Is it a place where you hope to be next year? Many would be justified in wanting an upgrade given the year they’ve experienced.
Maybe it’s a new home or even just a place to live, worry free. Perhaps it’s the top ranked country cited by the UN and other rating agencies.
But I doubt it’s a place at all.
I’d put my money where my heart is…the place where I can feel the way I want to feel. Seriously. It’s that simple.
In fact, if you don’t have a clear picture of that ‘place’ (the feelings that really matter most to you) no amount of moving from one country, city, home, or job can make any sustainable difference. No amount of stuff or bigger screen TVs will be enough.
It’s funny how few people get beyond this accumulation of stuff and ask what it represents to them. But when you push that question as far as you can and dive deeper into the real value behind what you bought trust that you will be rewarded.
You will discover that the place you love most is any ‘high’ that gives you pleasure. The joke is that these highs rarely can be bought. For the most part they cost nothing. They are the gifts of being alive and the gratitude we have for the people who share them with us. I call these my ‘passion absolutes’.
Good friends. A loving partner, child. A devoted pet. The joys of nature; beautiful sunsets, oceans, mountains, trees, and the wild life that run through my woods. The miracle of spring’s first flowers pushing up through the snow (at least where I live) is a sight I never tire of seeing every year. At my age I am counting the number of times left that I will experience this pleasure.
These feelings are the place settings for happiness. They are the true markers of success. Of course, having a million dollars doesn’t depreciate this quality of life. Poverty is not a prerequisite to happiness.
Whatever your goal make sure you understand where that place is for you and why you are spending what you do to get there… to enjoy that feeling, that high that makes it all worthwhile. Challenge yourself to analyze what those things you purchase represent to you. Are they the best investment of your income to get what they represent?
Quality of life is what makes you happy. Not what others want you to have.
Feeling the way you want to feel is what matters to you. That’s the best place in the world.
Copyright 2009 William M. MacKay
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( 2.9 / 152 )This should not be a novel idea. But, as bizarre as it seems, it is.
Consider your own budgeting effort if, as, and when it ever happens.
Is it more like damage control than your pursuit of greater satisfaction and opportunity?
Try this next self-analysis question as well if you have any doubts.
In your spending every week do you get the most for the least, leveraging the potential of every dollar to get what you want most?
Every dollar you spend should do what it does best; build the elements of the lifestyle you truly desire.
This is the strength of the financial system and economy we have created but, sadly, abused with excessive consumption on the trinkets and trash with no lasting value.
The debt spiral that has sucked down many is not playing to our personal strengths either.
The tragedy here is failing to use a very potent strength we have, our spending power, and applying it to the organization of a life worthy of the labor you exerted to acquire it.
I feel robbed whenever I get so little for so much. Don’t you?
Perfect performance is a long shot to be sure in our consumer culture when it comes to getting what you think you want and expect from a purchase. But surely we can all do better.
Where to start? You must breaks the pattern of the deficit based approach which is the predominant model established by traditional budgeting.
You know the routine; you are constantly in damage control mode, analyzing what happened to your money and how to fix your overspending here by cutting expenses there.
The deficit based budget never takes you where you want to be. It prevents you from going where you don’t want to be. This does little to motivate you toward a better lifestyle.
So let’s get more constructive. It begins with discovering your Dreams’ Delights.
This is not an ice cream flavor but a similar satisfaction with a much longer term payback. Spending here captures your passions and aspirations that give your life its defining character and meaning.
Some of these delights are what I label ‘Passion Absolutes’. If these are unavailable or eliminated (by the stupidity of an across the board cut to your spending) then all other aspects of your lifestyle are diminished regardless of all you have acquired or achieved.
What are your Passion Absolutes? A hobby, special time with a child, your flower garden, work with the handicapped, or outreach with your church?
This is the place where life puts a smile on your face. Don’t miss it through over-consumption and the over-working it takes to pay for it.
Enjoy a little happiness with a new approach to spending. Try a satisfaction based approach to your budgeting. You might like it.
Copyright 2009 William M. MacKay
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( 2.7 / 205 )Millions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
The EPA has pegged the value of your life at $6.8 million. But sadly, you can never collect this bounty because you would be dead.
This 2008 Valuation of a Statistical Life is yet another financial yardstick to measure (screw up) our self-worth versus our net worth, under $100,000 for most of us.
Throw in the median household income stats for your clan and this can create misery if you are one of the not-so-rich.
Is it any wonder that almost half of us are reporting anxiety, sleeplessness, and depression?
You can see why happiness and its pursuit occupy so much of your time when you are constantly bludgeoned with these comparative numbers. Not surprising that your attitude falls into recession along with the economy.
Well, I think it’s time, just the same, for the “Finding Happiness Budget”. Think of it as a survival guide to the best days ahead.
My take on this is simple; if you can begin to get some of what you value most then you can see yourself making progress. Hopefully, with the new frugality that is creeping into your lifestyle, what you are saving on the trinkets and trash is being reallocated to building your dreams.
Even if this is on the installment plan that’s okay.
We live in a credit-based culture and not much is going to change that unless the world falls into a black hole. So use the tools (credit and debt) the system provides but use them strategically to get more of what you really value most.
Start your budget today for the new priorities that will take you toward greater self-worth. Drop all the B.S. about being an automatic millionaire, with that mythical 4 hour work week.
There’s a new face on the world and the sooner you look in the mirror and see your reality, all the better.
Well done if you have already made the leap and figured out what truly makes you rich.
Copyright 2009 William M. MacKay
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( 3.2 / 175 )Fear has created an overwhelming incentive to save. No one wants to lose what they have.
Thinking magically that the renewed virtue of saving alone will protect your lifestyle is short-sighted. Of course, there is no doubt that it fosters a smarter strategy than rampant consumption and its partner, debt accumulation, the demons of our past.
Delayed gratification that was so quaint and boring last year takes on new life. Even imprudence is so yesterday in this seismic shift toward saving. And that’s a good thing.
There is another element to all of this that saving cannot address. Because we require the physical and psychological necessities of life we cannot abstain from spending. There is no cold turkey cure to our spending addiction. No demons implied.
What you identify as a need versus something you want is an individual thing. No two people see this the same way. This means we continue to spend. How to make this vice a virtue is the crux of the matter.
Hollow spending on more stuff, fleeting satisfaction, and unhealthy habits that pervade your lifestyle is a vice. It lacks the long term benefits that give your income its power of leverage. While you may be impatient with building your lifestyle in longer term installments this approach does offer a security and sustainability that ‘wanting it all and wanting it now’ fail to provide.
The need to self-regulate your drift toward more and more of the ‘want to haves’ is insurance that, should the economy also drift from bad to worse, you are at least in a position to protect what you have and maintain today’s quality of life. It may not be all you want but it is surely better than the ruinous path of the alternative.
Spending on purpose is a virtue. Understanding what is important and truly valuable makes it work. And it should be affordable to minimize any further debt and its cost.
Copyright 2009 William M. MacKay
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( 3 / 147 )Tagging an American President with a line from the late and renowned Russian Count Leo Tolstoy is fitting.
Both are part of the ruling elite; Tolstoy in literature, and Obama in politics (with a minor in government until proven otherwise).
Harm reduction, the conceptual notion of risk avoidance, has never been the American way of life. The ‘winner take all’ rules of the game preclude it.
Witness the most recent financial crisis with the populist rage over executive excess and the generational lapse and outright opposition toward a universal health care system.
If Obama was just one ‘of the people’ I have no doubt he would have the best interests of his country in mind and would support the full slate of human rights ‘for the people’.
It’s the government ‘by the people’ principle where Obama will be skewered. Tolstoy would not be surprised given his views of the State.
Enter the ruling elites. If they are ‘masters of the universe’ of anything it is their own harm reduction. Need I cite their whiz-kid creativity with debt instruments designed to reduce their risk, their lobbying prowess (war chests), and their innovative compensation packages unhinged from any performance failures?
Obama strikes me as a man who would rail at falsity and injustice. Yet, what is going on with the banking industry and the governance of the bailout efforts lacks transparency.
Acknowledging that greed is not an aberration among the financial elite’s demands that these same banks do not become the gate keepers for the taxpayer’s money.
The roles Obama has given to the favored banks in managing what started out as way to cure the toxic asset crisis they helped create appears (from what is very difficult to make any sense of) at odds in establishing the conditions necessary and sufficient to save the taxpayer from harm. The people are in for a good screwing.
The quantity of Obama’s communication about the multiple acronym- labelled survival plans is modest at best. The quality is lacking. Isn’t there an unequal access to knowledge here when the experts and surely the people cannot figure out (with the information given) how these programs will run their course to a successful resolution? Can truth and justice be served without transparency?
I get a clear message that non-government experts are struggling to grasp the side-effects of the remedy and are worried about the outcomes.
Harm, whether it be to this generation of taxpayers or the next, seems a given under these conditions and this governance 'by the few'.
While Americans and the world have a selfish motive to believe Obama when he pronounces that the economy is being righted and is improving, it looks to me like just another agreeable delusion.
The current slithering around the government trough to get a piece of the bailout action looks like it’s business as usual, Wall Street style.
Copyright 2009 William M. MacKay
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