“Don’t sweat the small stuff” has become a mantra for a lot of people. I don’t necessarily disagree with the sentiment, but I’m here today to say that sometimes it helps to pay attention to the little things.

This is a lesson I am learning from being a parent. (Who knew having kids was such an education?) Because our daughter (formerly referred to as SP- small person, henceforth referred to as Pop Tart) comes to us from foster care, and therefore, an unstable earlier life, she has some issues. C and I have chosen a few of the bigger issues to really focus on helping her work through.

Last night, after Pop Tart had fallen asleep, I walked into our room, feeling a little discouraged about the lack of progress on one of the big goals we had been working on. But as I was communicating my disappointment about that, all the little successes we have noticed recently also came to mind. Yes, our progress on this one big issue is slow, to the point of feeling like we have gone backwards, but there are so many other areas, little areas where we haven’t necessarily been focusing our energies, where there is marked improvement.

And in talking to C, listing the small successes gave us both some renewed energy around the big goals. It reminds us that even though we aren’t seeing much movement on the big goal, we are still moving forward, and moving forward consistently.

This realization matters in your money goals, too. Sometimes we’re so busy working toward a big goal, like saving enough money for a down payment on a house, that we don’t notice all the little successes we are having at the same time. In our case, we bought both of our first two homes with no money down, but we know that we won’t be able to do that again. Also, we would like to keep our current home as a rental property once we do move. That means we need a lot of liquid cash on hand for a down payment- over six figures for a 20% down payment on some of the less expensive houses in the neighborhoods we’re looking at. (Goal being to reduce my commute from 3 hours a day.) It takes a long time to get that kind of cash saved, and the amount does not seem to be moving up quickly. It gets discouraging.

And yet, when I look at our budget, I realize that we are making good changes, permanent changes that will help us not just save the money for our down payment, but also continue to serve us long term. There were the big things at the end of last year/start of this year, paying off my graduate student loans and refinancing the house. But we also changed our Netflix subscription to get rid of the physical DVDs. It’s not a lot of money, $10/month, but why pay $10/month for something we’re not using. We also just cut our cable TV for a savings of over $100/month.

We have a new budget that takes into account child care expenses. My new job has upped my retirement savings by a few percentage points. We have the money to pay for C to finish out his degree without taking out student loans.

The ticker toward the big goal might be moving slowly, and sometimes it is easy to get discouraged about that. But if you take the time to look at the small changes you have made, it might just remind you that you are on the right path and give you back the energy you need.

Maybe you shouldn’t sweat the small stuff, but don’t forget to take credit for it, either.