Is It A Good Idea To Take A Break Between Baby Steps?
July 30, 2009 – 4:55 amIf you’re on the Dave Ramsey plan or have listened to his radio show you’ve probably heard that it’s o.k. to take a little time between the baby steps to take care of a few things. For example, if you just finished getting out of debt and are getting ready to move on to baby step 3 (a fully-funded emergency fund), it’s probably o.k. to spend a little of your newly found cash-flow on a reasonable vacation or perhaps a few improvements to the home.
After all, you can’t stay “gazelle intense” forever, nor would you want to.
My recommendation: if you’re doing well try to overshoot and over-perform in all areas of life. I’m not talking about killing yourself to save a few extra pennies, but I think most of us (including me) would be better off if we built a little buffer beyond our goal. My reasoning behind this is that it’s a lot easier to live frugally for an extra few months when you’ve been doing it than it will be to pick up where you left off in a few months.
Momentum is everything when it comes to difficult tasks and goals. This also reminds me of how atheletes train. I was a competitive runner and swimmer in high school, and I swim with a master’s team now. Virtually all sports involve “interval training” as part of their conditioning regime because it’s so beneficial. A typical interval training program for a swimming might involve swiming 50 yards freestyle 10 times at about 90% of your maximum speed, with 20 seconds rest in between.
The key here, however, is not the number of intervals or the distance of each interval. The devil is in the rest period. Better swimmers require less rest in between intervals, because they are conditioned to recover more quickly.
I think the same is true with paying off debt, saving, and investing. Momentum is valuable, and the less “rest” you take in the process the better off you will be.
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