remodeling this life

Last night, hubby and I sat down outside and were having one of those reminiscing conversations. We talked about where we’ve been in the 11 years we’ve been together and all the different things that we’ve gone through. We’ve lived in 4 different cities, spent time where both of us worked, neither of us worked and just one of us worked – me for a while when he stayed home with our newborn daughter and then he went back to work so I could stay home with her.

Our financial situation has changed in the direction of making less as the years have gone on. It seems to be the norm in life that people want to continue to make more money as time goes on. Most people can look back on 10 years ago and laugh at how little they were making then. We can look back on 10 years ago and the money we were making was twice as much more, but oh my was the lifestyle that went with it not a fun one to uphold – and oddly enough, we have better financial security with more money in the bank now than we ever did before. We’ve learned through the years that it’s not always about making more but being wise with what we do have and holding onto it. I’ve also come to realize that by learning to live well on less, we’re giving what we do have saved more power, we’re ensuring that it can last longer and take us further because we have learned to live on less.

That leads me to where we have ended up today. It has been and will continue to be an adventure, our life together. But one thing that I can safely say is that if we’ve learned and changed anything in the years we’ve been together it has been changing from a focus of making more more more to living well on less and making time for valuable things in life like time with family versus long hours working at the office or traveling for work.

I know there are all sorts of angles to take on money and how much one makes and whether it defines people or rules people. I think it is safe to say that there are a lot of people out there that continually want to make more money. When they do, their lifestyle shifts upwardly with it. Bigger house, new cars, more stuff. It’s how it’s done. Make more, spend more. That is the beauty of personal finance though – it’s personal and each person gets to do what works for them and makes them comfortable and happy – and live well on their terms.

Living well means different things to different people. For some people to feel they are living well, they need to have a $500 bottle of wine with dinner. For other people it’s their home that makes them feel they’ve “made it” and are living well. We all have different things that define that for us. I am trying to live a life in which living well is about things money can’t buy – being smart, athletic, artistic, creative, loving – spending time with my family, going for a run on a cool morning, enjoying my kids with ice cream smeared faces on a Saturday afternoon. I want to always remember that for myself, living well doesn’t have to mean living expensively.