Most Challenging Obstacle in Personal Finance.

[LiquidSapphire]

I think when starting out it's all about aligning your finances with your personal goals. If you don't know what your personal goals are, or they're conflicting, or you're unclear about what is most important, personal finance can be hard. Once your spending matches your values, I think a lot of the mental struggle falls away, because you have a mental roadmap for your spending and why it is being spent that way.
For me, currently my biggest struggle is that I am saving for a BIG goal (ERE) and it is going to take another couple years minimum. I am struggling with doing it the fastest way (working at a crappy job) or maybe quitting and taking semi-retirement earlier. It's not really a personal finance goal at its core, I guess, it's just a goal that costs a lot.

[george]

survivor guilt
Should I leave when i have enough, or continue to work and save to support family who may suffer from this recesion.

[newb]

my first big obstacle is getting rid of the consumer debt, which I am SOOOOO close to doing. next i have a wedding to pay for, which both parents are helping with. I have been working crazy OT lately, which is burning me out and making me wish i was ERE already.

[LonerMatt]

Understanding and implementing investment strategies.

[frugalcoconut]

Right now it's patience for me also. I figure that eventually it will shift to being scared to take risks and avoiding analysis paralysis, once I build enough of a taxable nest egg that I'll want to invest in something without making another huge mistake (like I did with my first home that I have since converted into a negative cash flow rental property).

[GandK]

"What have you found to be the most challenging obstacle in your personal finance journey?"
Ditto patience. I'd been told by more than one person at the beginning of my journey that the first $100k is the hardest. That was absolutely true.
"What was the hardest goal to achieve?"
The hardest goal continues to be balance... pushing hard enough to achieve FI by our desired date while still spending enough money on our lifestyle to keep us from feeling that we're sacrificing a vibrant today on the altar of an uncertain tomorrow.
"Is there really anything hard about personal finance if you are following a solid system?"
Yes, because personal finance is more than just math. Math is simple once you know the rules. Life is not. To the extent that you make your financial decisions based on more than just math, they will be hard.
An engagement ring, for example, is a horrible investment. And a brilliant one.

[Stahlmann]

Did I say I want to be the best archelogist of the forum?

How about new generation of the user base in terms of asked question?

[James_0011]

4444, I think this tends to be extra hard for certain personality types. Living in a van will severely limit your social options -- mating, friendships, etc. Certain personalities (us) may not worry too much about this -- we don't depend on the constant approval of others. But I think many people out there (particularly the ones giving your strange looks) can't fathom the alienation that will occur... I think you can still integrate sufficiently in a van, but I think SOME alienation is inevitable.

On the other hand it would also filter out people that you don't want to be friends with anyways...

[Toska2]

Hardest obstacle? Working an uninspiring job that is quite lucrative.

Hardest goal to achieve? Balance x 2

"Is there really anything hard about personal finance if you are following a solid system?" Figuring who you are and tuning the system to your needs and style.

[wolf]

Finding balance btw.:
- personal goals
- living in the presence
- future finance goals
- frugal spending and saving vs. comfort
- one own's ERE thoughts vs. thoughts of peers and society
- dreams within FIRE phase vs. actual achievable goals within the next few years
- ...
BALANCE is my personal biggest obstacle.
Trying to reach it but I guess I never will.

[BRUTE]

determining what brute really wants. seems hard to nail down. maybe it's just not a real, solid thing, and brute is stabbing (or nailing) in the dark?

[Viktor K]

What have you found to be the most challenging obstacle in your personal finance journey?
Increasing income. There's so little effort that I want to put into finding/earning a job that I likely won't enjoy and don't want and won't keep for more than the time it takes to reach ERE.

What was the hardest goal to achieve?
Last year, I set a goal of reaching ERE in 7 years but only recently did I really get on the path to do so. So actually putting my goal in sight was difficult.

Is there really anything hard about personal finance if you are following a solid system?
I feel like following a solid system is really ambiguous concept. I don't really know yet what system to follow. The personal finance tutelage I received right out of college as a financial adviser seems very detached from ERE. I can't really answer this question because I don't even know which system I am following at this point. My first real investment decision was moving an unmanaged rollover-IRA to a target date retirement index fund.

As far as peer pressure, when talking to friends and family that I go way back with, I can kinda feel a tinge of something when they look at my like I'm crazed, even though they've known me for a long time and I at least hope view me as a methodological and logical person. However, being that the majority of my time outside of once or twice a year is with my girlfriend who is 100% approving and trusting, I really don't feel that peer pressure is any obstacle at all for me.

[Scott 2]

Most changing obstacle - not making a high score the meaning of life

Hardest goal - building a life during the accumulation phase, that if I learned I die tomorrow, I would not regret

As the system runs, it gets easier. IMO the biggest trap is failing to reevaluate the system at regular intervals, especially pruning what no longer serves you.

Example, at a certain point, it was important to raise my insurance deductibles, because I could personally absorb events in the range of 4 figures.

More recently, I can no longer justify comparison shopping individual grocery items. I just pick a store and grab stuff.

Peer pressure - My social circle has been completely accepting, but I've never been one of the cool kids either.

[IlliniDave]

What have you found to be the most challenging obstacle in your personal finance journey?
What was the hardest goal to achieve?
Is there really anything hard about personal finance if you are following a solid system?

-Maintaining faith and patience were the most challenging obstacles for me--it's worth noting both are internal.

-The hardest goal to achieve ... hmmm ... I suppose I'd have to say the one that is not yet achieved: getting in position to pull the plug without reservations. None have really stood out as difficult compared to the others.

-Is there really anything hard about personal finance if you are following a solid system? Yes and no. In my mind once you're making at least enough money to live on reasonably, the main things are discipline, patience, and self-control. The number one skill to cultivate is the ability to say, "No," to yourself. Those things can be very difficult. Intellectually, I've been successful with a very simple-minded strategy. I'm on the cusp of my fourth decade as a saver/invester. I practice what is more/less a buy and hold strategy, and I keep my investments and investing strategy simple. I'm a believer that the worst thing you can do change up investing strategies on a continual basis.

[fingeek]

Most challenging obstacle?
- Mentally preparing to pull the trigger after 10+ yrs of a high regular income with lots of surplus cashflow. Over last three months, I decided to invest the 91% savings rate directly into investments. Previously I would let it accumulate in a savings account (lazy security), but I won't have that when I'm FI. Over the last 1yr, I've gradually been disconnecting the Job Income->Monthly expenses cash flow, and replacing with {Job Income->Savings/Investments}, {Investment income->Expenses}.
- Knowing what to do "next". After FI, the current plan is to bum around and decompress for a month or two, and trust that I find a new interesting path to follow.

Hardest goal?
- Realising that the journey from SWR 10% -> 3% is going to take a lot longer than 100% -> 10%!

Is there really anything hard about personal finance if you are following a solid system?
- I think this is a sort of trick question. If you're following a solid system blindly, you're destined to fail. If you're the architect of your own system, then it's "hard" to build and refine such a system, but it's trivially easy to follow it. There has been a fair amount of MBTI talk across the blog/forum, and I suspect the majority of us here are INTJ (or close), and therefore we naturally gravitate to building our own systems. TL;DR: No.


Regarding the previous social and materialism stuff - I've never really cared what others think (perhaps that's why they loathe me ), and I've never really been a huge spender. I hope others are seeing similar too!

[LiberateMind]

The hardest thing in personal finance is not getting distracted by temptations from a goal that is several years away. It's human nature to look at our current say, "hey, I'm pretty close now, so I can let up".

Wise words. I am suffering from this. Not that close , but suffering all the same.

[brighteye]

1. Deciding on an investment strategy, one that I feel confident about for a long time. And then implementing it (putting things in practice is what I struggle with most).
2. Fully understanding the systems thinking approach so I can create my own instead of copying others.

[jbc]

The most challenging obstacle:
Increasing income while keeping expenses low. Let me explain: I believe everyone is at least partially a product of their environment because it is human nature to want to "fit in." Therefore, if one increases income and is therefore surrounded by other high(er) income individuals (at least in the mega-corp environment) then I believe that person will tend to at least partially adopt the habits of the high(er) spending peers. Choose your peers/friends wisely.

Hardest goal to achieve:
My (vague) goal was to decrease spending and increase income while simultaneously increasing happiness. Decreasing spending was easiest, followed by increasing income followed by increasing happiness. However, I would say I've made progress towards all 3 in the past two years since beginning the journey.

Anything hard about PF if you are following a system?
Yes and no. The theory is simple. Putting the theory into practice requires persistence, which is difficult only if you don't want to achieve FI bad enough. I think it's pretty safe to say that most people who have found this site did so because they want FI bad enough to actually attain it...

[Hankaroundtheworld]

Accepting that I have enough (to go for ER) instead of continuing staying in a cubicle to earn money (spend your valuable lifetime only for money)

[bryan]

Things that jump to mind for me:

• where to put down your roots!
• when to get married or start a family
• dealing with your original family (e.g. parents, siblings)
• dealing with risk (big category here.. I am thinking something like starting a business that requires, significant to FIRE, capital)