What Is Your Balancing Act?
What Is Your Balancing Act?
Isn’t it interesting how Time, Energy and Money are so inter-related, yet we try to compartmentalize them in our lives? For instance, so much Time & Money is spent planning how we are going to spend our day’s Energy; so much Energy is spent on how we plan our Time & Money; and so much Money is spent optimizing our Energy and Time!
How do we simplify this? It has taken me over half a century to realize the answer to my own question is Balance. We cannot live without time, energy or money, but when we push two of the three aside just to focus on one, it can throw our lives out of whack!
Recently, my father passed away. He had lived for almost 91 years. On his deathbed, he repeated several times the five areas of his life that had been most important to him.
Faith
Family
Friends
Farming
Football
These areas all made his life full. The richness of his life, however, was the balance he achieved between the five areas! For instance, Farming was his occupation, but he knew that observing a day of rest on Sunday was not only important to his Faith; it provided the balance he needed to re-charge his mind and spirit.
Another balance came in the time he devoted to Family. Although he had a commitment to his dairy farm on a regular basis, he planned time to enjoy sports events with his three children in spite of the fact that the high school we attended was 30 miles from home.
Dad also realized the importance of friends and community and how helping friends and neighbors is reciprocal. You may have chuckled when you saw Football on the list! As was explained in his funeral program, Football (playing or watching) is more than cheering for a favorite team. It is “building discipline, teamwork, and resilience while embracing competition, camaraderie, and the thrill of striving toward a shared goal.”
As you set your goals for the remainder of 2026, where can you create more balance in your life?
“If you measure something, you can understand it. If you understand it, you can control it, and if you can control it, you can improve it.” The same holds true in your monthly budgeting.
The reality is that it is nearly impossible to complete & follow a monthly budget without improving your overall financial position. There are several reasons for this, so I would challenge you to do this.
First, just developing a budget for yourself will raise your awareness of what you have for revenue or income sources and then also boost your cognizance of how much you are spending each month. Next, you will come to grips with the reality of one of three facts. Either you need to boost your income sources, reduce your outgoing expenditures or, thank goodness, if you have more income than expenses, you can then save some money. Of course, this is fantastic! You just need to determine where you will store or invest those extra funds each month…