Money, Life and Goals

It is HARD to balance those three things: money, life and goals.

 

It’s a balance I have rarely had a say on in my life (or so it feels at times). I’ve basically always worked full time, but been on contracts. So, generally speaking, I’ve always had money for bills. I’ve also only had weekends to do everything else, and that wears me out. I need more regeneration time than two days a week. My life and goals lag behind when I have the money to achieve them. So I compensate by buying things. Not big things, and not in a way that it’s a problem. It’s just the “only option” when you don’t have time to spend.

 

You’ll probably think it’s odd that I’m about to link to a travel blog, but yep. I posted this comment yesterday on Y Travel Blog in response to a post about money. But it’s a good post. Go read it. That post, and my own comment, got me thinking about this topic. Then I thought, blergh, who wants to read about crap like money? As I was sitting at my desk this morning and flicking lazily through the internet, Ben walked in and handed me our latest phone bill. Oh fuck. Just as I thought I was going to be able to manage the electricity bill I’m slowly paying off, in comes another one. Sigh. My feeling of “yay, I might not be totally fucked” went out the window.

 

 

I’m not a financial expert, planner or any of that blah blah stuff. But I have my own goals and views on how I want to manage my money to let me live my life. I haven’t achieved them. But they’re a part of my mindset now, rather than tangible goals. I don’t really like goals. Because if I make them up, I can break them. I can choose to have the reward even if I haven’t met the goal. It’s not a strategy that works for me.

 

This work/life balance thing is hard. Some days I’m tired of fighting it. Some days I’m all “woo yeah, I have this shit down!”. I can’t tell you how much happier and relaxed I’ve been only working 20 hours a week. It has been huge. Possibly one of the biggest transformations in my life. Sadly the related decrease in income has left me flailing financially. I’m not progressing. I’m going backwards. This isn’t long term sustainable.

 

Knowing that my part time job is only a fixed term contract, I’m trying to use all my time to complete as many goals as I can. Which is kind of counteractive to maintaining the relaxation that has come with the part time job. But life is full of contradictions. I’m using my time to build the websites/businesses I wrote about a few days ago. I’m going ok with that, though honestly if I wanted to feel like I was actually achieving something sooner, I need some serious heads down, bum up time at my computer.

 

Truth be told, I’m not getting any more done than when I worked full time. But I am more relaxed. So I may be down on money and equal on goals, but I’m up on life. See what I mean about balance?

 

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Of course, this also means sitting at home most nights of the week, applying for full time jobs. Snore. I apply for anything and everything. I aim to hit 30 job applications a day. I don’t have my care about what I do for a day job. It’s just a day job. It’s sad that I am (mostly) applying for full time jobs though.

 

I want to keep this level of peace. I want time to work on businesses. But you know, short term pain, long term gain and all that. I feel stupid that I wasn’t able to save more when I was working full time. But I look back and I see how much I was struggling just to get through a week. I wasn’t in a place to save, I was in a place to get by. In my own context, I was trying to survive. You can look at things in a pure dollars and sense, spreadsheet way or you can look at it in context of your whole life.

 

I don’t know how to end this post. There is no summary, just a constant effort to find the right balance? I guess, like always, I kind of want to skip the crappy parts and move forward to a stage where I feel like I am progressing.

 

How do you find balance between money, your life and your goals?

 

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