The principles of saving and budgeting are simple. The execution is where it gets tough. In a busy world with work deadlines and kid’s sports, the ability to control spending and avoid lifestyle creep becomes incredibly challenging. Additionally, we want to enjoy our busy lives and society points to a billion different products to consume to help us with that.
If we feel less than fulfilled with our current situation, it is just too easy to get pulled in by all the ads or friend’s vacations on social media. We end up wanting the “next thing” and this invariably makes it challenging to live on a budget that really gets us where we want to be in the long run.
What does Simple Joy mean?
The idea behind simple joy is to find things that bring happiness in your life that involve a slower pace and don’t require a big outlay of cash. A fancy dinner at a new restaurant is a great potential source of joy, but it can’t be repeated too often. Vacations are great, but you can only take one or two a year.
There has to be something that is consistent and sustaining in your life that helps bring a spark to those random weeks when it feels like a slog. This is the thing that will allow you to pass on picking up take-out or snagging some random item on Amazon just to break up a lame stretch.
Here are some thoughts on what it could be:
- Taking a weekly walk with a friend
- Trips to the Dog Park
- Playing Pickup basketball
- Keeping an art project alive
- Gardening
- Learning to Cook
- Gaming with Old Friends
These are generally things that we did when we were younger and had more free time, but then they gradually vanish from our schedule. Others like gardening and cooking are things that seem to sit out in the retirement years when time shows up again.
Carving out Time
One major thing that it takes to focus on simply joy is to set out time for whatever the activity is. If this time is carved out, then it can’t be taken over by some random busy task that pushes in from modern life. The big challenge is that it may involve pushing back against kid’s activities, but this opens up another opportunity too.
Kid’s need time to just be kids and hang out with friends. Its free and I know for my kids, they really fight for time to just hang out. It’s a crazy side effect of the never-ending push for more activities that kids are losing out on this time more than ever. The push of kid’s activities is a pretty constant conversation I have with friends of school age children. All this stuff is good, but it’s always worth asking if it’s blocking us from stuff that feeds our soul.
Creating Emotional Reserves
The biggest thing I’ve seen when my wife and I go way over budget for a month is that it corresponds to periods where we are really busy with work and starting to get burned out. When I had intense periods of stress, it makes eating out much more frequent and also increases trips to the store where items are forgotten which then prompts more visits.
When things are a bit out of control, the number of purchases goes way up and then the end month budget is toast. This is why it’s so important to have some sort of activity that anchors you and brings a little oasis when weathering stressful periods. Keeping a good budget is mostly about staying consistent and nothing helps that more than having some event each week that you know is going to help you pull away from the stress, relax and enjoy yourself.
My weekly basketball game with friends provides this for me. It is a simple activity where I get to see friends and get a great workout in, but it also helps refill the emotional tank. On a full tank, its way easier to cook dinner each night during a busy week. This simple joy activity provides the base.
Budgeting is all about maintaining momentum
It’s just the facts. Budgeting is a necessary part of life whether you have a great income or are feeling tight. There are way too many people figuring out new and smart ways to pull our money away from us. They are endlessly pushing at our lack of contentment and for even the more finance conscious person a plan for spending is only as good as our desire to execute it.
There are lots of great apps and plans out there, but you have to be able to fill the tank and find enjoyment in something simple and cheap. We all have some level of self-discipline, but it shouldn’t feel like a struggle to live in a reasonable way. That is why we all need to put our focus on building in that regular, life-giving activity that hits the refresh button.