Today I had a moment I’m not proud of. I was talking to accounts payable at my former employer about my final pay stubs so I knew what my final 401K amount was and whether the company match was vested (it wasn’t) or whether vacation was paid out (it wasn’t), and I was feeling choked by my own fear of January – when we’d have no paycheck.
So, naturally, my panic turned to emotion and I needed to end the call quickly because I started to cry.
Why do we learn to spend our paychecks as fast as we make them, when there is no reason we need so many things? As mentioned in my earlier blog, I want to organize my life – clear my clutter. And yet, I have spent years buying this clutter. For what?
It’s not necessarily the case that, for most of us, we have that much left over once bills are paid, but it’s the bills we probably need to rethink. Thankfully we didn’t buy a fancy car, and so we remain a one car family. And I think we’ll cancel cable which we’d planned to do. I have cut back on daycare so I can spend more time with the girls starting January, but it’s temporary in case I jump back into the full time foray by February.
There are ways to trim costs. But I think I’ve spent so many years getting away from living paycheck to paycheck so I could have “things”, that I have let money and the American dream become my bondage. I need to find the new dream. Freedom. Where I am not coveting Anthropologie or buying lattes daily. And I suspect the kids can live without Hanna Andersson and other organic kids clothing.
Maybe it’s time for me to redefine the American dream – to live happily ever after without excess.
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