Yes, I would love more time with my daughter, but it's my choice to work because I don't want our family to have the stress of living paycheck to paycheck. I've been worried and stressed out quite a bit lately - well, maybe that's something I can get a better handle on instead of wallowing in self pity. The last couple of weeks, I've made big leaps and bounds and I'd like to share how I've gotten there:
In her Project, Gretchen lays out her "12 Commandments of Happiness." I'd like to point out two of them and how they've had a profound positive impact on me so far. These are pretty general and can be incorporated into just about any situation.
Commandment 8 - Identify the Problem
I think so many of us spend so much time spinning our wheels that we don't really take the time to get to the heart of the issue. If we can see what's causing the stress, why not try and remove or amend it? For me, money is a big stressor. I worry about it and think about it all the time. It's silly really, because I would consider us both pretty frugal and responsible. We have everything we need. Every pay period we have 12% drafted into savings and another 10% drafted into retirement. But I think about buying/saving/paying bills all the time. For our 5 years of marriage I've been responsible for putting together the budget and paying bills. But I finally realized that being so involved in this process may not be healthy for me. In fact, if one of us had to be deemed the spender, then it would have to be me. So maybe if the saver was in charge of the budgeting and bills we would be even more successful with managing our finances. So I realized that maybe it would relieve a TON of stress if I could pass the torch on to Tim. However handing over control of this was not easy for me which brings me to the next commandment I want to touch on....
Commandment 2 - Let it Go
I finally took a deep breath and told Tim that I thought he should start paying the bills and handling the budget. He agreed and had been doing a good job ever since. Now, with matters such as these, I don't think this means ignorance is bliss (although sometimes it is). It just means I've let that go and how he is doing the grunt work. I still check our accounts once a week or so, but somehow I've learned to trust him with this. It was difficult at first to let this go. I was convinced that he would not know when anything was supposed to be paid and we'd start over-drafting and things would fall through the cracks. I reminded myself that this was a guy who always had cash stashed away when we were dating an somehow managed to take care of himself in this regard before we got married. Well lo-and-behold we are just fine and I couldn't be happier that this is no longer my responsibility. Tim even made the comment last night that my stress levels seemed to have tapered off a little and he wondered what changed. I realized that shuffling this responsibility has made a huge impact on my happiness. Not thinking about money constantly has been very liberating.
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