Spring Clean Your Finances

Birds chirp as they fly through a field of budding flowers, only days from displaying their bright petals hiding underneath its thin layer of leaves. Dew covers the blades of grass that have recently grown back after being covered with snow for months. Tree branches are beginning to fill back in with leaves, and the warmth of the sun beams down on you, laying peacefully on a blanket in a quiet field. Green surrounds the field, and nothing but blue skies can be seen for days.

It's a calm and peaceful scene, and one many of us have been longing for since the weather turned snowy in November. With spring weather arriving (hopefully) in the coming weeks, it’s time to turn our focus to starting with a fresh start in a new season marked by new beginnings and transformation. While many of us remain focused on the final weeks of the semester, it’s important to stop and consider many of our attitudes towards what we own and recognize the impact it has on our lives.

This spring, I believe adopting an attitude that is resolute and contented can help us set the foundation for new beginnings that will help us grow into the people we want to become and have the money for it. It is so easy to get stuck looking at what everyone else has around us and see what we’re missing, making our desires muddled with everything that grabs our attention. This can cause us to begin to have a constant need for more rather than accepting what we possess, impacting on our finances.

We all know the people who have a goal to aspire to, and it seems as if nothing can truly get in their way of achieving it. No matter what barrier is placed before them, they are determined to achieve the standard they have set for themselves. These individuals can be best described as being resolute in their efforts and aspirations. To achieve this in your life, take some time to yourself and cast a vision. If things were in your favor, what would life look like in a few years? Who are the people around you? What is your marker of success? Write these down with some ways you think you can get there. Maybe it’s reaching out to  someone at a firm you’re interested in, volunteering for a cause you believe in, or ridding yourself of beliefs about yourself that hold you back. I recommend not becoming overly specific in your vision, and rather allowing the general idea of who you want to be guide you towards specific achievements. Through this process you can clear out the busy noise around you and hone in on what matters to you, saying no to what doesn’t help you achieve the vision of who you want to become.

Being contented means being happy with what you already have. Being resolute and contented are able to exist as emotions simultaneously in a delicate balance. Like how there is someone we want to become, an ideal we want to achieve, we also are satisfied with what we have now. We can be resolute to achieve a fitness goal but be contented with the body we have. For example, a personal goal I have is to one day be able to do a pull up. Currently, I can do a pull-up using a machine that offsets a little under half my body weight. I try to work out in such a way that one day I can do a pull-up, but I am contented with the body I have in that I am able go on hikes that take me to beautiful places, and I usually maneuver in such a way that all basic and some advanced tasks are possible for me. This can be applied to other simpler aspects of our life, such as our wardrobe, where we are contented with the clothes we have currently and want to find ways to use our current wardrobe while adjusting to achieve a new image of ourselves we are resolute to achieve.

With these two attitudes in mind, we can approach our goals and desires in such a way where we know what we want and are not distracted by peripheral ideas. When we know how we want to grow and are content with what we already have, we are no longer tempted to buy less of whatever peaks our interest and move towards purposefully buying what does help us achieve our goals. For example, you may want to save for a new apple watch to buy later this year. We can find ways to save by knowing what we are contented with and not desire for more moving forward, and can make decisions with being resolute that help us buy the apple watch in the future. For example, you may find that you would save $40 a week if you did not go out and purchase lunch every day, and therefore decide to eat at home to save the $40 you would have spent eating out to save towards your apple watch.

Small side note: you are twice as likely to save for what you want when there are visible reminders of what you want near where you would spend money. People who put a photo of their kids on an envelope to save for emergencies were twice as likely to do so. Put photos of what you want up to remind you of your goals near where you often do banking, like as a screen saver or by your computer.

Remember as we enter spring that “mere change is not growth. Growth is the synthesis of change and continuity, and where there is no continuity there is no growth.” (C. S. Lewis). If we want to see continuous growth in our lives, we have to continuously work at it. Just as how we did not wake up one day adult-sized, we need to be patient and wait as we grow little by little every day. Find areas where you want to grow, and find one small way you can work towards it every day. All of your small decisions will add up to one big action, and so every step we take in a direction counts. Happy Spring!

1. S. Lewis (2013). “Selected Literary Essays”, p.105, Cambridge University Press

 

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