Happiness is different things for different people. A whole lot of happiness is about having your mind in the right state. And there’s been a whole industry built on this. Mindfulness, meditation, yoga – 5 minutes, 10 minutes, an hour.
Food – I need to think about what I put in my body. This means I need the right foods in the house. I need to know what the right foods are. I need to know where to get them. I then need to get them and I need to prepare them.
Exercise – I need to find something I’ll get out of bed in the morning for. I need the right shoes, clothes, accessories. I need to find the time to fit it around my other commitments.
Family – having healthy, happy and well educated children. This means finding the right activities, paying for them, and being the taxi driver that takes them to and from. Being able to spend time as a family, have the odd holiday and have fun.
Work – having a job that I love and that is flexible enough to allow me to achieve my goals both at work and outside work.
When I think about the hundreds of things that need to be done in any given week to achieve these things and look for the overarching stresses, it comes down to time and money.
It’s no wonder that my money slips in and slips out without me even noticing it. My budgeting story isn’t the most successful. We’ve gone through years and years of doing a semi budget each time we are paid. Everything important came out on that day (mortgage, rent, bills) and what was left was what we spent on groceries, medical bills, lifestyle expenses.
We tried Excel spreadsheets and hated them. We tried writing it in a book and lost the book. We got some things right and never met true disaster. We automated payments, never missed bills, never paid fees, have our savings separate and lots of other good things. But I still had money guilt. A feeling that I could be doing better.
Then I had the good fortune to be told about MoneyBrilliant. I love so many things about it, mostly because it gives me reinforcement in the areas that I’m doing well and highlights for me the things I needed to work on. First thing for me was groceries, so I set the Grocery Challenge. I set a budget in the desktop app which gives me direction. I use Safe Spending on my phone which gives me real time feedback. And the very best thing about it is that there are no Excel spreadsheets.
If you think you can do better with your money, chance are you can. Check out the MoneyBrilliant app today and see if you can achieve a place where money isn’t one of the things keeping you from being happy.