What Does Your Checkbook Say About You???

I've been thinking a lot about our financial journey in recent days and, like most times of reflection, I've come to some revelations.

And, like many times of reflection, some revelations are not as pleasant as others. So is the case with this most recent occasion.

I remember Larry and I reading a book about 12 years ago titled, "Your Money or Your Life". It was a really inspiring story of two very successful stock brokers from New York that were tired of the proverbial rat race. The book chronicles the course of action that they pursued in order to change their lives. Their ultimate goal was to become Financially Independent. At first blush, this sounds like most people. Yet, their definition of independence was a bit unique. They considered the notion of independence to be one where money would no longer have a hold on your life. You could actually live 'free' from it.

They take you on a personal journey of discovery including: documenting every penny you've ever made and giving an account for it, tracking your expenses (to the penny) for a period of two weeks, and spending time developing a 'fulfillment rating' for the activities you do in your life. An example of the Fulfillment Rating would be to assign a number of 1-5 (one being the highest level of fulfillment) to all of the activities in your life. Once completed, you would take your expense sheet (where all of your money went) and lay that against your Fulfillment Chart. In our case, we found that our expenses were in no way a reflection of where we found our greatest joy.

The final activity was an exercise to determine what your current job was actually paying you once you netted out all of the intangible costs. For example, what type of car do you have to drive for that job, how far do you travel, what clothes do you have to own, how many stress days do you have to take, how many hours are you actually away from the home, etc. Once we completed this exercise, we were amazed. In fact, I learned that the six figure salary I was earning was actually netting me about $12/hour, once I deducted these hidden costs. It was out of this exercise that we decided to leave the bay area and move to the foothills of the Sierra Nevada to raise our kids and improve our quality of living. A move in my life that I've never regretted.

Sadly, like so many other great inspirations, we never completed this journey. Instead, we grabbed on to the notion of a lower cost of living lifestyle while still earning high incomes. The net effect was that we continued to spend every penny we had and ultimately drove ourselves right to the poor house (or in our case, the trailer house).

Today, I was asked the question, "What does your bank statement say about your values"? 

It's a really fair question and one that I haven't asked in a long time. While my bank statement is dramatically skinnier than it has been in years and the fact that we currently do live beneath our means exists, I'm still not happy with what it says about my values.

In a time when every marketing message aimed our way says 'you deserve better', 'live for today', 'take care of number one', it's difficult to stay focused on the dreams that I had for a bigger impact on the world. 

In my own county, homelessness has just increased a whopping 29%, yet I'm continually concerned about the color of my walls. I say that I care about kids who have no parents, yet you would never know that by the entries in my check register. Rather, my banking statement says quite loudly that I've bought the madison avenue messages hook, line and sinker -  I'm numero uno! 

It's no wonder our nation is fighting over health care reform. Who cares about the other guy - I've got to take care of me and mine! 

I'm guessing that there are others out there like me, who, when faced with the realization that you are not living the life you say you want to live becomes the motivation to do something about it. If so, I'd love to hear from you. Perhaps if more of us started to really analyze our pocketbooks as a statement of our values, we'd actually begin to live the lives we were called to.

What does your checkbook say about you and what you value?

About Friendship...

I had a lot of time to think about friendship this past week while visiting my home town. I had hoped to see several friends while there but ended up falling short of my plans. It reminded me of what life was like in the past when making time for friends was an afterthought.

When I was a 'career' woman and living life, friends were people that could fit in to my schedule. If I wasn't too busy working, shuffling kids, attending seminars or taking well needed vacations, I could make time for them. Larry and I remember meeting one couple that we had really hoped to spend time with so we tried week after week to find time in our schedules to get together. We lived 30 minutes apart but it seemed like an impossible task. It wasn't until we were on vacation - 200 miles from home - that we ran in to them. I think all of us were struck with the sadness of our mutual too-busy schedules.

Our dear friend Gordy used to say, if you have more friends than you have fingers then a) you don't know the meaning of friendship, or b) you are a freak of nature. I never really understood that until I had the type of friends that I think he considered finger-worthy. It took me years to understand what he meant because to me, friends were all of the acquaintances that came and went through the doors of my life. I don't think I would have ever been able to say I had a "BFF" and it was never really clear whether the 'friends' I had picked, had picked me. I think that this is a sad artifact of living an upwardly mobile lifestyle. If friendship isn't part of that plan, then you probably won't find time for it.

I regret that I lived my life this way for far too many years. Coupled with the fact that I didn't know myself well enough to make myself fit for a long lasting and intimate friendship. (Anything less than that is a relationship of casual acquaintance).

Of all of the things I am thankful for, it is learning how important friendship really is in a persons life. Larry and I have always had an incredible friendship between us but it is so important for each of us to have deep bonds with other people. In the process of changing our lives and slowing down, we have finally found out just how sweet having friends to share our dreams, hurts, struggles and joys with can be! Where we used to have great intentions to see our friends, today, we see them. We are doing life with these people and it's made our life so much sweeter. I wish I would have learned this lesson sooner and had been a better friend to those that considered me theirs.

To all of my friends, I'm so thankful for you. I cherish you and I can't imagine life without you!

Jan