My gym in Old Town was a 10 minute walk from my apartment in Lincoln Park.
After a long day at the office, especially in the winter months, I was not going to the gym. The extra 10 minutes each way seemed like just a small inconvenience at first, but it made a big impact. Combined with bad habits (Looking at you Netflix), I ended up skipping a lot of workouts and eventually cancelled my membership.
Last year, I switched to a gym less than a block away from our office in Arlington Heights. Very convenient – I could exercise before work or at lunch in a timely fashion. Even mentally, I was more willing and energized to exercise. As a result, I went to the gym on a consistent basis.
Removing this seemingly small roadblock made a huge difference in my results.
Roadblocks can affect your investments and finances too.
People are busy. As important as it is, finances are often put on the back-burner and day-to-day issues unsurprisingly take up peoples’ time. To help combat this, here are some common roadblocks you might be able to remove:
- If you consistently forget to write checks from your bank account into your investment account to invest your excess cash, set up a monthly or quarterly ACH investment plan to do it for you.
- If occasionally you pay your credit card or utilities bill late, set up auto-pay to get it off your plate.
- If you typically wait until the last minute to make your annual IRA contribution, schedule an automatic investment every January so that your contribution gets a full year of potential growth.
- If you want to stay on top of your expenses but aren’t great at reviewing your spending transactions, find a cash flow tool that tracks where your money actually goes each month (Jim wrote about ours here).
- If “market timing” worries are keeping you from investing a large sum into your portfolio, consider dollar-cost averaging into the market over several months versus doing so all at once.
Physical and financial health are both important. Get your house in order by removing the roadblocks that inhibit your success.