Admittedly, as far as problems go, it’s not a very bad one. I can’t say I’m unhappy in life and keep myself occupied and maintain strong social connections.

I’m sure once I finally buy a house I’ll have *TONS* of things to save up for and spend money on. Furniture, re-modelling, artwork, etc.

When my goal was paying off student loans, it was so easy (and almost fun) to find new ways to free up cash and watch that balance drop. Yet I can’t seem to apply the same enthusiasm to saving. I probably put aside 1/3 of my gross income at this point while at the same time indulging my hobbies (reading, running, travel, cooking). I know I could save more, I just struggle to define the reason why I don’t want to spend $20 on happy hour with a friend this week.

Financial freedom is a great goal but sometimes, it’s hard to see how $20 is going to speed that up significantly. And then I wonder what I’m going to do when I get there, though that’s a whole other topic :)

:)

Riki – you’ve got it 100% right; finding a place where I am passionate saving up and spending money (other than a home or retirement) is a challenge for me. I think I’ve read too many pf books/blogs . I can splurge in the 2 or low 3 digits on myself and like my purchases, find value in them. Beyond that, I can think of some things I would like to buy but talk myself out of it. And then I get frustrated seeing the house market rising so much when I’m saving endlessly to buy in, or an article on frustration pops up. :)

Thanks again both of you for responding.

Does it mean you need to find something that you’re passionate about?

Guess I need to do some soul searching on what purchases would give me the best happiness/dollar spent ratios. Thanks for your input as always.

But my downpayment can’t really ever be big enough, so I do feel frustrated because I could save huge amounts of my take home pay towards it for years and years and never have a stopping point.

I need a new savings goal for the medium term, but I’m at a loss. I made a list of interesting things that cost $1000-$10,000 to save for, but I can easily talk myself out of any of them.

I have no other long term savings goals outside of retirement, and it’s a struggle to think what I should save for in the medium term. Travel seems to be the panacea of the PF blog world, except Trent (one of his redeeming qualities is he doesn’t over emphasize travel as the be all end all).

Original art? Paul Smith suits? A Mercedes? (I barely drive my car now, once or twice a month)

Guess I’ll just save more, even though the housing market where I live makes the only goal I have more out of reach every day.

Goals are indeed nice to have, but if you focus too much on them, you may handcuff your future self into doing what matters to you *now*. That could be fine, but people grow and change. If I evaluated my life right now based on the plans I laid 5 or 10 years ago, I’d be severely depressed. But I learned and grew during these years. My needs changed. I may not have what I thought I would back then, but I still giddily happy.