I am about to go back to full time work. This is a relief on our household’s financial situation, but it’s hard to reconcile with the dream of working part time at something relatively easy but engaging and spending the rest of the time as desired. I thought that when I worked full time again it would be in some regard on health issues, what I thought my career path would be. Somehow in that wash of fate and purpose and whatever influence plans and intentions have I ended up doing something else. And really only for the money.
The trick now is to know what that money is for. Obviously for “living expenses”. But my cost of living has always just expanded to fit my income.
Once I got to a place where we might not make rent, it became very clear that previously we hadn’t been just covering the basics. We were spending money because we could and then starting again at the same place each month.
Making enough seems to create a mindset of extra money. We feel that in order to maintain a level of normalcy that money should be spent.
The other state of mind that created these habits is the intention/plan that we will someday make more. This is dangerous. These habits just get worse.
Being in a tighter situation it finally occurred to me in a real way, instead of a general philosophical way that I need to re-define my basic expenses. Otherwise, why do I work? Where am I going? It’s one thing to work part time and try to make ends meet and really just be plain poor. And another to make good money and never feel like I have any, and work all the time.
For a while I have tried to keep in mind the concept of satisfaction through rejecting a desire rather than fulfilling it. I promise it’s not so puritanical, and only applies to material goods/desires. The trick for me is applying this to more and more things that seem reasonable given my new income.
GetRichSlowly has a nice discussion on this. The overall issue is “lifestyle inflation” and the real heart of it, is being satisfied with what you have.
I will say that many of the discussions on cutting costs start at a higher level of consumerism that most of us are at. We wouldn’t have bought a new car or any car at all, we can’t really afford brand new things anyway. We already feel like we’ve pared down our consumption relatively far, so how much further could we go? But then we’re still in the place of just working through all our time and spending all our money, so something must change.
This idea of satisfaction really should go hand in hand with understanding our purpose for work. And our enjoyment of work. If we are working too hard, doesn’t it seem good to get to a different level of satisfaction or basic living and then work less…and maybe be happier?
Here’s an interesting source of inspiration for getting creative with our idea of work.
In thinking about purpose, I am working at this full time job to:
- support our little household while one is in school.
- get out of old habits, pay for old mistakes, and build the savings.
I will commit to:
- Redefining our baseline and our priorities of money. The more I spend now, the more I have to work later.
- not indefinitely putting off working less and living that good simple life.
GetRichSlowly has really been a great resource for me in this. From the discussions on budgeting I found this program, Pear Budgeting. I like it for the endless capacity for custom categories and because it makes you enter your receipts. This is going to be the hardest part, because why would you spend your time with this…but how else will you really know where the money goes? And is does all the math etc. Just going through the first step of entering in guesstimates of expenses and seeing how it all adds up was a good start.
A lot of this is common sense passed on through adages over the years, now with some experience and real pressure it’s all sinking in.
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