A Matter Of Direction

Like most things, our decisions and habits with our money will point us in only one of two directions: towards our financial goals or away from them.

There is no in between.

It’s common and easy for our goals of a financially secure retirement, early retirement, college savings to help our kids, or living debt-free to feel like amorphic intangible states floating out in the ether in some distant future.

But each day, whether we acknowledge it or not, we’re moving a step closer to realizing them or a step away. Each day we’re increasing the odds of a desired outcome or decreasing those odds. Moving up the timeline of reaching a goal or delaying it.

There’s no way around this universal truth of direction. Because time passes, money flows in and out – we only influence the direction of that flow as time keeps marching on.

Did you trade a round of fall décor shopping for sticking to your savings goals? Or pass them off another month?

Did you trade earlier years of debt free living for newer wheels that came with a car payment? Or keep fixing what you had to commit to savings first?

None of this is easy, of course. Making the step forward in the direction of your financial goals is sometimes even not an option. Circumstances push us backward. Progress gets undone.

But that’s the thing.

Circumstances will almost always work against our financial goals progressing.

Very rarely do random events help us attain a better financial position without our input.

That’s why our actions, our decisions, our inputs are the only things standing between us and hope of attaining the financial freedom we aim for.

Our actions, decisions, and inputs must keep pushing for those forward steps, the direction of accelerating our goals.

Because the only other direction is diminishing our wealth. That is the default.

When it boils down to that black and white thinking, how do your choices and habits measure up? Are you using your inputs to push forward your desires and goals? Or are you putting up no defense to circumstances that will diminish wealth and delay goals?

If you’re feeling stuck or seeing your goals pushed further and further into the distance, be sure to test your thinking and decisions against this rubric: Is this moving me closer to or farther from what I truly want?

It might take more than you think. It might mean tough changes.

But your choices are only helping you travel in one of two directions.

And only one of those is a direction worth the battle.