Money Wise Mom

Nothing is forever. This blog will end one day, as will I.

This week I received news that a former roller derby league mate died unexpectedly in an accident. She was about my age – old enough to have lived a life, but young enough to grieve a life cut too short.

Zoom out far enough in time and nothing in our lives remains. It’s a fact that I will be gone one day, as will my husband, and my children, and my grandchildren. Everything that I own will, eventually, be rehomed, discarded, and turn to dust. There is nothing I can do to make this not true.

Perhaps this reads a bit “dark”. But darkness helps define the light. Every moment of every day is a gift, because it’s so fleeting. Nothing lasts forever, so I choose to cherish what I have today while still always building a life that brings joy.

Humans struggle with the concepts of mortality, time, and change. Most days we exist in a fantasy bubble in which how life is today is how it will always be. We hyperfocus on problems that actually carry no significance in the weeks/months/years to follow. Even as we get older with the “wisdom” to look back on the previous chapters of life, we are still terrible at looking forward. But the truth is, we don’t know how many days we have left or what our futures hold.

So as I’m thinking about my mortality, I want you to be thinking about yours as well.

Money is a tool. Time is finite. Money plus Time is powerful and we should use them both wisely.

Here are some important concepts I would like you to consider:

• Spend your money with intention. Track it.
• Save and invest.
• Make a plan for your future self based on goals, like when you want to retire.
• Make choices that keep your money lifeline trending up (a.k.a. your net worth).
• Have a will and a power of attorney.

So yeah, this blog will end one day. I didn’t start this project to become a content creator who just pumps out post after post after post. I am writing with intention. I plan to share what I know, while I can, in hopes that it can help people that I care about. I want to do this because it gives me the warm and fuzzies inside. I hope that I will nudge people on a better path and improve the trajectory of their lives. And once I’ve shared what I know, I’ll be done