We all need a little help in life. When it comes to staying on track with our goals, friends and partners can make a huge difference in your success rate.
Running Partners
For example, I’m currently training for a half marathon. A college friend reached out to me to see if I wanted to sign up with her. We live about 40 minutes apart, so we can’t train together, but we text each other our stats.
On Saturday, I needed to run 8 miles. I’d arranged with another neighborhood friend to run early Saturday morning. The night before, Friday night, a friend had a get-together. If I had to run those eight miles by myself, with no one to support me or keep me on track, I’m sure I would have stayed way too late at the get-together and would have found a reason not to get up the next morning.
Instead, I knew that I had someone who was willing to meet on her Saturday morning to run with me, even though she isn’t currently training for a race. Because I knew I’d let her down if I didn’t show, I didn’t stay too late at the gathering and went home at a respectable 10:30pm. One of the friends at the get-together even lent me a pair of athletic pants to try out for my run to see if I liked them! (Can you even imagine how sweaty those things got after 8 miles?). There was no way I was going to skip the run since so many people were involved.
Without my running partners, I doubt I would run half as much. If I’m running by myself, I seem to often find an excuse to skip the run or do it later. But when I know there are two or three friends getting up early, putting on their running gear no matter the weather, and running with me, I put my excuses aside and just do it.
This is a perfect case of positive peer pressure. I feel guilty if I let my friends down and I feel like I’m “missing out” if I skip too many runs. Our super-small “running club” of four supports each other through frigid winters, grey and rainy springs, and hot summers. I need my running friends’ support and energy to motivate me to run outside throughout the year.
Financial Goals
Just as I use my running partners to help me stick to my physical goals, there are several people you can turn to when working on financial goals. These are a few I’ve depended on:
- Significant Other:
Mr. ThreeYear and I set our goals at the beginning of each year and review them periodically. We use each other to keep ourselves on track and as sounding boards. “How are we doing with saving? What are ways we can minimize some of our costs for some household expenses? How can we earn more for that house project we want to complete?” We informally hold each other accountable. “Did you check into that other tutoring gig? Let’s cancel the cleaning supplies subscription.”
2. A Personal Finance Nerd Friend:
While using your significant other can be great, sometimes it’s not. You may have a spouse who’s not interested in the financial side of life (sometimes I catch mine yawning–yawning! when I start talking retirement account strategy). You might be single. You might just want an outside opinion to make sure you’re on the right track with your goals.
I recommend finding a friend, neighbor, or acquaintance who’s frugal or really good at personal finance, and inviting them over for coffee. I did this three years ago, with a friend who’s a personal finance professor at a local college. I asked if she’d be willing to come over and help me talk through our PF strategy to see if she saw any holes.
She came over and gave me some terrific advice. She also gave me perspective-changing ideas that I later implemented. Without sharing specific dollar amounts (I shared percentages), I showed her how much we were spending and saving for different categories: housing, food, retirement, college savings.
She said, “I always tell people that you have to decide what’s important to you when you budget. For example, my family lives in a tiny little house. Our house just isn’t that important to us. But we love to eat well, so we spend what some people might consider to be a lot of money on food. My husband picks up premium T-bone steaks from [a super expensive grocery store in the area] and we eat well. We also spend a lot for our son to play hockey, because that’s really important to us.”
She also gave me feedback on our housing costs. She helped me realize that because we had a 15 year mortgage and the apartment in Chile, plus high property taxes, the percentage of our take-home pay that we spent on housing was probably too high. We brainstormed ways to improve this scenario and because of our talk, I decided to go back to work part-time.
3. Your local millionaire-next-door:
Seeking out personal finance professionals or millionaire-next-door types can provide you with perspectives you hadn’t thought about before.
These are, of course, those individuals made famous by Dr. Thomas Stanley in his book The Millionaire Next Door. Dr. Stanley, an economist who spent decades studying high-net-worth individuals, found that millionaires, rather than spending big bucks on flashy cars and designer clothing, tended to live way below their means and invest wisely.
Many of my friends back in New Hampshire were such types, and I’d regularly ask them PF questions. “What’s the one thing that your family has done, in your opinion, that’s contributed to your financial success?” I got answers like, “we’ve always paid cash for cars. We pay cash for pretty much everything. We also max out all of our retirement accounts. We don’t waste money if we can help it.”
If I have a specific financial concern or conundrum, I’ll ask people who have accumulated a large net worth what they think.
If you’re not sure who the local millionaire next door in your town is, ask around. They probably have a reputation for being super frugal, and may wear low key clothes and drive older cars, but are liable to say things like, “we don’t have a mortgage anymore” or “we pay cash for our cars.” I’ve even heard gems like “we are so fanatical about saving that we take our leftover coffee from the pot and keep it in a pitcher in the fridge to make iced coffee later” and “we would never pay anyone to mow our grass. That’s what kids are for!”
I haven’t mentioned using personal finance professionals. There are undoubtedly many qualified, fee-only financial planners out there to assist with financial planning. But I must admit that I am skeptical of the industry at large. Here’s why: oftentimes, the personal finance industry is set up such that there are inherent conflicts of interest. Many times, these professionals are sales people, interested in selling you the products that make them the most money. My dad always says, “Who seeks to profit? Who stands to gain?” You’re paying for their advice, one way or another.
If you do use a personal finance professional for advice, make sure you do your due diligence and avoid salespeople like the plague.
Going Public with Your Goals
Another fantastic way we’ve used other people to help us with our goals is this blog. When I started this blog, I had no idea how we were going to achieve location independence. A mere year and a half later, we had engineered our lives to look exactly like we wanted. It was a scary goal because it was a stretch goal. We had no idea how it would look or where we’d eventually end up. But as I kept writing, and we kept talking about our dreams, we thought more about what were the most important values in our lives, and took many small decisions to finally be able to move to North Carolina.
I’ve found the personal finance community to be extremely supportive of our goals. The support and encouragement have made our goals seem reachable. Other readers and bloggers have opened up our imaginations to new and different ways to save more and live lives that matter.
Forums like Rockstar Finance Forums have been invaluable in getting advice and meeting new people. Almost any question you have can be answered by some of the most knowledgeable people around! For free! (I really like free).
The Debbie Downers of Life
Are there instances where other people can sabotage the pursuit of your goals? Of course! We all know the Joneses. Who hasn’t had a case of FOMO or major jealousy after seeing a long-lost friend’s Facebook post? Who hasn’t had someone rain on your parade after sharing your biggest, scariest dreams?
But if you have a clear sense of what you want and have taken the time to set your goals, you can find friends and partners to support those goals.
Human beings are social beings, and finding supportive and encouraging friends is one of the sweetest parts of life.
So as you’re working toward your financial goals, don’t discount the power of other people to help keep you on track. Just make sure to find unbiased, knowledgeable, and positive friends with a track record of success!
Who’s your go-to person for keeping you on track?
This post was originally published in 2017 and has been completely updated for 2019.
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I have a tough time finding people comfortable talking about money in real life. As soon as money is brought up, people start whispering, and using vague amounts. If I try to clarify with specific numbers, I feel I am being rude. As a result, the most valuable advice I find is online from strangers with clever aliases.
Clever aliases like Mr. JumpStart or Mrs. ThreeYear? 🙂
You make a great point. I find that talking to Joe Blow on the street gets me that reaction a lot. The only time I’m able to have an honest and fruitful conversation about money is talking one-on-one. And I have to select my partner carefully. Since a lot of people are uncomfortable talking about money and feel vaguely weird about it, I only go in-depth with people I know are “money people.”That’s after having many conversations first. Have you tried talking to people about how they buy their cars? That seems to be something most people are willing to talk about, and is very telling! I agree that online conversations can be very helpful, especially in this community! People are so giving with advice. But for us, that in-person connection, if we can find the right person to talk to, has helped us a ton staying on track.
I’ve never felt so uncomfortable as I have sitting across from a suit in a bank, with him trying to sell me mutual funds and credit cards. Didn’t care at all about my goals and preferences, just kept trying to make a buck off a 20-something with money in the bank.
Someone you trust is key in accomplishing goals and it’s so great to see that your husband and you are on the journey together. Great post, beautiful flowers : )
Thanks so much for the kind words, Ms. Raggedly Rich. I hope you high-tailed it out of that bank! There’s nothing like seeing the dollar signs flash in the person’s eyes across from you. Ugh. Yes, I’m very fortunate that Mr. ThreeYear keeps me grounded. (He’s also less of a spender than I am which is hugely helpful).
Hi! First time reader of your blog, but I can relate in quite a few areas. I’m currently training for my first half marathon, and I’ve yet to find a committed running partner. My Hubs keeps me as encouraged as he can but a running partner would definitely keep me more accountable after later nights.
We are working to pay our house off in 4 years and get financial independence through passive income and investments. We are each others go to accountability partners for that. It does make life harder though when friends are not at all of the same mindset. I agree that the online community with the financial independence goal is our best place for encouragement when we need that. Y’all’s location independence goal is such an awesome twist on the FI goal!
Congratulations on training for your first half marathon! That’s awesome!!! Keep trying to find a running partner–it’s so worth it! I found mine after my first half, too! That’s impressive–paying off your house in 4 years?! I can see how having frugal friends would definitely help with that. Good luck on both your goals and thanks so much for stopping by! 🙂
Goal setting is tough. The blog-o-sphere is riddled with posts about people who ‘failed’ their goals. Sometimes I think bloggers set goals just for the inevitable click bait post later to explain how they failed the goal – OK, maybe I’m a bit too cynical!
But I do agree with the advice you give for financial goals 2 and 3. Meeting people more expert than you are, asking lots of questions, and hanging around as many of these people as you can is a great way to learn and move the needle forward on hard stretch goals. That’s primarily how we got going in real estate, by networking, asking lots of questions and finding the right people to partner with.
My wife just wrote on our blog how she picks One Word each year as the guiding light for her activities, which is another way to approach goal setting. Of course finding people that can help you or keep you accountable, as you describe, still applies.
I think the much-talked about one-word-for-the-year goal is actually really effective, because it forces you to focus on what’s really important. I have found myself getting tunnel vision, though, and forgetting about things like relationship, health, etc., if I get too focused (sometimes goals work too well!). That’s actually another way other people have helped me, because they get me to broaden my vision a little bit. I would not know where to start with real estate so I would definitely need other people! That’s so cool that you guys took that approach with yours.
This is really great – I was just thinking today about how surrounding myself with the kind of “echo chamber” of personal finance and travel/worldschooling folks online has had such a huge impact on me. I was talking with a doc at work about our upcoming trip to Ireland (I left out the part about how we are also going cross country and hitting like 5 other countries in addition to Ireland!) and he was like – wowed that we could pull something like that off. But when you surround yourself – virtually or otherwise – with people who are doing amazing things, it suddenly becomes clear how much really is possible!