What are you willing to sacrifice?

Its 10:00 am. The loud hum of the vacuum cleaner quickly lifts my head off of my pillow, which unfortunately is only mildly warm right now. I struggle through the typical waking questions, like “where am I?” and “what the hell is that noise?”, and as I piece together the complex events of what is going on, I come to the realization that my wife is not even home. It also dawns on me that despite the fact that it is past 10 a.m. I have only been asleep for just over 2 hours. Is this some kind of joke? Am I really awake? And what the heck is that noise?

We all have goals and dreams that we would like to accomplish. I, like many people, have goals in life that require freedom of time and money. So, naturally my main goal is to become financially independent. To do this requires sacrifices along the way, one of which is living with other people.

The story at the beginning illustrates what literally happened to me this morning. I currently work for the government as a water/wastewater operator.With this job comes the lovely bonus of working shift work. 12 hour days are great for a compressed work- week, however, not so nice when I work 6:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. as was the case yesterday. After the commute I finally stumbled into bed just after 8:00 a.m. To my surprise I awoke at 10 a.m. to find that my downstairs tenants decided that Monday morning would be a great time to clean their entire apartment. I was not impressed to say the least.

After a half an hour of listening to furniture moving, cupboards slamming and the sound of the vacuum turning on and off what felt like 100 times, I realized any efforts to fall back asleep were in vein. Once my initial feelings of anger and frustration wore off, I decided to do something different. Something I should have done from the beginning. I decided to said “thank you”.

Now, I didn’t go downstairs and physically say thank you to the tenants. Instead I said thank you to the universe. Why? Well these people are paying my mortgage, literally. Because my wife and I own a duplex our mortgage is literally covered by the rent from the downstairs apartment. This is the way I looked at the situation:

1)      Sure, being woken up sucks but it is better than getting a nice sleep because its vacant downstairs.

2)      The tenants care about their place. How many renters do you know that would take apart their entire apartment and clean it on almost a weekly basis?

3)      This is the price I am willing to pay to get ahead financially.

How would you react if this situation happened to you? Would you be grateful? Or would you curse the fact that you are living with these people? I believe it all comes down to what are you willing to do to achieve your financial goals? Sacrifices are going to have to be made. It could be time, money, energy or even the odd lost sleep. Remember, the bigger the financial goal, the bigger the sacrifice that is needed to achieve it. Nothing in this world comes for free and the attainment of your goals is certainly not exempt from this.

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Tagged with: Financial planning advice • Money management advice • Money management skills • Personal finance debt • Personal money management

Filed under: Personal Finance

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