Finance Fun on Friday
One year has passed since #FFF was launched. This journey has enabled a lot of reflection around different financial aspects and helped identify ideas and opinions. Along the way other great ideas has also been born and in order to put some time in these for a while #FFF will go on a break.
We might have envied those born into richness imagining how much easier it would be if we weren’t constantly restricted by our money. The freedom of buying what we want when we want it and enjoy everything that the world has to offer that comes with a price tag. We do however not have to live the rest of our life envying those with riches and it is within our power to do something about it.
It feels like 2017 was starting yesterday and we had the whole year ahead of us with financial adventures. Since then days are just passing by and it feels like months are like weeks, we can confirm one thing, time does not slow down. It is therefore important that we once in a while take some time to stop and think about what we have actually been doing and highlights of the year. Otherwise 2017 might just become another blurry year in our lives.
It’s comfortable to rely on excuses, they make us feel better about not doing what we know that we should be doing. They give us a reason for being the way we are but they also cost us our potential and when it comes to our finances this results in not only costing us our potential but also our money as a consequence. We have many different possibilities to have more money and stabilize our finances but that package does not come with excuses and if we ever want to achieve that we need to start doing something about it.
December is a dreaded month for many with all the expenses expected to come. Suddenly it feels like we know tons of people and family just keeps multiplying with siblings and cousins having kids. We hear more and more grown-ups saying that “This year we will not buy any Christmas gifts, only for the kids.” In the end we tend to buy just one small gift anyway, and we do this because there is something more to Christmas than just spending money, there is something beautiful of giving a gift to someone you care about, to see their excitement and to be able to be the reason to put a smile on their face on that day. Personally I love gift giving and I’m a strong believer that Christmas doesn’t have to be expensive.
Do you remember when you were a kid and 1st of December finally was here, the beginning of the Christmas month that everyone loved. A month full of joy and excitement for a child, although on 1st of December it was still 24 days until Christmas Eve which then felt like an eternity. As we grow older and busier it became easier and easier to make that time pass and it even starts to create some stress because of everything we have to do and the financial pressure because of all the gifts we have to buy. That pure joy related to Christmas that we had as a child has become a bit of a love-hate relationship towards the holiday. Is that really how it’s supposed to be?
How much money did you invest in yourself last month? It is a tricky question because we pay what we need and want throughout the month without giving much thought to it. If we don’t give much thought to what we are actually paying chances are that a lot of money that could’ve been invested in yourself is wasted. This is the reason why every person should have a money plan, why waste our money when we instead could spend it on making ourselves happier on a deeper level.
At some point in life almost all of us start to wonder what our purpose in life is. Maybe we are being asked in some kind of assignment or maybe the thought popped up while trying to fall asleep. It is not an easy question to find the answer to and the answer can change as we go through life. We might want to find our purpose to feel that we are not just living day in and day out but that we are actually living for something bigger. We might want to know our purpose to know in which direction we want to go in our life journey. Our purpose is a guidance that leads to the greater good. As much as it applies to our life purpose this can be applied to any kind of purpose.
We plan our future, we plan what to wear, we plan what to cook. We can make plans for everything to make sure we are on track, save time or just because we think that it’s fun. Do we also have a plan for our money? I mentioned last week that without a plan anything can happen and this can be exciting while living our life, but it is not so exciting when it comes to our money.
The world evolves around money. We get an education to get a nice job, we get a job to get a salary and we need a salary to pay our bills and fund all our comforts and enjoyments in life. We make a huge effort to earn the money that we can spend sometimes seemingly without any effort.