spending and goals

Recently I noticed an odd line of thinking I find myself in. It seems that no matter what kind of goal I am striving to reach, I have this assumption that there must be some kind of reward for reaching it. If the reward isn't something that is already settled on, I decide to reward myself.

In some cases, this is fine. There is one case where this backfires a bit. My current big financial goal is getting out of debt. I have one credit card and some student loan debt left to pay off. While deciding with my wife how much to pay off and by when, I said I'd like to have a reward of buying something nice once the credit card bill is gone. She commented that being rid of credit cards once and for all should be reward enough and besides, any money we would spend on a reward should just go to paying off the student loans. We'll get to our bigger goal that much faster.

It hit me then: for the longest time, I've been thinking and saying that every time we hit some financial goal we should go spend money on something. This makes about as much sense as going out to eat at a buffet every time I hit a milestone goal in losing weight. Sometimes just accomplishing something good should be its own reward.