journal

I was scrolling TikTok a few days ago and I caught this piece of content from Dr. John Maloney. It really struck a chord with me so I bookmarked it cause I wanted to share how it reflects my own approach to my family and I's financial life.

I've known from a really young age that one of the greatest stresses in my life would be my family and I's economic standing. My parents were hard working and earnest, but money was always a point of contention. They worked hard to make sure we always had what we needed and occasionally what we wanted, but it came a price. There was hand wringing, arguing, and I'm guessing a lot of shuffling money around to make sure everyone got what they were owed. As a kid I hated all of this and what it made our home like at times. As an adult with two kids of my own I can only stand and applaud both of them for doing what it took. It is funny how much more grace and love you find for your parents once you become a parent.

Those experiences though have deeply - probably more than I knew at one point - influenced the way I handle my family's finances and that video above pretty much hits the nail on the head in describing what I am optimizing for. If a purchase or decision to purchase puts the security or peace of my household at risk then I couldn't care less about it. My status symbol is being able to provide for my family well enough and not have financial concern and worry crawling into every area of our lives.

This isn't to say that we have always had and have financial peace. My wife and I began like most everyone else. We worked the jobs we could get - some of which we didn't like - for the wage they would pay. We had both our boys young and at the beginning of my career. We used credit cards when we needed and shuffled our money when it was required. We priortized my wife staying home with both our boys over earning a second income. And sometimes we had arguments about the direction of our financial life.

However, I never accepted that that was going to be the status quo for our family. I knew that, unfortunately, no one was going to come and save us. We were going to have to make deliberate choices and continue to make those choices year after year to move us toward that life of financial peace and security. This has meant making a lot of life choices that differ from our family and friends and even our own visions of what we thought adulthood would look like for us. Things like...

• Driving a single vehicle
• Renting instead of owning where we live
• Saying no to an annual vacation or vacations
• Avoiding lifestyle inflation

It has all been worth it though because with every year that passes I see us moving closer to where we want to be and I feel us having our financial feet planted more firmly on the ground. It's reinforcement that while it's felt like a grind, it is paying off. Expenses that once were emergencies have moved to inconveniences. The amount of time spent manually managing our finances has dramatically decreased. The conversations we have about money are less and less filled with anxiety and instead excitement about the plans ahead.

We aren't geniuses either. We are just trying to stand on the shoulder of giants by taking advice from others, people like J.L. Collins and Dave Ramsey. We automate our bills and live below our means. We automate our savings. We avoid debt like the plague and we are deligent to pay off anything we owe. I almost always capture all of my yearly raises into our savings to avoid the lifestyle inflation spiral. It isn't necessarily easy and there are definitely moments - especially after unexpected setbacks - where I think what is the point of all of this work. But then our car needs repairs or my kid needs a couple set of glasses and instead of it becoming a crisis it is just something we need to handle and we have what we need to handle it. And in those moments I catch a glimpse of what all of this is for.

Don't get me wrong. We don't got that Bezos money. We are still saving for a down payment on a home. We still have my student loans to payoff. We still want to buy a second car. We'd love to be able to show our boys all that the world has to offer. And while no one can know the future or plan for every extraordinary event I believe we will do them all. The best part being that we won't pay the price that my parents paid. We likely won't have the classic signs of wealth, but I do believe we will have the wealth that really matters.