Frustration can lead to financial blunders. Here's how to calm down and make the best decisions for your financial future.

Personal finance can be really frustrating at times.

The Simple Dollar is a blog for those of us who need both cents and sense: people fighting debt and bad spending habits while building a financially secure future and still affording a latte or two. Our busy lives are crazy enough without having to compare five hundred mutual funds we just want simple ways to manage our finances and save a little money.

For starters, money success can take a long time to achieve. If youre in a big hole of debt, youre looking at years of digging just to get back to zero. People are often encouraged to start saving for retirement in their twenties, even though most wont actually retire until their seventies. The time frame for most personal finance moves is measured in years and decades, not weeks and months.

Another frustration is that every financial move you make costs you in some other regard. If you put away $50 a week for retirement, youre now bringing home less money, and that means less money to spend on the things you need and the things you want. Youre probably giving up something like a dinner out with your partner or something else youd like to have every single week in order to make that savings plan work.

Im often frustrated by both of these things.

Whenever I look at my account balances, I really want them to be higher. I have big goals in mind and although Im moving towards those goals, the progress is slow. The little devil on my shoulder will start agitating and whisper in my ear, Youll never make it to that goal. It will take forever.

Each month, when I look at how much went into savings for various goals, I cant help but get a twinge in my stomach thinking of some of the more immediately enjoyable things I could be doing with that money. Again, that little devil pops up and tells me that I could trim back on those savings plans just a bit and enjoy some things Ive wanted.

When I mix those two feelings together, frustration is the result. I feel like Im saving for something Ill never reach, and that saving is keeping me from making some choices in the here and now that Id like to make.

That moment of frustration is the point when Im most likely to make a big financial blunder. Ill listen to that devil on my shoulder a bit too much and before I know it Im ordering something online that I shouldnt be buying or planning some event that I shouldnt be planning.

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Breaking through the frustration of personal finance