One thing that helped was to set up spreadsheets for my short term [one year] and long-term [20 years] financial goals. For the short-term goals, I layout how much I want to set aside each month during the coming year for a specific goal [401k, children's college education, etc.], then underneath those amounts, I put in the actual amounts that I manage to put towards those goals. It helps me see the progress I am making on a monthly basis [with a running total for the year].

For my long term goal, I set up columns projecting the balances I hope to achieve at the end of each year for the next 20 years for such things as paying down my mortgage early, my retirement accounts, and my children’s education accounts. Then at the the end of the year, I enter in the actual mortgage or account balances.

This longer term goal sheet has really helped me with my patience problem. For instance, last year my retirement accounts did so well that it put me a year ahead of where I was supposed to be based upon my projections. Without this sheet, however, I wouldn’t have known where I stood in terms of meeting my 20 year goals.

You bring credibility to your posts because of your past choices, which allows your readers to relate to you.

I do think this post addresses the emotional side of money/debt management which is rarely addressed….except for Suzie Orman.

But this is what I have to say about patience, the way you write about it. I’ve learned to be glad that I don’t have all the money or income that I might have dreamed of. Because it forces me to make choices, and not to waste what I have. Even if your bank account gets really big, you won’t want to touch the money. So patience here is a misnomer. The money is there, you are living your life. At least you know that you are on track, and you can sleep easily now without big bills to stress you out. I love your blog!

In that same blink of an eye, you’ll be out of debt. Think of it that way, and use it as a method to focus on being in the present (safe in the knowledge that the debt will be gone soon enough) and fully enjoy your time with the kiddos.

By doing that, and taking our excess and applying it to Investments or our small amount of debt, the net worth grows on it’s own.

I see the problem where a $500 decision in the scope of a month is a big difference, but rationalizing that decision on its impact to net worth is not as affective in deterring bad financial decisions.

On the asset side, it’s the opposite situation–as your assets increase, it takes a larger absolute amount of money to make the same percentage change. And that’s also true of your net worth–the larger it grows, the more money in absolute terms it takes to make the same percentage increase, so you’ll see the rate of percentage increase in your net worth slow as the overall amount grows.

Once your debt is small relative to your assets, if your assets are mostly in stocks and mutual funds, you’ll get to a point where daily market changes in asset value will swamp the changes in your debt–market changes will play a bigger role in net worth changes than your debt payments.

As it grows, you’ll get to a point where monthly market changes in assets are larger than your monthly contributions, and, very pleasantly, to a point where income from your assets is larger than your monthly contributions–and even larger than your other income (the “crossover point” that Trent has written about).

Did I really make some bad choices along the way? I guess so. Can I keep from making them again? I hope so.