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SIMPLE LIVING GUIDE: How much is enough and the nature of fulfillment [Step 4]

Last updated: January 27th, 2019

 [Read Step 3 of the Simple Living Guide. Go to Step 1]

In the previous step, Where Is It All Going?, we created a monthly tabulation of the money flowing through our lives as an act of discovery rather a budget. We’re not going on a diet, we’re engaging in a change of lifestyle. Rather than setting targets for our spending, we’re working to align our finances with our own personal values. We’re taking all those beautiful lifelong dreams of what we’d love to do in life, and making them real, step by inevitable step!

My credit union sent me their monthly flyer last week. In it, they advertised their home equity Visa card. “Pay with your home equity card!” bellowed the promotion. My own reaction aside, I think this home equity credit card perfectly illustrates the need for Step 4. This step is about aligning our financial lives with our own personal values. When someone buys something with their home equity credit card, they’re in fact selling their home to buy that item. Considering the transaction from that angle, are we operating in alignment with our deeply held values when we pay with our own homes?

What’s your dream?

In my opinion, Step 4 is the heart of the Your Money Or Your Life program. This program isn’t about money; it’s about creating the lives we’ve dreamed of! In Step 4, the big issues we’re dealing with aren’t, “How should I go about figuring out how much I’ve earned in my life?” or “What sort of system should I use for tracking my finances?” or “What categories should I use when tallying my expenses?” No, we’re finally asking the big questions, in all their glaring beauty: “What did you want to be when you grew up?” “What have you always wanted to do that you haven’t yet done?”

Be careful! Spend some time contemplating these questions. I say that because these lofty dreams are going to become reality. Be careful what you dream of, because you’re going to live it. If you’ve always wanted to climb Mt. Everest, get ready, it’s going to be cold up there! If you’ve always wanted to find the time to learn the piano, take care of your fingers, because you’re going to need them! If you’ve always wanted to volunteer at the local animal shelter, let’s hope you’re not allergic! The point is this: we’re not dreaming, we’re planning our future.

Discovering fulfillment

How much is enough? That’s the question we’re answering for ourselves as we begin contemplating the first question presented in Step 4. The question is, “Did I receive fulfillment, satisfaction and value in proportion to life energy spent?” We’re asking that question of each category of expenses in our monthly tabulation. This is different from simply answering the question of how much is enough. Rather than saying that some certain amount should be enough (i.e. budgeting), we’re discovering the answer for ourselves.

For each category of expenses, how did it feel? Do you wish you had spent more there, or less? Did it feel just right? For example, I spent about three hours of my life energy on a pair of running shoes last month. I bought last year’s model on a closeout sale, so I’m happy with the price I paid. I find running to be very rewarding in my life, and replacing my shoes regularly helps to avoid injury. The problem is, I’ll need to buy another pair soon, and that closeout sale has ended. I can’t find that discount price now. I wish I had bought two or three pairs instead of just one. I would have experienced greater fulfillment by purchasing more running shoes at the same time. Oh well, live and learn. Next time I run across a sale like that, I’ll buy more!

Ann was frustrated by the amount of money (life energy) she spent on rent each month in San Francisco. As she says, she “was determined to find something just as fulfilling for less money.” Her motivation and consciousness about this were reinforced as she kept looking at it every month in her tabulation. She moved a few times to try a variety of situations that turned out not to be fulfilling. Eventually she happened upon the unconventional idea of living on an old houseboat. Now her rent is half what it had been, and her “backyard” is filled with a variety of waterfowl. Her commute isn’t optimal, but the overall situation is fulfilling for her.

Alignment with values and life purpose

Most of us can figure out easily enough whether we feel fulfilled with our spending on various items over the past month, or if we wish we had bought more or less. But this next question involves deeper contemplation: “Is this expenditure of life energy in alignment with my values and life purpose?”

Whoa! Hang on a second! What’s this “Life Purpose,” anyways? While some of us were blessed with knowing a clear purpose for our lives from the very start, many of us were not. In fact, this turns out to be a major stumbling block for lots of folks following this program. It sure has been for me. I’m not such a contemplative person, so basing my financial life on my life purpose was quite a stretch. In the absence of a single clear purpose, I’ve instead identified some of my own core values, and used them to direct my financial decisions. Nobody else is watching me do this, so it’s easy enough for me to change this later if I discover a deeper purpose in my life.

Sheila and her husband found that they strongly value knowing how to do things. They make their own wine and brandy. It doesn’t save them a great deal of money, but it’s closely in alignment with their own core values. They share the delicious results with everyone they welcome into their home.

Lynn applied this concept of personal values in Step 4 to her income source, rather than just expenses. She changed how she earns her income to a type of work that closely matches her values. In contemplating Step 4, she was able to take steps in her life to find her “right livelihood.”

Step 4 invites us to explore our own values and life purpose? What’s important to you? Who do you want to be when you grow up? How would you like to be remembered?

What if I didn’t have to work for a living?

The final question that Step 4 presents is, “How might this expenditure change if I didn’t have to work for a living?” Searching through popular financial literature there’s a lot of advice in this area. The “professionals” tell us to estimate our post-retirement expenses to be anywhere from 70 percent to 100 percent of our pre-retirement expenses. The thing is, how can they claim any such thing? They don’t know us! They don’t know our values or what fulfills us. They talk about “retirement”, while we’re talking about Financial Independence. From my perspective, “retirement” sounds pointless and boring! What am I supposed to do, buy a big RV and lumber around on the interstate from campground to campground until my health fails?

Personally, I’m far more interested in being a wilderness ranger, helping backpackers in remote regions, and learning and sharing the local ecology with others. Meanwhile, that big RV would cost a bundle, and those campground fees add up, and there’s all the fuel, and campground food, and so on, while the wilderness ranger spends a summer in a place where a dollar bill is totally useless. To me, this illustrates the difference between “retirement” and Financial Independence. It doesn’t take a whole lot of money to be Financially Independent.

I love this riddle presented in the book: “Who is more Financially Independent—someone who can fix a toaster, or someone who must pay another person to fix it?” If our vision of not having to work for a living involves having the money to pay that toaster repairman, our expenses in each category may not change appreciably after we stop working for a living. But if we’re willing to learn to fix that broken toaster, our expenses will drop when we have more time. For me, I love learning how things work and fixing them. I can’t begin to explain all the things I’ve learned to do since I stopped working for money! In the meantime, my expenses have plummeted. I simply don’t need so much money any more.

As Lynn worked through the program, she gained an understanding of how important it is to learn more about investing. She came to the conclusion that she’s valuing her life energy more by knowing enough to invest her savings in alignment with her values and future needs (more on this in Step 9).

Getting to enough

The authors of Your Money Or Your Life included a short piece on “Getting to Enough” in their explanation of Step 4. This is important because the entire program depends on the concept of Enough. Until we find out how much is “Enough” for us, we can never be fulfilled. Our finances remain arbitrary and uncontrolled until we discover the point at which more isn’t any better.

That’s what we’re doing with Step 4: month by month, we’re zeroing in on our own personal amounts of “Enough.” How else could we have any idea of how much money we need to feel fulfilled in our financial lives?

In the next step we’ll create a wall chart of our finances. It’s a fairly simple exercise, yet it gives us a visible reminder of our progress down this road every day. Keep collecting those monthly tabulations from Step 3—we’re going to make it all much more clear next time!

Come back on Monday for Step 5 of the Simple Living Guide

[su_panel background=”#f2f2f2″ color=”#000000″ border=”0px none #ffffff” shadow=”0px 0px 0px #ffffff”]Fred Ecks was the volunteer Newsletter Editor for The Simple Living Network. He’s a dedicated follower of the 9-step program detailed in Your Money Or Your Life. He uses the time freed up in his life for writing, volunteering, sailing, and trail running. He maintains a Web Log www.crazyguyonabike.com.