In the Beginning There Was Debt: A Journey to Financial Freedom: Part 2

What is "savings fatigue"? I"m not sure this is the official term for this but in my house this is the term we use and this came when we had been "too strict" (I will explain this later) with our budget for too long and just as we were about to hit what we thought would be a more abundant financial period we had our daughter, Eleanor. This was the most amazing event of our lives but also the most costly, so the financial freedom we were about to experience finally was gone and we had to not only stay the course of our extreme budgeting but account for new financial items such as daycare and extra curricular activities which come much faster than we realized they would, also there is the added pressure of being in a "good school" district which means a move to a substantially more expensive house. In Part 1 I referenced Mary Hunt's book "Debt Proof Living", she does a remarkable job at explaining how to get financially free while still getting to enjoy life but unfortunately yours truly skipped that part of her lesson. This created a "too strict" budget. In the beginning when we started this we did find joy in this process because we were achieving something together and getting out of debt and securing our future. The "too strict" part comes in when you have gotten out of debt and mostly secured your future but in our case still save for a future utopian state where both spouses quit their jobs and play disc golf and paint with abandon but do none of these things in the present moment waiting for the "right time" to enjoy life and the money that's being saved. When I created my budget I accounted for everything but things I thought were "wants" not "needs" such as a regular clothing budget, personal care and health items, and vacations. My plan was to add these categories at the "right time" (probably when I was a true millionaire, only then could I get underwear without guilt). I did have a category for family fun money in which we could use for memberships to the zoo, eating out, and basically anything Eleanor related. Before the "right time" would come to add the "want" categories the pandemic came and even before this our constant conversations over the budget and growing savings were getting more and more annoying to me. For the first time in our lives we were making well above what we ever hoped for and had only the debt of our house but still living in lack in our minds. I started asking myself why, why am I working at a job I don't like to make more money and get very little joy in return. This didn't make sense to me especially after Covid. On a spiritual level this also did not jive. I was pretty certain God put us here for more than earning money in a questionable sales job and then storing it with a financial institution where I was receiving .00001% interest. After some convincing Philip and I started to relax a bit on the budget. We took a period of time where we just spent without a great deal of conversation, after all the years of working on this neither of us were making large purchases or doing anything that would undo all the work we had put in but we just started enjoying giving again and enjoying a pleasure purchase once in a while. This helped us to reboot and recharge so we could go into another stage of our lives willing to risk spending with joy in mind and willing to take our next steps to real financial freedom. We are now in the privileged process of rebuilding our budget to include joy and probably the most important part but the most challenging is leaving behind our mindset of lack and embracing abundance. Even though my years of childhood poverty are burned into my mind I have actually been living in abundance more years than I lived in poverty. It is time I embrace this. No matter where you are at your financial journey you are more privileged than most by just thinking of growth in this area. It takes saying, "yes" to the journey no matter where you are in the process. I started in just about the lowest place. I won't tell you the journey is fast and I won't tell you the journey is the same but I will tell you no matter where you are starting the journey is worth it. Think about your own journey celebrate your victories and write down your future goals. I will be posting soon tips that have helped me. Feel free to start posting tips that work for you. Let's take the third quarter and reboot our financial wellness to help achieve our main purpose of Spiritual wellness!