It’s a reality of life that most people don’t have enough resources to meet all of their wants. (In fact, it is this fundamental conflict resulting from unlimited wants and limited resources that keep economists employed.) Most people don’t want to face this reality because they have been told (and believe) that if they just work hard enough they can have all that they want.
However, even the wealthiest people, while they can consume more, are constrained by resources, the most limiting resource often being time. Everyone, unless it is their first or last day of life, has the same amount of time in a day. Regardless of how many houses or cars the wealthy (or the rest of us) accumulate, they can’t create more time to use and “enjoy” them. Also, research indicates that all that additional wealth has little impact on their personal happiness.
If we quit using all of our time and energy trying to accumulate everything, and focus on fewer things, we can have almost everything that is really important to us. Therefore, the first task in this most difficult process of changing attitudes and behaviors is to identify what is really important. One Financial First Aid exercise that will help is The Five Most Important. If we aren’t spending our time and money on what’s most important, we are wasting both.
Tags: financial first aid, money management, personal finance