Gails Blog

Despite the way I dress on TV, I’m not a clothes horse, and some people’s obsession with handbags, shoes, shirts, skirts, blouses, jackets, watches… well, I could go on forever…  seems weird to me. I’ve been in homes where there are hundreds of pairs of shoes, dozens and dozens of pairs of jeans, and cupboards and drawers full of clothes, along with loads of debt. I scratch my head. What drives us to collect all this STUFF when a) we’re in debt and b) we just can’t afford it?

According to the Stats Man, in 2002 Canadians spent $21.5 billion dollars on clothing and accessories. Women’s clothing made up about half of that spending, men’s made up about 29% and the rest was on kids’ clothing.

So, just how many pairs of shoes can we wear? Do you really need 40 T-shirts? And how can a handbag priced at $600 ever be a good idea, particularly if you’ve got ANY debt?

Clothing, it seems, has a lot to do with how we see ourselves and others. Many people use clothing as an opportunity to express themselves, and just as many use it as a means of judging others. If you’ve caught yourself looking at some fatty walking along in a too-tight t-shirt and cringing, or wondering why that woman would pair that lovely plaid skirt with that horrible polka-dotted ruffled blouse, you’re guilty.

Men and women are so weird about their clothing obsessions that they actually lie to each other about what they’ve paid. Sometimes they lie UP to impress. Sometimes they lie DOWN to appease. But the very fact that you feel you have to lie about what you spent on an item should indicate how twisted this all is.

I’ve listened and watched people almost get into battles over the question of whether to by cheap-and-often or quality-that-lasts. People get all uppity about their brands. And there are dopes who believe that dropping $400 on a pair of shoes, handbag, new jacket, is something they HAVE to do. There are people who’ve told me they HAD to buy it because they were “saving so much.” And there are people who, despite having several versions of an item already, have to acquire the next one anyway.

Now that the prices of food and gas are going through the stratosphere, it’ll be interesting to see if people are willing to cut back on their STUFF so they can keep eating. I’m not willing to take a bet on it since this aberrant shopping behaviour is totally unpredictable.

If you find that you’re guilty of having too much stuff, but you just don’t know where to start, it may be time to take inventory and make some choices. After all, you can’t possibly wear it all, and there is such a thing as “too much of a good thing.”

Empty your drawers, putting everything on your bed in a pile. If you have seasonal clothes, separate the seasons, and put the clothes you’re not wearing this season aside.

Of this season’s clothes, choose those you really love and actually wear on a regular basis.

If you have special occasion clothes, pick out the ones that are your favs.

Put the clothes you love back in your drawers leaving space around the clothes so you can get them out easily. If you’re stuffing your drawers, you still have too much stuff.

Now, do the same thing with your off-season clothes, putting the ones you’re planning to keep in a bin for the swap-over, and setting aside the stuff that’s just accumulated that you NEVER wear.

Ditto handbags, shoes, jewelry, hats, scarves, undies, PJs, and whatever else you’re hoarding. And, of course, there are all the clothes hanging in your closet. Yup. Them too.

You can do this exercise for your linen closet, your towels, your dishes, glasses, cups and mugs, DVDs, CDs, books.

Now, make yourself a promise that you’ll never impulse buy anything again. If there’s something you need, you’ll put it on a list. You’ll price it out, and write a target price beside it. Then you’ll buy it when you have the money to pay for it, and it has hit your target price. If you want to keep simplicity front and centre, add that you’ll get rid of something you no longer use every time your bring something new into your space.

As for what to do with the stuff you’re divesting: charities abound. If you have women’s and children’s clothes, consider your friends and family, then a women’s shelter. If it has value, sell it on Craig’s List. Put whatever you earn toward your debt. If you don’t have any – YEAH! – put it towards your next experiences.

It’s experiences that make us happy, not STUFF. Commit to having a great experience with a friend, your partner, your kids, and then give yourself something to look forward to that you can use to battle off the STUFF MONSTER the next time it rears its ugly mugg.

I’m a very happy woman.  I’m convinced that one reason I’m so happy is because I see the donut and not the hole.  Lots of people I know can only see what’s missing in their lives, so they head out to the mall to fill the holes. Me, I only buy stuff when I’m bored or really need something. So if I’m bored I find something constructive to do, or I stay out of the stores. If I really need something, I make sure I have the money for it or I find something constructive to do to get the money, or I stay out of the stores.

Back to being happy. My happiness is part contentment. When I first got him, my husband used to quote me this poem (while smiling):

Contentment
is for babies
and for cows
To live life
vibrantly
is to dangle
securely
from a
frayed
string.

I said, “Hogwash” and set out to prove that contentment wasn’t something to be despised. I’ve converted him.

My contentment is hard earned. I’ve read a lot to find answers to the questions that have plagued me and come up with some nice guidelines. Here’s one of my favorites quotes from Zen Master, Thich Nhat Hanh:

Whatever the tasks,
do them slowly

with ease,
in mindfulness,
not with the goal

of getting them over with.

Resolve to do each job
in a relaxed way,

with all your attention.

Our lives are busy and we tend to rush through things to get to the next thing to rush through. So we forego all the pleasure we would derive from completing the task. I find this with cooking. When I have to just Get It Done, I don’t get any of the pleasure I normally derive from Creating a Masterpiece. When I Zen Cook, I have way more fun and the food usually tastes much better. And I am content.

If, at the end of the day, you are exhausted and stressed out, it may be that you are rushing through your life, taking no pleasure from the completion of tasks and the achievement of contentment. And if you’re only pleasure today was from shopping, it may be that you’re filling the hole in your life with the wrong thing.

Try this:

Think about what’s important to you. What do you really want to be doing? Who do you like to spend time with? What do you want to accomplish? Make a short list of 4-5 answers for each of these questions.

Assess your commitments. Are you trying to do too much? Is your plate too full? Are you over-committed? You can’t possibly enjoy your life if you’re trying to do too much. Accept that you can’t do everything, know what you want to do, and work to eliminate the commitments that aren’t as important.

Leave space in your life. Put in time to do nothing but sit, think, imagine. It doesn’t have to be a lot of time. But you do have to make time to be with yourself in joy. Another mistake is trying to schedule things back-to-back, which leaves no space in case things take longer than planned or something unexpected crops up. It also leaves us feeling rushed and stressed.

Prioritize. You can’t do everything on your to-do list, so begin by deciding what you MUST do. Write an “A” beside those things, and focus on getting them done. “B” things come next, and “C” things can fall off the list, please! Now, slow down and enjoy doing each “A” task. This is the most important step, so read it again.

Finally, take pleasure in the simple things you do throughout your day. Knowing what your simple pleasures are, and putting a few of them in each day, can go a long way to making life more enjoyable. I commute my kids to and from school – half-hour each way — and I could make it into a chore, but instead I look forward to that time. I can use it to plan, to work through stuff I’m trying to figure out, to look at the beautiful scenery, to listen to an audio-book, to plan dinner, to talk to my children… the list goes on and on. I use it for pleasure.

I am a happy woman. Some of it’s natural. Some I’ve worked hard at. And I’m content in the happiness I’ve achieved. From time to time something comes along that pushes me out of The Happy Zone, but I fight like a fiend to get back into it. I guess I’m an addict. A happiness addict. I will not settle for less.

Some of the people who watch the show who don’t make a ton of money are often dumb-struck that a couple can be making $100,000 a year or more and still be in debt. “Where’s the money going?” they ask. “How can you make that much money and still need to use credit?” they wonder. “How much would they have to make to not go into debt?”

There a couple of problems with the way people look at their money. The first is that many people think of the money they earn in GROSS dollars – that’s before taxes. But if you make $100K and pay 30% in tax, you’re left with $70K. “That’s more than enough,” you say. Maybe. But if all your thinking is based on $100,000, then you’ll be in the hole $30K every year and you’ll never understand why.

So we think of our incomes in GROSS dollars. But we think of our expenses in NET dollars. Yup. And that adds to the problem. Can you see why?

The other thing that adds to the problem is that $100,000 doesn’t buy what it used to. According to the U.S. Federal Reserve, between 1960 and 1990, money lost a whopping 77% of its buying power. That means if you paid a buck for something in 1960, you’d have to come up with about $4.40 to buy it in 1990.

So did incomes rise four-and-a-half times over the same period? Not on your life. Which means a $100,000 income doesn’t buy all the bread and butter it used to. But it still sounds like a lot of money, right? So we still THINK it should buy everything we need. There ya go: another gap between perception and reality.

If $100,000 doesn’t buy all it used to, how come we have more stuff than ever before? That’s easy. We’re using credit. Gobs and gobs of the stuff. We’re borrowing against the equity in our homes. We’re using lines of credit in record numbers. And we’re carrying more plastic than ever before. And we’re giving no thought to how we’re ever going to pay back the principal.

Sure, we’re careful to make our minimum payments. We don’t want to ruin our credit histories, after all, and limit our access to even more credit. But a suggestion that someone pay more than the minimum is met with a laugh… ha ha.. it must be a joke. Who’d be silly enough to do that?

The media has also been lying to us. They’ve been telling us we’re rich. We’ve lots of money in terms of home equity, after all. And that’s money in the bank.

Well, it’s not. It can evaporate – as it has in the U.S. – even more quickly than it grew. And since you have to sell your home to use your equity as money, you better have a nice rock picked out that you can crawl under when the caca hits the fan and you HAVE to sell your home to pay for all those toys you put on your credit card.

It’s time for us to grow up and act like adults. We can’t keep operating under the delusion that just because the amount of money we make sounds like a lot, that we can buy whatever we want whenever we want. And we can’t keep talking about our income in gross dollars while we spend in net? We have to come to terms with the reality of our money and our lives. If we put only $100 in the bank, then we can spend only $100 – at the most. (We should save $10.) And we can’t put $100 on a credit card if we don’t have $100 in the bank to pay it off IN FULL when the bill arrives.

People who aren’t aware of how much they make, how much they spend, and how much their debt is costing them in terms of money and life’s energy expended are not heading anywhere good. It really doesn’t matter how much we make. What matters at the end of the day is what we do with it and how truthful we are with ourselves.

Have you ever thought about how much money it would take to make you happy? Is that net or gross?

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It’s amazing the many ways in which we’re willing to delude ourselves so that we don’t have to face our realities. People are soooo willing to grab hold of a Maybe or a What If or a Perhaps, all so they don’t have to deal with their own crap. If you’re thinking that any of the following are in your future, you need to give your head a shake.

Prince Charming is Going to Save Me. Really? Prince Charming? Didn’t you see Shrek? He’s a Momma’s Boy who is so obsessed with his own future that you’ll only know he’s been there by the wreck he’s left behind: YOU! Despite all the stuff that’s been written about the Prince Charming Myth, there are still people out there – boys and girls alike — who believe that someone is going to come riding to their rescue with pots of money to bale them out. If he’s stupid enough to try and bail you out of the mess you made of your own life, why would you want him? Let’s face it, in today’s very complex world, one person with the “solutions to all your problems” is likely to come with a whole lot of baggage of his own.

My Parents are Going to Leave Me a Million. Let’s say they do. What makes you think you’re going to have any better luck managing an inheritance than you do managing the money you actually have to work hard for? But what makes you think they’re even going to have a million to leave you? After all, with rising health care costs and greater longevity, your parents could live to be ninety. And many of those years will be very expensive as they take medicine, hire caregivers and generally do whatever they can to extend their lives for as long as possible. Assuming you’re 25 years younger than your youngest parent, you’d could be 65 or 70 by the time both your parents kicked the bucket. That’s a hell of a long time to put your life on hold. And then, of course, if you have a sibling or three, you’re going to have to split what’s left once dear old mom and dad shuffle off this mortal coil.

I’ll Win the Lottery. Ha! This is one of my favorites. Do you know that you’re more likely to be struck by lightening TWICE than win the lottery? How about this one: you’re more likely to die in a car accident going to the store to buy a lottery ticket than win the lottery. I know someone has to win. I know it could be you. But do YOU know that it very likely won’t be. Besides, 1/3 of lottery winners end up bankrupt within five years of cashing in their lottery tickets. Why? Simple. We don’t value what we don’t have to work hard to earn

Oprah’s Going to Discover Me. Yeah. I’m waiting for her to call me too.

I’ll Get Rich Playing the Stock Market. “Playing” is the operative word here. If you’re “playing” then you’re not serious about investing. If you’re serious about investing, you’re using a buy-and-hold strategy, and you have an advisor who knows what she’s doing.

I’m Just Waiting to Land the Big Job. Which job is that? The one where they pay you oodles of money to do what they could pay someone else half as much to do? Hmmm.

Things Will Work Out. How’s that working for you so far?

Financial success is based on performing the essentials of good money management. You have to have a plan. You have to be organized. You have to have a goal and be committed to achieving that goal. And you have to work smart. 

Harbouring financial fantasies are detrimental to success because they encourage you to put the power outside yourself: you’ll be rescued, you’ll be left a ton of cash, you’ll be discovered. If you want to be successful, you have to take back the power and know that the best way to make it happen is to do it for yourself.

The old saying, “It took 10 years to become an overnight success” is true because success means learning from your mistakes, becoming knowledgeable about money and how it works, and knowing our own strengths and weaknesses.

Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.

Ever heard that old saying?

I’ve worked with more than 75 couples on the show so far, and I’m amazed at the number of people who want to sleep in. These aren’t teenagers whose brains just aren’t tuned to the morning. We’re talking adults. People who have jobs (or should). People who have children. People who can’t find the time to manage their money properly. Whazzup with that?

I love getting up early. I get so much more done. This morning I made a mess of potatoes in my crock pot – mixed with garlic, onions, oregano, the zest and juice of a lemon and a little paprika – while I sipped my tea. Later I’ll throw some of the chicken I marinated on the grill. Hey, 7 a.m. and dinner’s ready!

Most days I’m awake by 4 a.m. Yeah, I’m nuts, but it’s a hold-over from when the kids were really little and I was up early to write. And it comes in handy when I have to drive three hours for an 8:00 a.m. shoot. I hate, hate, hate traffic and I’ll leave early from home to avoid it, picking up a newspaper and a cup of tea or doing some web stuff at the other end with my extra time.

When I don’t have to be anywhere, I read. It’s my time. I get to bed nice and early, so I’m not an insomniac. Just an early riser. I’m usually up by 5, either doing stuff around the house, processing a family’s finances or writing.  No yelling kids. No phones ringing. No one breathing down my neck. By 6 I’m in the kitchen getting the kids’ stuff ready for school.

The Dalai Lama is a get-things-done kinda guy. I bet he gets up early. He says, ”Everyday, think as you wake up, ‘today I am fortunate to have woken up, I am alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it. I am going to use all my energies to develop myself, to expand my heart out to others, to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings, I am going to have kind thoughts towards others, I am not going to get angry or think badly about others, I am going to benefit others as much as I can.’ “

I’m willing to bet there isn’t a single really successful person out there who sleeps past 7 a.m. (If you’re a shift-worker, don’t write me back.) And they don’t start by jumping out of bed, late as usual because they hit the snooze button.  They don’t rush out of the house and arrive at work all rumpled and foggy. No, they probably have a ritual that lets them set the tone for their day, and it probably starts the night before when they look over the next day to see what’s what. They’ve set their goals, and they know just what it’ll take to get through the next day successfully.

If you want to get up earlier, like everything else, it takes a plan. Start slowly. Wake up just 15-30 minutes earlier than usual for a few days. Then wake up 15 minutes earlier than that until you hit your goal time.

Getting up earlier means you may have to get to sleep earlier. If you stay up till one in the morning watching TV, playing video games or surfing the net, you’re going to have to cut back to get to bed at a decent hour. Don’t just climb into bed and lie there struggling to get to sleep. Read. Listen to a story on tape. Meditate. In no time at all, you’ll be fast asleep.

Move your alarm clock away from your bed so you have to get up to turn it off. I never hear my alarm clock because I’m always awake before it goes off. I learned this when I was quite young; if I tell myself what time I want to wake up before I go to sleep, my body just does the right thing. No jolt. No panic.

Since you’re out of bed to turn off your alarm anyway, might as well head to the shower. If you get back into that bed – particularly when it’s cold outside – you’re sunk.

Make sure you set yourself a task to do first thing so that you aren’t getting up and then wondering around what to do until your brain kicks into gear. Life is so busy, you won’t have any trouble finding something. Just make a mental note of the first thing you have to do after you’ve cleaned yourself up.

I often find myself driving east, heading home, when the sun is rising, and I find it exhilarating watching the sky change colour. It’s a gift. And one we often take for granted. Make a date with me to get up tomorrow morning and watch the sun come up.

As I was checking into my hotel last night I was greeted by a lovely young man who expressed some frustration at not being able to beat down his debt. With about $12,000 in debt, some at the highest interest rates going, he was frustrated. He’d tried to get a consolidation loan but had been turned down because the bank said he was already overextended. (We’re going to see more and more of this as credit gets tighter.) He was wining the battle, but said, “It’s hard staying motivated.”

Yup, when it feels like you’re progressing in teeny tiny steps, it can be hard to stay motivated. Just the thought of tackling a mountain of debt can stop the less brave from even beginning. It can seem like a massive undertaking to jump-start yourself into action. It can seem even more daunting to maintain your focus when your progress, although steady, seems really slllooooooow.

So what can you do to help you stay motivated? Try some of these ideas and see what works for you.

Make a List. Write down your financial goals in small increments.
So if you want to pay off a $3,000 balance on a store card you might write:

Transfer balance to a lower-cost card
Earn an extra $200 a month
Trim $100 from my budget
Pay $300 a month toward card in August
Pay $300 a month toward card in September
Pay $300 a month toward card in October

And so on…

As you achieve each of your individual steps on your list, you can stroke them off. Man, what a feeling as you watch your page fill up with stroked-out achievements! And if you start doubting your progress, if you start feeling demotivated, you can look back at the success you’re having and kick yourself in the pants.

Tell Everybody What You’re Trying to Do. One of the biggest problems we have is the fact that money is still a BIG SECRET. Whazzup with that? I mean, if we’re prepared to talk about our most private matters, why the big secret when it comes to money? Because we judge others using money as a benchmark. And we’re afraid they’re going to judge us. STUPID. Let’s face it, we’re all making mistakes and if we don’t share our mistakes it means we have to make them all over and over, never learning from our friends or family. And keeping secrets means we can’t count on our friends or family to pull us back from the edge when we come close to falling. But if we tell people we made a mistake, if we ask them to help us stay on the straight and narrow, then when we become tempted we can use our Safety Network to pull us back, to help us stay motivated.

Keep a Journal. Don’t moan. I know not everybody likes doing this, but it works. Write down what you’re doing, what’s working, what’s not, and what you’re going to change, and you’ll find yourself closer and closer to your goals.

Eat the Frog! If you have things you need to do that you find easy to procrastinate, then do them first! It’s called “eating the frog.” It’s a quote from Mark Twain who said if the first thing you do in the morning is eat a frog, nothing else will seem as hard for the rest of the day. So, Eat the Frog!

Keep Your Goals Visible. Post them on your fridge, on the bathroom mirror, on the wall right behind your computer. Put them where you see them ALL THE TIME so you can stay on track.

Measure Your Progress. This works for kids. And it works for grown-ups too. Draw yourself a thermometer graphic to show how much debt you have to pay off. As you pay it off, colour your way up the thermometer. There. You have a visual record of your progress to keep you motivated.

One of the most important lessons you will learn is that no matter how well you prepare and how many precautions you take, there will be times when you’re thrown off track by an unexpected setback. That’s life. Having friends to urge you on, going over what you’ve achieved on your List, taking pride in your progress chart are all ways to get yourself re-motivated to get back on track. And you can use my blog to share your frustration and accept encouragement. Whatever you’re facing, it can be a temporary setback or you can let it permanently derail you. It’s up to you.

Peer pressure is something we associate with teenagers and their ability to distinguish between a sensible course of action and a dumb one. We know peer pressure leads to bad decisions and good, and that we want our kids to be able to think for themselves. But have you given any thought to how you may be affected by the peer pressure from your friends, particularly when you decide to change how you’re managing your money?

One of the hardest things to deal with once you decide to live on a budget, change how you’re using your money, and modify your life, is telling your friends. Some of them won’t mind a bit. Some will congratulate you. And some will think you’re nuts.

I run into this all the time when I’m working with my fams. They have friends who like to go out to restaurants. They have friends who want to explore all the amusement park rides in the summer. They have friends who think a budget is what losers do.

You may have to rethink who you’re hanging with.

If you’re hanging with people who are in your new head-space – folks who budget, watch their money, and are getting and staying out of debt – you’ll find it easier to stick to your plan. These Frugal Friends will know that you’re working hard to make changes and they’ll support you.

Don’t equate frugality with meanness or tightwads. Being frugal is being committed to staying on a budget and living a simpler life.

Your Careless Chums won’t consider for a minute how their own spending patterns may be difficult for you to deal with. They’ll say, “Com’on, we haven’t been out for dinner in weeks” or “We’ll just go for a couple of drinks” or “You need to spoil yourself once in a while.”

Frugal Friends are also into the sharing thang. If you have a chain saw and they have a lawnmower, they’re quite willing to share their tools with you, as long as you reciprocate from time to time. Imagine a network of Sharing Friends! I mean, how often do you use your crock-pot or your stepladder or your powerwasher? I once had sharing friends who let me use their swimming pool, which I kept clean in exchange. There’s $10,000 I didn’t have to spend! (They’ve subsequently turned their pool into a beach,  which I’m still happy to share.)

Splitting the bill evenly is not always the way to split it fairly. Frugal Friends always go with the “fair” not the “even.” If money is no object, or if y’all ate the same thing, hey, splitting equally is fine. But if you eat a $15 meal, why should you have to ante up $30 to split the bill equally? As the girl who never drinks, my share of the bill is always less than the others’ who have put away a couple of bottles of wine with dinner. My options: pony up and shut up; eat the most expensive thing on the menu; have dessert.

Having a fun night out doesn’t have to cost a fortune. Your Careless Chums may want to blow $100 on baseball tickets, but your Frugal Friends will be quite happy with a night of scrabble and a pot luck dinner. Yes, you’d have a great time at the baseball game. And your Careless Chums may even offer to spring for your ticket ‘cos they love you.  Then you feel you have to go, spending gobs for parking, food at the stadium, treating them to drinks after as a ‘thank you’ and paying a babysitter

Frugal Friends will be willing to point you in the direction of the best deal, ways to cut costs, and having fun for free. While Careless Chums will brag about their latest acquisitions, leaving you feeling pooooor, your Frugal Friends will demonstrate just how rich a life can be without constant consumption.

I’m not suggesting that you tell all your Careless Chums to go to hell and go get yourself a whole new set of friends, I’m just trying to point out how peer pressure can mess up even the best laid plans. If you’re committed to changing how you deal with your money, you’re gonna have some ‘splaining to do if you want those Careless Chums to understand your new headspace. 

I grew up listening to adages like, “Money doesn’t make you happy.” When I was married to my first husband and trying to figure out where I was going to get the money to go to work the following week, I figure all that stuff I heard was a load of b.s. Over time, I’ve worked hard, traded-in husbands, and discovered that money – more and more money – doesn’t make you happier. Yes, too little money can make you miserable, but once you have enough to meet your needs, more money doesn’t increase your sense of wellbeing.

Lots of people think if they could just get their hands on a couple of million bucks, everything would be GREAT! Not-so-much. Loads of people who have won lotteries have found themselves back in the financial toilet in no time flat.

So let’s turn the equation around for a minute. If we’re willing to accept that money doesn’t make you happy, is it possible that sadness makes you spend more?

Yup. A study by researchers from Harvard, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford and Pittsburgh universities found that when people are sad, they spend more money… way more money. The researchers concluded that when people are sad, this sadness could trigger extravagant tendencies. Nicknamed the Misery-is-not-miserly phenomenon, it’s clear that having access to credit when you’re bummed out can end up costing you big time.

Maybe the most disturbing part of the study was the fact that the sad people – who were made sad by watching a sad movie – spent more that 4 times what the not-sad people spent, they had not a clue that it was their sadness which prompted them to splurge. They were completely unaware of how their own emotions were feeding into their consumerism.

That’s us: bummed out and dumb about it, so we go Cheer-Me-Up Shopping. Argggg.

So what’s a body to do? It would seem that if you’re feeling sad you should stay out of the stores, leave your credit cards locked in your freezer, and carry the minimum amount of cash. Or you could do something nice for someone else, and that’ll make you feel better and won’t cost a cent. Offer to cook a meal for a harried neighbour. Water someone’s garden. Put a dollar in someone’s meter. Little things that take your focus off YOU and your misery and move your focus outward.

It would also seem an investment in getting happy might just pay dividends on the financial front. Happiness isn’t always about getting what we want. Nope. In my experience, happiness is about wanting what we have. So instead of making lists of all the things we want or wish we had – even silent lists in our heads – maybe we should be making lists of all the things we have that we want. An inventory. Then we can focus on what’s there instead of what’s missing the next time we see a tear-jerker movie, break up with friend, bang the car, yell at our kids, fail to get the promotion… whatever it is that’s triggering our sadness.

So, what are you going to do the next time you feel sad and are battling the urge to splurge? You better make a plan now, since one won’t come easily once you’re in the dumper. And if you don’t have a plan, you’re only going to be sadder when the credit card bill arrives!

The Muslims call it Zakah. The Jews call it Tzedakah. And the word “charity” comes from the French root “caritas” which means “Christian love”. Around the world, people give of their money, of their possessions and of their time to help those who are less fortunate.

Causes abound, from the preservation of land and species, to myriad health-related foundations, to the rights and freedom of men and women around the world. Most religions require the act of selfless sharing as part of an individual’s ethical obligation to help people who are less fortunate. Beyond traditional religions — beyond religion completely — people give to preserve their culture, their children’s future and the world’s resources.

Under Jewish and Muslim law, there are very specific requirements for sharing. While Christians have no specific law that demands an act of charity, teachings about charity abound in the New Testament, and tithing is common among many Christian groups.

Muslims calculate their own Zakah individually, paying one-fortieth of their capital (excluding their houses, cars and tools) on an annual basis. But giving isn’t restricted to Zakah, for a Muslim may also give as much as he or she wishes as Sadaqa-h, or voluntary charity. Tzedakah is one of Judaism’s must basic value concepts and every Jew is required to give Tzedakah, even the most needy. There are a variety of levels of giving ranging from giving all that the poor man needs to one-fifth of one’s salary. If he or she cannot give one-fifth, then he or she should give one-tenth. Christianity, too, has guidelines for giving: gifts should be proportional to one’s income, consistent, sacrificial and cheerful.

If you are not bound by religious law or committed to formal tithing, the decision of how much to give can be a difficult one. With disposable incomes falling, expenses rising, and uncertainty a way of life, one oft-expressed sentiment remains, “I’ll give once I’m sure I have enough.”

How much, then, is enough? When is the safety net big enough to allow us to share with those who need help? And how much is enough when it comes to sharing?

Perhaps the simplest answer is to give as much as you can, to share your good fortune with others willingly, and to offer to give up something that is simply a “nice to have” to provide someone else with a “must have”. The whole point of sharing, after all, is to recognize that the most basic needs of others must be met, and that as part of the family of man we each play a part in meeting those needs.

Giving recognizes that there is someone who is less fortunate than we are. It’s one part counting our blessings and one part social responsibility. To not share is the most selfish and self-centered act, for it states quite plainly that we believe we are the only ones deserving of our bounty.

If we begin our philanthropy early in life, the single amount that we give is not as important for we have put time on our side in terms of sharing our good luck. And if we focus our gifts, rather than reactively scattering them, our gifts will not only have more impact, they will be fore satisfying for us. Find a cause that you are passionate about, and make it as important to you as your own child. It is, after all, an investment in the future of your child’s world.

Think about ways in which you can leverage your gift. By combining small amounts with others you can offer a pooled gift that may make a big difference. By challenging others to support causes you consider important, you may involve people who would never have considered giving.

One of the most important gifts you can give is to teach your own children to share. Both my kids put five percent of their allowance toward sharing each week. They know that money is for those people who aren’t as lucky.

Not all of us can afford to give financial gifts. I work with fams who are deeply in debt and have to find another way to share. It’s not that hard. We all have other gifts to share: our skills, our time, our good will.

For those of us who can afford to give a financial gift, we must consider carefully how we arrived at our gift amount. If the gift causes no pause to think, we probably haven’t shared enough of what we have. As Winston Churchill said, “We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.”

I remember when I was growing up, everyone used to tell me, “You can’t have it all. You’ll have to choose.” I heard it again and again, from everyone. Everyone, that is, except my mother who told me, “You can have it all, you’re just going to have to work hard for it.” Thankfully, I believed my mom.

You know, I still hear that old phrase: you can’t have it all. I was told I’d have to choose between raising a family and having a career.  Tell that to my kids who, as toddlers, would come running into my home-office, bare-butt just before they jumped into the tub.

I was told “You have to decide whether you’re a child or a grown up, and behave appropriately”. Yeah, right? Fact is, I’m pretty button-down when it comes to the detail of my business and financial life. But you don’t get much more free-spirited than howling — arrrrooooooooooo — loudly for a husband lost in the aisles of the local supermarket.

So I have it all. I’ve got a happy home life, a lovely husband, two kids I’d die for, work that I love to do (even at 4:00 a.m. in the morning, which is when I often write) and I’m financially free.  My life is in balance.

Balance, of course, is the ability to deal with myriad priorities, giving each just as much attention as it deserves. Balance means not working so hard at accumulating assets that you fail to spend time watching the children play. Balance means weighing the need for future retirement savings with the need for providing your partner, your children, your friends with fun and exciting experiences in the present. It’s about taking care of today and tomorrow. And it’s about satisfying your soul while you challenge your intellect.

Now, it’s pretty hard to keep your sense of balance when reality bites — when divorce, widowhood, disability, or unemployment contrives to push you off kilter. “Balance?” you shriek, “How can I have any sense of balance when I’m just barely making it from day to day, paycheque to paycheque?”  Ah, yes. Well, that’s where the plan comes in.

Balance isn’t something that happens. It takes work. It requires that you create a blueprint for your life. And it requires that you take control of the components of your life that you can control, so when you stumble over one of life’s bumps in the road you can pick yourself up and move on. It means planning like a pessimist so you can live like an optimist.

By taking care of the financial parts of your life , you’ll be covered for any of life’s financial disasters. Whether you find yourself suddenly living on one income, having to care for your aging parents, or dealing with kids who have boomeranged home, you’ll be prepared, at least financially, to cope.

By setting goals, you’ll be laying the blueprint for how you want your life to look. You’ll be creating the balance with which you want to pursue your dreams and achieve your purpose.

When I had my children and I moved from being a career-focused glamour-puss to being a much more balanced, whole woman. My babies were the catalyst for reviewing my life and deciding what I wanted to expend my life’s energy to achieve. I decided on a little of this, and a little of that. Some career, some learning, time spent nurturing my soul and my babies. In the process, I proved my mom was right.

I learned I can have it all… I just can’t have it all at the same time. Maturity has brought the ability to prioritize, to give a little, to negotiate with myself and others so that I can do what’s most important at a particular point in time. When it looked like my Malcolm was going to have to be home-schooled because his Asperger’s Syndrome was too much for the school system to cope with, I quit all my jobs, packed up and moved to the country (to cut overheads) and got busy figuring out what I’d needed to know. Luckily, in the process, I found a school that was up to the job. 

I do consider myself to be a very lucky girl. But I also know that I’ve been willing to take advantage of opportunities — even to make opportunities — that would take me to where I wanted to be next. None of it has been accidental.

Think about what you want your life to look like five years from now. Who will you be near to? What will you be doing? And what steps do you have to take financially to get to where you want to be?

Decide that you’re not going to feel bad, overwhelmed, stupid, stressed, or anything else negative about your money anymore. Instead, you’re going to do something about it — no matter how small those steps — so you can achieve your own sense of financial peace.

Close your eyes, take a deep breath and repeat after me: “I am more than what my financial statistics say about me. I can have anything I want, if I prepared to work hard. Today I want to ….”

Go ahead, fill in the blank.