financial reflections

Personal Finance involves a lot of number crunching.  Not to mention that there are forms to be filled out, phone calls to be made and dates to remember.  We calculate, negotiate, and consolidate.  When you think about it, there’s a lot to do in the course of a year.  No wonder people get burned out on it and leave behind the perceived drudgery of the things that make us rich.

There are a handful of us out there who just love seeing numbers on a spreadsheet get bigger.  I’m assuming - based on my own experience and observations - that those are but a small handful.  Most of us want something else for all that effort, and the shortest path to getting it is to buy stuff.

I think most of us go the “stuff” route with our money.  We just spend (often money we haven’t earned yet) to get stuff.  Then we have something to hold onto that can show us that we’ve earned some money.  Plus, there’s the added bonus that we can show other people that we’ve earned money.

However, I’m not that impressed with stuff (if you take a look at my car, you’ll agree), and I think most people aren’t impressed with their stuff, either - at least not in the long term.  Which might be why people keep buying stuff - they need to renew that short-term buzz.

I’ve had to dig a level deeper to find the real core of why I’m so interested in personal finance.  Then I realized that it isn’t about money, or even about stuff.  Personal finance is about life.  I came up with a bullet list of items that keep me moving forward.  This is, at least in part, what personal finance means to me:

• Freedom to live where I want - That’s not always easy when people are upside down in their own home.
• Security in the face of uncertainty - With no emergency fund, there’s no security.  There’s no hedge against things like illness or job loss.
• The power to take charge of my career - People end up stuck in jobs they hate, just because they’re afraid to take a 10% pay cut to do something they love.  People can’t afford to take risks because they have such a high burn rate.  Not to mention the fact that they end up being bank employees (making all those debt payments) in addition to their regular jobs.  I don’t want to end up that way.
• The power to give - This is one of the things that set me on my current financial path.  Personal finance isn’t about money, and my personal finances aren’t even about me.  It’s about my family, and others that I can help.

Well, that’s all I have time for now.  I need to complete the list as I go.  One thing I can say is that in spite of the bumps in the road, I’m moving forward for the first time in a few years.  It’s a great feeling.