Swinging From the Money Tree

“We realise we can’t have everything, and so begins the mad scramble to have everything else.”- Robert Brault

For the first time in many, many years I have started my annual holidays with money to burn!... money to travel, money for accommodation and lovely meals, money to spend on going out and seeing the sights and to buy new clothes along the way, money to bring home a trinket or two, money to spend on whatever I fancy!... but here’s the irony … I don’t want much of any of it.

You see, the very changes I’ve adopted recently which have freed up so much of my cash, are life-changing, behavioural shifts that have made me come to realise that I already have most of everything I need and probably could ever want.

 It’s simple really. I have enough.

It seems to me that the endless cycle of desire, buy, remorse and eventual long term guilt, relieved only by more buying is now more debilitating to our health, our relationships, and our lives than ever before. Our over consumption has become the norm. There was a time when we were able to recognise poverty for what it was, the lack of resources, now it appears, we believe that poverty is not being able to have what we desire at a particular time.  As a society we have lost our perspective on what we need to survive and have adopted a sense of entitlement in its place. I have been guilty of saying “I work hard, I deserve this” when I should have been thinking about how much I already have. Until recently I have not put a lot of thought into how an item was produced, and what would happen to it once it had lost its appeal to me.

So, deciding what is ‘enough’ for you will mean that you are aware of your needs and that you can recognise when something is a ‘desire’. Knowing ‘enough’ will give you the tools to make tough financial decisions that will impact on your hip pocket and your responsibility as a consumer.

I have not always been so saintly in this area, I have had my share of money worries, lying awake at night doing sums on the ceiling and struggling week to week.  I know what it means to spend with no controls in place. My point here is that whatever our current money situation – it’s the choices we make and the reasons behind those choices which will lead us out of the money pit. It will be the changes in how we think about what is ‘enough’ that decide whether we swing from the money tree like a princess or swing from a noose!

I’m not alone in my newly developed disdain for over-consumption. Environmentalists and the social welfare faction have been railing their contempt against the ill effects of our over consumption for a long time.  Irresponsible consumption is not only laying waste to our planet but is destroying our homes and families and the lives of the forgotten women and children forced into deplorable working conditions by our need for instant gratification.  

We need to focus on the gaps between our pay days, the time when we make a judgement about how we spend our money, or question if we need to spend money at all.

 

My own efforts in exploring what is ‘enough’ have restored a sense of gratitude I’d long forgotten. It turns out our parents were right (I may need to stop and take a deep breathe admitting to that), we probably already have what we need if we just stop and look around.

So, my next challenge, to myself (and to you), is to look at how much ‘stuff’ I have, how much of it I really use and what could I throw out (recycling expected). Then with what I have remaining, decide how long I can survive without going shopping? A day? A week? A month? …. Maybe longer?

“The hardest thing is to take less when you can get more” – Kim Hubbard

more food for thought? visit these blogs for some inspiration

www.andthenwesaved.com

www.missminimalist.com