POOL ENVY
I was just outside listening to my neighbors splashing around in their brand-spanking new, five-figure costing, pool. It is a beautiful summer evening and life feels good tonight. But I started to think: how is it that so many people seem to be able to afford these "extras" in life, and we feel like we are just treading water without owning a pool and no pool in sight. Do they make more money than us? Spend less? Invest more wisely? Manage their finances better? Did they finance this pool and are up to their eyeballs in debt but got the pool anyway. Is it possible that they actually had enough money saved to pay for the pool without gaining debt?
Actually, I am not jealous of my neighbor's pool, I am jealous that they do not seem to have to worry about money the way I do (although, maybe they do and built a pool anyway). Lately, every dollar must count in our lives now, or, to put it another way, we must count every dollar -- no pools in our near future, we just want to make sure that we can pay the bills and get the things we need. I worry about how long we will be able to maintain the discipline that we have showed this summer as we have worked on managing our money to get out of debt and start to live more comfortably. I worry that while I have worked so hard to organize and manage the finances, I have not really done that much to make significant change. After all the years of not keeping good records, I can only guess at the effect of our changes. We have made a lot of changes, I know that: we got rid of one credit card altogether (shredder), we lowered our interest rates on all our other cards, we reduced our costs for insurance, and, most importantly, we stopped spending money without thinking about it first. We have been using a lot less money in our everyday lives and we have not increased our debt. We have some money saved, and I really am taking care of the bills. We still need to do better so we can afford our necessities without ever putting them on a credit card, but, we certainly are moving in the right direction. And, although we should have been doing this all along, I need to stop thinking about the past and just move forward from here.
That has been my mantra lately. We must not just look back and see all the mistakes, we must look today at all the steps we have taken to correct the mistakes, and look at the future knowing that we are making choices about money, not being blind to the realities of our financial situation. I find myself constantly evaluating potential expenditures: is this something that is more important than paying off more of the debt? Most "things" are not; some are (most of the things that are seem to relate to my children, but that is a whole other discussion). Meanwhile, I learn a few new ideas every day. I fix up our paperwork more and more every day. I de-clutter our house a little bit more every day. All of that is making me feel better: we can be in control of our money because we have it organized and we know where it is going. I have made some amazing changes: I manage the money so much better now than I did two months ago. I worked hard to put a structure in place to allow me to track our money and keep it under control; now that it is there, I am using it every day and it is working really well to keep us focused on our goal of eliminating debt and increasing savings.
All of this work must be having an effect on our financial bottom line. Certainly, we have made strides: some are not measurable yet, but I can feel us living on less and paying off more all the time. We are in front of the bills for the first time ever. The bills are paid through the end of the month; when I pay again, before the month is over, I will be paying September's bills. That is huge: we have never been in front of our bills. These are forward steps. They must be having an effect on the bottom line.
But when do we get to take a breath? When do we get to stop worrying and just live? When will we feel comfortable financially? When will we have enough money? My answer to that, today, is that you have enough money when you can afford what you need and perhaps, some of what you want on top of that. I am not a materialistic person, so why so much focus on money? We have what we need: we sleep in a home, we have transportation, our children get good, solid educations and opportunities for lots of niceties in life, we eat, we are clothed and we basically enjoy a very lovely life. So, obviously we have enough. We have worked hard to achieve these things: we are both professionals in our fields and we work to earn every penny we have ever made. So, why are we in a bind financially? Why am I so worried about money? Because my husband and I stuck our heads in the sand when it came to money for so long that we failed to make choices about money; our attitude was that we both have good jobs, the money comes in, so what do we have to worry about? That has allowed us to make poor money choices, or, perhaps, even worse, we have failed to even make choices. Now we are in a precarious financial position: an illness or job loss would put our lives in serious jeopardy. That is why we need to take control over our money NOW: while we have what we need, and have little need for much else, we need to shift from paying debt to saving money for emergencies, and other expenses; then, we can think about the extra goodies.
I do not really have pool envy. My real envy is that I want to be able to afford a pool, (metaphorically speaking). I do not actually, necessarily, want to own a pool. The goal of our recent efforts to manage our finances and to systematically eliminate debt is to gain financial freedom. What is financial freedom? True financial freedom cannot be about having enough money to buy more stuff; as I have learned, stuff is just stuff -- it is temporary and much of what we buy is irrelevant to good living. So what is financial freedom? Today, I am starting to think that financial freedom is a feeling that you are in control of your money. Financial freedom is becoming unshackled from the chains of spending what you do not have. It is freedom from debt, because paying money on the use of money is often a gigantic vise grip that forces you to work harder and harder to enrich the institutions that loaned you the money. When we looked at our debt, we knew that we no longer work for ourselves: we work because we have to pay back what we borrowed from the banks and financial institutions with whom we made a reckless deal: a deal that has allowed us to live above our means. That is not freedom: that is indentured servitude. Financial freedom is the ability to make choices about where your money goes and the ability to feel secure with your monetary situation. Gaining that freedom does not mean you actually have more money coming in to your house (although increasing income is a way of helping to take control over money); it means you get to make the choice about what to do with that money. How many of us have that kind of freedom? We certainly do not. We have to work or the bank will take back our shelter and our transportation. We have no choice now but to spend a huge chunk of money every month because of our recklessness and lack of control over our money earlier.
So, we are now choosing to become free from those debts: when we are, we will have gained financial freedom. No, we are not going into bankruptcy; we are actually systematically paying off our debt. We hope to eliminate our debt gradually. Instead of debt payments eating up 1/2 of our salary every month, debt will consume a lesser and lesser percentage of our income, until we have no debt. Then, we can save that money or spend it or do whatever we will do with it. Maybe we will give it away. That will be financial freedom. And we will get there: we will keep being patient, disciplined and assertive about controlling our finances so that they no longer control us.
The reward will not likely be a pool (although you never know). The true reward will be the peace of mind with which someone who can afford a beautiful new pool lives. That is what I want: pool-affording peace of mind. That is why I am working so hard on taking control over our money. It is a hard road, but at the end, is really the pot of gold...literally, I hope.