157. How to Stay Motivated When Saving Money Feels Slow

Ever feel like your financial progress is crawling? You’re budgeting, cutting expenses, and building your emergency fund—but it still feels like nothing’s happening.

In today’s Question of the Day, Emily from Arizona asks how to stay motivated when saving feels painfully slow. This is one of the most common struggles my clients face—and it’s often where people lose steam.

In this episode you’ll learn:

• Why slow progress is still powerful progress
• How to measure growth beyond the numbers in your account
• Why “slow is not stuck” when it comes to your financial journey
• The key to focusing on alignment instead of speed

Your steady steps today are building the stability your future self will thank you for.

👉 Want to reframe your mindset and reignite your motivation? Join my free 7-Day Money Mindset Shift Challenge inside the Legacy Builders Network. 

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Transcript

0:00

hello, and welcome to the question of the day series here on Money and Career Mastery, where we tackle real questions from real people who are trying to make money, feel less chaotic and work feel more meaningful. Think of it like chatting with a friend. If your friend also happened to be a money coach. Okay, let's jump in to today's question.

Laura: 0:21

Hey, accelerators. Today's question comes from Emily in Arizona. She writes, Laura, I've been working really hard to get my finances in order. I've cut expenses, made a budget, and even started building my emergency fund. That's kind of awesome, but honestly, it just feels slow. I know I'm making progress, but some days it feels like it'll take forever to get ready to really get ahead. How do I stay motivated when it feels like I'm barely moving forward? Mm. This is such a good question. Emily. Thank you so much for writing this question into me. It is such an honest question, and I want you to know that you're not the only one that feels this way. This is probably one of the top five struggles I hear from my coaching clients because they want the flashy progress, right? But it doesn't always come that way. And let me tell you, this is also one of my biggest struggles inside my business. I see the end goal, and I just wanna get there faster. It sounds to me that you were doing all of the right things. You've cut expenses, you're living on a budget, you're building your emergency fund. That's amazing. You're doing the right things, and I know it doesn't always feel that way. So let me just check in with you, Emily. I'm assuming because of the way you worded this, that not only cutting expenses have made a budget. You are either doing your starter emergency fund of a thousand dollars, or you've paid off all of your debt and are building up your emergency fund of three to six months of expenses. Now, if you are trying to build up your emergency fund and you're trying to pay all of your debt payments at the same time, it's going to feel slow because you're doing it in the wrong order. If you have debt, you need to tackle that first, but I'm going to continue talking about this as if. Your debt is paid off and you are in the middle of building up your emergency fund. And sometimes that's the hardest spot to be because you just tackle this giant mountain and you were constantly excited because you're paying something off and paying something off and paying something off, and you were getting those quick wins and now you're in a slog of this three to six months of savings and it doesn't feel like you're getting anywhere because you don't get to have the dopamine hit of paying things off. While progress isn't always visible, it is always compounding. Okay? So think of it like watering seeds. You don't always see the growth coming from the seedling, but something is happening underneath the surface. If you try and dig it up and look at it, you're gonna kill all of the growth that's already been made. So just. Keep plugging away. If you feel like you aren't actually making progress towards your savings. Let's look at what you are actually doing. Go look at where your savings was three months ago. Go ahead and ask yourself where, where was I three months ago? What did things look like? Because I'm willing to bet that you savings account is much higher than it was three months ago. Am I right? See, sometimes you're just feeling stuck. You're not, actually, you're more stable than you ever were before. So don't just look at the numbers. We can look at our financial statements and they're not going to reflect the peace that we have. They're not gonna reflect the confidence that we're feeling, and they're certainly not gonna reflect how you are at your decision making now.'cause I'm willing to bet after you're doing all of these things and you're putting in the work and you're starting to really gain, gain stability. I'm gonna guess that you were feeling more stable than ever. So don't let your feelings detract from the things that you are actually doing. And please remember, you're not starting from scratch. You are building something that is sustainable. Slow is not the same as stuck in fast does not mean that you are actually getting things done. You've all heard slow and steady wins the race. I have a client named Lonnie. She has Boscos, creatives and Boscos crafting, I'm sorry, and she crocheted me these little turtles and I have one that sits on my desk and I've given them out as prizes inside my Facebook group. If you're in one of our challenges and you win, these are one of the things that I love giving out the most. These tiny turtles, they are just so sweet and they remind the people they're sent to. They're a reminder that slow and steady wins the race every single time. Keep going. Don't get distracted by the flashy on the side. Keep going. Keep doing the next right thing. Emily, your slow progress is still progress and it's building something that your future self is really gonna thank. Thank you for. I don't want you to measure your speed. I really want you just to measure your alignment. How are you? How does it feel when you lay your head down at night? Are you in alignment? And the thing that my coach says to me all the time, you're not behind. You're becoming. You are exactly where you were supposed to be. And if you're still struggling with your mindset and you're ready to fall back in love with progress. Go ahead and join us inside the Facebook group for the seven Day Money Mindset Shift Challenge kicking off in October inside of the Legacy Builders Network with Laura Sexton you. We will help you reframe your habits, your thoughts, and your vision for the future. The link is down in the show notes, or you can type into Facebook Legacy Builders Network with Laura Sexton and I will pop right up. That's it for this week, legacy Builders and Emily, thank you so much for writing, and if anybody wants to write in and give me your specific question, I would love to have it on the show. I'm starting to run low on these, and I would love it if I could feature you and your questions. All right, accelerators, that's it for this week. Go out and make a difference.