Some of us are always looking for ways to motivate ourselves. And some of us have this insane need to be creative. And every once in a while, the two roads meet.

Ever thought about keeping a personal financial journal? It's not a bad idea:   Writing down your ideas and thoughts can serve as a great motivator, thought flesher-outer, and stress-reliever. But hey — it's the 21st Century. Nobody does paper anymore, right?

So ... ever thought about keeping a personal financial journal online?

Lots of people are doing it; you can check out some of the best of them by heading over to my personal finance blogroll page.

As for me, I began keeping Money Musings, my blog, in April of 2002. I several blogs, actually, and use them to remind myself of short- and intermediate-term goals. I use them to reprimand myself for careless or stupid expenditures. I use them to preach to my Dense Inner Self how much better off I am every month that my credit-card balances decrease. If I see an item in the news that strikes me as financially telling, or hear a statistic that takes my breath away, I copy it into my journal. If I see someone around me being stupid with their money, I expound upon it to my heart's content.

I will be honest here:   There is something downright powerful about opening yourself up online, particularly in the area of personal finance. Write about what you want to do to improve your situation, or what goals you hope to attain in certain periods of time, and suddenly you feel as if you are being held accountable by a great many people. I did not expect this feeling at first. Quickly, however, I learned to feed off of it, appreciate it, and put it to use as a motivational tool.

If this online-journalling idea sounds like it might interest you, then the site to visit — and you've surely already heard of this — is Blogger.

Once you've found yourself some time, and some free web space (apparently Blogger can provide you with this, with perhaps a few stipulations), then you're ready to go.

(Or, if you're not exactly the sort of person who wants to fiddle with much internet/technical stuff, you might look into goal-sharing sites such as 43things and GoalSetting1. If you have bigger-than-big web aspirations, you could always grab a content management system like Blogger (simple) or Wordpress (not so simple) and use a paid hosting provider, too, and write to your heart's content! Hosting isn't terribly expensive, and it's worked very well for me!)

So get your typing face on. Let your inner voice do its thing. And see if you can't create an online journal that helps make your financial beliefs, motivations, and accomplishments just a little bit clearer.

And closer.

If you're comfortable with it, then once you've got your financial blog up and running, you might wish to let me know about it. I'd love to follow along.

Great journeys, I believe, are meant to be shared.