Sunday 25 September 2016

An 'aha!' moment


Not that kind ... although they're fun, too.


THIS!
"That overall lack of direction went a long way toward fueling my overspending back in the day. My general lack of any kind of life direction sort of bothered me, so I often covered it up with short-term pleasures. I spent money and did things at least in part so that I wouldn’t have to consider my lack of life direction.
I think that feeling is common for a lot of people. If you don’t have any sense of what you want to do with your life to guide you, it becomes really easy to just drift through life, living paycheck to paycheck and simply trying to get the most momentary enjoyment that you can from what life hands you."
I found this blog just now. It seems to have a number of contributors with posts about various personal finance topics but it's the latest post, "What Should I Do With My Life? The Fundamental Question of Personal Finance - and a Surprising Answer" that jumped out.

In particular, those two paragraphs above stood out - okay, maybe it was like a universal smack upside the head, but really! Why has it taken me so long to realise this? (emphasis mine).

I'm a drifter. Somewhere I did know this, I've been told, but I suppose you get to a point in your life where you just start 'Adulting' and get on with it. My upbringing didn't encourage girls to be anything other than wives (ideally of People: doctors, lawyers, etc.) and mothers. I knew I didn't want that but at the same time, anything I DID want was neatly deflected as unimportant, silly, unnecessary, etc. So where did that leave me?

Anyway, here I am. I don't believe in coincidences - everything comes to you as and when you need it. There have been a number of 'aha' moments in the past couple of months and I've begun to pay real attention, conscious attention, to them and am finding ideas, experiences, and opportunities are starting to show up.

I don't love my job, but at the moment it's steady and allows me to live comfortably and enjoy a few things.

But what I really need to do is write my book(s).

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I've transferred money from my Canadian LOC to clear my English credit cards. The exchange rate is pretty miserable, but the interest rate on the LOC is about 5x lower than the credit cards! It makes more sense to do this, despite the fact that I haven't lowered my total debt load, as I can adjust my outgoing debt payments down a little bit.

I'll be paying a bit more than minimum on the remaining CC and concentrating harder to bring the LOC down more quickly.

I add this as it was another of those little 'aha' moments, even though it's technically more of a lateral move than a forward one.

4 comments:

its me, sam said...

i've book marked the site so i can sit and have a really good read of the article.. thanks... :)

Northern Living Allowance said...

You're welcome! Hope you like it as much as I did xx

Jane said...

That's a good article - I like the way he lays out his plan probably because I use a little planner to plot out my week, it was just a very necessary habit as a teacher. My "flow" time is when I carve or do something artistic, painting or drawing. Time just evaporates. I imagine for you it's writing. That blog was a great find at just the right time :)

Northern Living Allowance said...

It was a great article and it made a lot of sense to me, that whole lack of direction thing. I think it's why I have so much trouble making decisions and wind up wanting to do 500 things at once. It can be stressful but I know that once I've made up my mind, things DO tend to come together and I'm quite single-minded and determined. Here's hoping Nanowrimo winds up being one of these things this year! :)