As I sit here this evening I am counting the days until I go on vacation. It’s a little different vacation than most people take. My vacation is to go back home for Thanksgiving rather than to travel to some exotic place in the world. While I could do that, it’s still a priority to spend some time with family before that opportunity no longer exists.
As you may know by now, I have been living overseas in the middle east. I have been working towards the goal of being debt free of credit cards and I am now able to pay the last credit card off. I haven’t just yet as it’s a zero interest card and I want to have a few dollars in an emergency fund. The idea of using the credit card for “emergencies” be they genuine emergencies or just strong wants, is counter-productive. It is too easy to bust out a credit card in effort to spend what I don’t truly have….well it used to be easy. It’s not anymore. When you invest your time and hard work into meeting a goal such as debt freedom, it’s not so easy to just slide right back into the old ways because of what it took to climb out of that hole of debt.
Often, we become numb to what it really means to earn a paycheck only to turn right around and give it to a creditor because we purchased something we didn’t need. Maybe we did have a need but because of the monthly cash drain we just never seem to be able to save enough for the true emergencies and the cycle continues. It’s painful and it’s so easy to get trapped. I know, I have been there.
Enter the new dawn of freedom. The house and car are my only two financial obligations and the car is almost paid off. This leaves me at the the next point.
Goals. What now? Not having goals can be hazardous to your financial health. Every day we are bombarded with advertisements telling us that we need the latest trinket or shiny toy or that we “deserve” a better objectified widget and it can be obtained with just a few easy payments if we don’t have enough cash on hand. What’s worse is when we have no goals and enough cash to make the purchase and no goal or plan that causes us to stop and think about how spending our hard earned money leaves us wandering about aimlessly.
The importance of having goals is that they can help us stay on track and give us a purpose.
I have discovered that most of the time, having a purpose often ties back into what your passion is.
It’s been suggested that if you can find out where a person’s money is going, you will often find that is also where thier passion lies.
I have had a few hobbies that I funneled my “extra” money into and that was where my passion was also.
Sometimes we hang on to hobby or participate in an activity that we were once passionate about but the excitment surrounding the activity has left us. It’s normal and it happens.
For the sake of not hanging onto a fading passion, it’s important to recognize if/when it has faded. If it has, it’s not a bad thing, it’s just a part of life.
Hanging onto the past in this way can be costly when we try to relive the “Glory Days” of something we once were really into and now it’s a matter of trying to respark that old feeling we once had by spending enormous amounts of cash in what can be an ultimate waste of resources.
The hardest thing to do for some is to let go of something when we realize that the party is over. When this happens, it can leave you feeling a little lost and maybe a bit empty. The people who have learned to identify when and end of an era has come are the first to “recover” and move on. They are the ones who seem to move effortlessly from one activity to another and they remain happy and purposeful. They appear to have no remorse when it comes to leaving something they were once passoinate about. This can be seen as a maturing process I suppose. In an example of a child who plays with their favorite toy. It’s something they love to do. They will spend hours toying with the toy. Eventually under normal circumstances, they will lose interest and find another toy to play with. Sometimes, they will find a better toy that is related to the first one but it’s improved. This is one of thise things that sometimes becomes a lifelong path and the choice of toy becomes the choice of career. Take a look at some of the toys that imitate things that adults have graduated to. Kids toys can be trades related like the toys made for kids to pretend to be builders or carpenters, others are geared for kids to pretend to be chefs and cooks with easy bake ovens and that sort of thing. Some toys are more office related but you don’t see as much of that. For example, you won’t see “My First Accounting” playset with a “Cooking the Books – Graduate Level” add on. Not only is Cooking the Books Illegal, It’s just not out there for kids to learn in that way. When we were kids, we wanted to grow up and “be adults” but we wanted to be like the adults we actually saw working at someting. We were easily willing to set aside the things were were once passionate about so we could move on to the next level. Now that we have grown up, we understand the simplicity of youth and sometimes we hold onto our “Playthings” far beyond what is considered healthy. Take an adult who collects toys. Some might see this as an unhealthy inability to let go of something that usually is outgrown as a child. The adult childrens toy “collector” has morphed into something that was never intended. It’s an example of someone who has not been able to let go of a childhood passion. I have seen more than a few of these collections of toys that started as a childhood passion, morph into an adult owned collection that was costly to purchase and sold for pennies on the dollar because someone didn’t realize that the party was over until it was a costly mistake.
What’s the advice in this long story?
Don’t let your inability to let go of a faded passion be the cause for your personal demise, both personally and financially.
Learn to recognise when it’s time to move on to something new.
Have healthy goals.
Cheers
-C
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