How I Failed On My Journey To Financial Freedom

In this blog post, I’ll be discussing how I failed on my journey to financial freedom. I’ll also outline practical steps I’ve taken to get back on track and ensure I stay on track to achieving my goal of financial freedom.

How I Failed On My Journey To Financial Freedom

It’s been six+ weeks since my last blog post and my longest hiatus since launching my blog in January 2019.

In my last blog post, I vowed to start publishing one blog post a week. I quickly failed at this goal. Somewhere along my journey to financial freedom, I lost my way. I stopped living frugally and felt terrible for it.

In this blog post, I’ll be discussing why I failed on my journey to financial freedom. I’ll also outline the practical steps I’ve taken to get back on track with my journey to financial freedom. Finally, I’ll be discussing things I’ve put in place to ensure I stay on track to achieving my goal of financial freedom. Read on to discover how these things will help you also achieve your goal of financial freedom.

Why I Failed My Journey To Financial Freedom

Poor Return on investment

I’ve read so many other bloggers accounts of how they made a fortune within a few months of starting their blog. That wasn’t my experience and I felt discouraged. So many hours invested in researching, planning and writing these blog posts, only to get next to nothing in financial return. Once I started to feel there was no point in writing about it, there was less pressure for me to live it.

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I was distracted

I spent so much time looking to my left and right at what everyone else was doing that I lost my way. I lost sight of my initial purpose for pursuing financial freedom and sharing it online. Instead of staying true to my vision and goal, I became distracted and engrossed in the fabulousness of my timeline. Before long I was sucked back into my old ways and started buying things I had convinced myself that I needed.

Financial Comfortability

When your backs against the wall you surprise yourself at what you’re able to achieve. If you’re not careful, comfortability can quickly breed complacency. This has been true in my case. Because we’re in a good financial position, the urgency to make it better wasn’t there.

How to successfully complete your journey to financial freedom

Outline Your Goal And Mission

What is your main goal and objective? While we are pretty much consumer debt free (aside from our student loans), we still have a pretty hefty mortgage to pay. Our goal is to pay off our mortgage by my 41st birthday and achieve financial freedom. I’ll explain why we’re determined to pay off our mortgage early in a future blog post.

Once you’ve decided on your goal, break it down into smaller goals. This way you can celebrate each mini-milestone achieved and you’ll feel more motivated to stay on track to achieving your main goal. I wrote a whole blog post on goal setting earlier this year, have a read here.

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Identify And Know Your Why

Why have you set this as your main goal and objective? What’s your purpose in doing what you’ve set out to do? It has to be very important and meaningful in order to keep you motivated during the seasons when life hits you hard and motivation dwindles. My why is my family. I want to secure my children’s financial future and don’t want them to experience the same money troubles we had growing up. I’d like to teach them the principles of money and financial literacy, but you can’t pour from an empty cup. I want to learn everything there is to know about the principles of money.

Side note: If you know of any fantastic personal finance and money books please mention them in the comments section below.

Smart People Budget!

Before starting your journey to financial freedom, you need to have a clear picture of your finances. How much money do you have coming in? Where is all your money going? What are your biggest expenses? Are there ways to reduce your expenses? Is that Amazon Prime Subscription a necessity?

Get a clear picture of your finances by tracking every single transaction for a whole month. You’ll surprise yourself when you see where your money is really going in comparison to where you think it’s going.

I could write a series of blog posts on the topic of budgeting alone. We’ve always claimed to have a budget, but it’s only when I actually sat down and created a thorough budget tracker that we were able to get a fully accurate picture of our finances. Understanding your finances is just the first step, the next is to actually manage them. Once you’re able to create and stick to your budget you’re well on your way to achieving financial freedom. Remember, it’s not so much about how much money you earn, rather pay closer attention to how much money you keep.

Find An Accountability Partner

My husband is my accountability partner. We have a shared budget tracker which we update daily with our income and expenditure. We have regular catch-ups to discuss how we’re tracking against budget for the month and things we can do to improve our budget. Having someone to talk to that is on the same path helps keep you sane and motivated to stay on track. When one is losing motivation, the accountability partner is there to hold you accountable to goals you’ve set out to accomplish.

Cash Is King

A gamechanger for me on my journey to financial freedom has been the introduction of cash envelopes. I’ve started using cash envelopes for all our variable expenses such as food, petrol and the kids spending allowance. At the start of the month, I withdraw the money allocated to each variable expense and place them in their respective envelopes. I set a budget each week and once the money is gone, it’s gone. If I had my debit card the temptation to overspend would be too great but my removing this temptation I have no choice but to stick to the budget.

Document everything… literally everything!

In addition to paying with cash, I document every single transaction I make. This helps me visualise where my money is going and helps me to keep track of my spending patterns and behaviours.

Sharing Is Caring

By sharing more of my journey to financial freedom on this blog, I hope to inspire others to do the same. I also get a lot of encouragement from my readers which is invaluable and keeps me motivated to stay on course. It’s also good pressure. The pressure to achieve what you set out to achieve because you know people are watching you.

In order to avoid making this post ridiculously long, I’ll stop here. In summary, these are just a few safeguards I’ve put in place to keep me on track on my journey to financial freedom. If you have any other suggestions of things I can implement to keep me on course then please share them below.