handy! Nice post!
Mar responded:
Posted: December 7th, 2007 at 9:20 am
Just think how badly this would have hit you if you didn’t have goals, if you didn’t have a budge, and if you were just piling up more debt. Good luck with the debt reduction!
Mar responded:
Posted: December 7th, 2007 at 9:20 am
Just think how badly this would have hit you if you didn’t have goals, if you didn’t have a budge, and if you were just piling up more debt. Good luck with the debt reduction! Good luck!
Colleen in MA responded:
Posted: December 7th, 2007 at 10:41 am
Thank you for sharing this – your upbeat attitude is inspiring and will certainly be a big part of your success. I also find it satisfying that the things I’m learning as I get out of debt can also apply to other “setbacks” in life. In other words, the payoff to getting out of debt can be bigger than financial! You beautifully illustrated that in your guest post.
Guest Post and Next Books | I've Paid For This Twice Already... responded:
Posted: December 7th, 2007 at 11:52 am
[...] off, welcome to my new visitors from Blogging Away Debt! I have a guest post there today about How I’m Staying Motivated Through a Setback. If you are one of my regular readers and haven’t seen it yet, I encourage you to click over [...]
Karen responded:
Posted: December 7th, 2007 at 1:47 pm
I know EXACTLY how you feel. A similar letter arrived in my mailbox about 18 months ago. Mine was that my mortgage was sold and due to differences in the way they calculated escrow accounts, my payment went up $100/month. Let me tell you, on a single income, that was hard. And I fought them, as I had put 20% down and wasn’t required to have them escrow my taxes and insurance. But they fought back, saying that I had to prove now that I had 25% equity(!), that would cost me several hundred more $$ for an appraisal by a “licensed appraiser”. Well! Basically, this mortgage company (which begins with citi…) decided they wanted to “hold” $800 more of MY money as a cushion, well, just because they CAN. The good news is that I weathered the “storm”, you will too; and on a happy note, I did get a big refund in escrow after the year was up (go figure that one). It really is a travesty some of the stuff that the mortgage and credit card companies pull. All the more motivation to be truly debt-free!
Dealing With Setbacks, My Two Cents Worth » Blogging Away Debt responded:
Posted: December 7th, 2007 at 8:35 pm
[...] Karen: I know EXACTLY how you feel. A similar letter arrived in my mailbox… [...]
rolleyes » Blog Archive » First Seven Days of December responded:
Posted: December 7th, 2007 at 10:33 pm
[...] @ Blogging Away Debt is staying motivated through some setbacks. See what she is doing to cope with this situation! You may be able to [...]
paidtwice responded:
Posted: December 7th, 2007 at 10:47 pm
Thanks for the responses! Indeed, all the more motivation to be debt free – and I’m glad that your situation Karen turned out well in the end!
Looking for Guest Bloggers » Blogging Away Debt responded:
Posted: March 15th, 2008 at 10:30 am
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