Several months ago I quit my day job to focus solely on my business (well, and on getting our house out of the "Complete Chaos Verging On Candidate for Clean House" stage). We knew it would be an adjustment, especially in the financial realm, and we weren't wrong.
You see, most of my income was going to extras such as dining out or things we didn't really NEED, and we knew that stuff would have to be severely cut back. The funny thing is, I don't think either of us realized just how dependent we had gotten on those luxuries. Dependent is the right word, too, because they became a part of our every day routine. Neither of us felt like cooking? Not a problem, we would just order food! Bored? Just go buy new craft supplies or ebooks or DVDs, and the problem is solved!
At first the change was easy to deal with because it was new and different. We could be proud of ourselves for being virtuous and not spending money. As time has gone on old habits fight to reassert themselves and we give in more and more. But this is a trend that needs to be stopped and stopped now, because while I have my own business, I do not make a salary (yet!) from it, thus we are living solely on the income brought home by The Husbeast and those incidental purchases impact our finances proportionately a lot more than they did when we had disposable income at hand.
Please do NOT get me wrong. This is a change that I will never regret and have happily made as I really want to find out if my business can stand on its own two feet or not. If it is going to succeed, it will do so because it has my undivided attention. If it is going to fail, then I want it to fail for valid reasons (the market won't support it, deficiencies in my marketing abilities, fate, karma, whatever) rather than just because I half-assed it to death.
This blog entry is just serving as a reminder to myself that old habits die hard, new habits take time to build, and that unless I really WANT to return to Cube Farm Life, I need to get better and deciding just what is a necessity and what isn't.
But isn't that the way of life for everyone? We all need to know what our necessities are and what our indulgences are, and when it is appropriate to allow for the latter. It's just that I will be fifty years old in less than a month, and I find that I'm still really not that good at distinguishing the two.
Gives me a goal to work toward, doesn't it?
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