We’re celebrating couples and individuals in midlife that inspire … I hope you enjoy these uplifting stories, and if you know someone who should be celebrated, please let me know. Sep 10 Healthy Retirement
Recently published in the Globe and Mail, on investing in 2009 and the challenges faced in the current economic environment by organizations that depend on our generousity…
As I find a bit of time here and there over the summer, I’ll be updating my portfolio pages. If you’re interested in finding out what I’ve been so busily writing about, please check it out.
Joy is an essential element in every life, and in our quest for financial freedom, we’re all striving for that balance between spending and saving that is highest on the joy scale.
In order to spend or save, most of us have to trade our time for money. Because our time is, in fact, our life, we’re trading the single most valuable resource we have for whatever we turn our money into. If we turn it into something that gives us joy in good measure, we’re living life well.
That’s true whether we spend our money now or save it to spend later. There are people who default to buying more stuff, or living a more luxurious lifestyle today; there are people whose primary pleasure comes from accumulating savings and investment.
For me, real freedom comes from reducing my need for money now and in the future. I love stuff, believe me — I love my iPod and nice clothes and (especially) eating great food. But I treasure my time, and as a result, I am very frugal. There are some things I don’t stint on: it gives me a lot of pleasure to support my favourite charities, and I try to buy organic food when I can. But I’ve learned to be a smart thrift store/Craigslist shopper, and I love being part of the Freecycle community.
For me, it’s not about money at all. It’s about having as much life in my life as possible.
How about you? What’s the perfect balance in your life?
Yesterday, I had the privilege of being part of a discussion on the nature of change and our relationship to it.
One of the ideas that occurred to me as a result of the insights offered by people around the table is that while change is the only constant, we are challenged to deal with the often surprising products of change. (Credit derivatives change; the unexpected product is the financial crisis.) And with any change, some people are affected more than others. Those who are affected least are those who have the most resources, which make them the most resilient. Therefore, if we want to be a society that evolves in the direction of change mastery, which seems to be at the heart of innovation, it seems we have to first address issues of income disparity and strong social safety nets.
As has become clear during the financial crisis, corporate safety nets can be too encouraging to innovation — but in the larger world, social safety nets allow people to make investments in things like education and job training, preparing them to respond to change products in a creative way.
What do you think?
Were you at the VPL Forum last night? Would you like to continue the discussion? Please register and leave your comments here — I’d love to hear from you!
Please join us for the Full Figure Theatre Women and Money Forum (Where did I spend it all?) at the Central Branch of the Vancouver Library on Wednesday, May 6 at 7 pm. It’s free, and there will be a panel discussion (I’m one of the panel) on women and their relationships with money.
When it comes to living more richly with less, one thing seems clear: it’s going to require that we share.
That may manifest as more renting, borrowing or reclying versus buying (car co-ops and libraries), more co-housing (see cohousing.ca for more on that) or on more active participation in our communities. Whatever it looks like, the more we share, the higher our collective quality of life will be.
On the weekend, I received an email from my administrator at Freecycle, which I love, with a message I did not. The administrator advised us that some of us had been using the term Freecycle wrong. From this point forward, we were informed, we were to use Freecycle as a noun, not as a verb or adjective.
And today on one of my favourite blogs, Zen Habits, blogger Leo Babauta wrote that he’d received a letter from a law firm asking him to change his use of the term “Feel the fear and do it anyway,” which apparently has been registered as a trademark by the author Susan Jeffers. He refused.
Cue the language police. Please. (The idea that someone would have the nerve to register an old chestnut like ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’ is in itself a head-shaker.)
Later in the day, when I checked back on Zen Habits (yes, I am mildly OCD about my favourite bloggers), Mr. Babauta announced a new, free poster of his best tips, here.
While reading about the poster, I also learned that Mr. Babauta has an ‘uncopyright’ on all his work. Yes, that’s right — he wants to share, because he understands that the benefit of doing so will ultimately bring him a greater audience, sell more of his books, and make him a happier, more successful guy.
Post-financial crisis, the idea of hoarding our ideas, our phrases and our stuff behind closed doors is no longer tenable. It’s impossible, and it makes us look foolish. So … I applaud Mr. Babuata, and Goddess Leonie, and I hereby uncopyright my work, too. Take it — share it. I’d be flattered.
