The Importance of Accountability to Your Personal Finances

Have you ever struggled to do something until someone asked you about it multiple times? Sometimes it can be hard to get things done without someone else checking in on us – or holding us accountable. This can be useful when it comes to managing your money too. Today, let’s talk about why it’s so important to have accountability to your personal finances and goals.

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Why is Financial Accountability Important?

Having a system in place to hold you accountable to your goals is important to your success. It’s easy to set goals without a real plan in place – but you aren’t going to make much progress that way. I always perform better when someone or something is holding me accountable.

Motivation is great, but it’s honestly usually only enough to get us started. Most of us need more than just our initial enthusiasm about a goal to keep us going, especially when we’re thinking about long-term goals. Having someone or something that is helping you stay accountable to what you say you’re going to do is going to give you that extra push when your self-discipline is nowhere to be found.

How to Establish Good Habits

The smallest habits can make the biggest difference. While motivation can help you get started toward your goals, creating habits will help you put things on autopilot. Establishing small every day habits can go a long way toward creating the life you actually want.

You want to create habits that are going to help you hold yourself accountable to your goals. For example, I’ve made it a habit to track my spending every single day. This helps me stay on track with my budget and remind myself that I’m working on paying off debt.

A habit that would be good for any financial goal is to do a budget every month or every paycheck. Once you make a habit of budgeting, you’ll do it over and over again without too much resistance – especially once you start seeing how much financial stress it relieves!

Figure out what habits you can focus on that will help you get closer to your financial goals. Even though it will take some motivation and discipline to establish the habit, once you get into a routine you’ll have some regular built-in accountability.

How to Hold Yourself Accountable

So, how can you hold yourself accountable in a way that is going to help you reach your goals, but not be so overwhelming that you give up completely? Here are a couple of methods you can try.

#1 – Track your progress.

First, try setting up a system to track your goals and your progress toward them. This can be as simple as a calendar you hang up and check off every day, an app on your phone, a chart you color in, or a note you write down in your planner.

The main trackers I like to use for my finances are debt charts and spending trackers. My current financial goal is to pay off debt, so I like to use color-in charts to track my current balances. I track all my spending to stay on top of my budget as well, so this is an important one.

Figure out what trackers are going to work the best for your specific goals. My complete budget binder is a great way to get organized and track all your financial information in one place.

#2 – Find a partner.

See if you can find a friend, family member, coworker, etc. who you trust that you can share your financial goals with. Make sure you feel comfortable discussing your finances with this person and that they will actually support you and your goals – not enable you!

My boyfriend and I discuss our financial goals all the time. Having someone to bounce ideas off of can help you stay motivated, and can also help you keep perspective on things. Make sure the person holding you accountable understands and supports your financial goals – you don’t want your accountability partner to be constantly questioning or disagreeing with your plan. If they are, they aren’t going to try that hard to help you reach your goals!

#3- Join a membership or hire a coach.

Yes, it does cost money to join a membership or hire a coach. Even if you’re on a tight budget, there can still be a huge benefit to investing in supporting your goals.

The point of having a coach is to have someone who’s actual job is to push you to reach your goals. Coaches usually work one on one with you to establish your goals and determine the best ways they can help hold you accountable.

Investing in a coach will mean you not only have the coach pushing you, but you also will be more motivated to make progress since you’re actually paying money for the service. We are always more likely to put priority on things we are spending money on.

Joining a membership serves a similar function to a coach, but is usually cheaper because there is much less individual attention. Memberships usually use a group accountability system where members talk with the membership organizer, but also with each other as a community. It’s a great way to find both resources and accountability to your goals.

My membership, Flamingo Fundamentals, was created specifically to help you reach your financial goals!

What is Flamingo Fundamentals?

I’ve created a really easy way for you to hold yourself accountable to your financial goals.

Flamingo Fundamentals is the membership I run that helps women set, plan, and work toward their financial goals. It includes a vault of information about the core concepts of personal finance, as well as direct interaction and accountability between members. Every single week I do a live stream where members can ask questions, share their goals, wins, and progress, and learn more about financial management concepts. I also do a deep dive webinar and challenge on a specific every single month.

Besides the fact that I absolutely love interacting with the members and finding accountability for my own financial goals, I love getting to share in the excitement when members hit their goals! In just a few months, there have been members who paid off credit cards, cleared up medical bills, and saved their first sinking funds. It’s amazing what having a like-minded community to talk out your goals with can do!

Membership in Flamingo Fundamentals open up once a month, usually during the very first week. Make sure to sign up for the waiting list so you can get access this month!

Click here to join the waiting list so you don’t miss out on the next round of enrollment!

If you’re struggling to reach your financial goals, I promise you aren’t alone. Budgeting, planning, and sticking to your financial goals are all skills that you will learn and get better at over time, and finding accountability to your personal finances will help! Find a partner, write out your goals, and get to work!