Ever felt like your life was chaotic or out of control? 
I know that if you’re a parent, you probably can relate immediately to that feeling of being “out of control.” Because nothing shows you just how little control you have than trying to raise tiny humans who will one day be adults. But does your life ever feel constantly out of your control? Like you just can’t seem to grab a handle on it?
Something I’ve seen over and over again in my work as a financial coach is how much the chaos of our lives affects our money. I’ve also seen how when we start gaining control over our lives, we start to gain real control over our money as well.
So how do we control the chaos of our lives and stop spinning all the plates?
1. It’s time to budget.
I’m not just talking about budgeting your money here. We’re talking about budgeting your time as well. This year, I gave up social media for Lent, and let’s just say I realized how much time that space was taking up in my life. It also made me realize that if I budget my money, then I should also be budgeting my time. After all, I can always make more money, but I can’t make more time than 24 hours in a day. I don’t control how many hours or days in a month exist. But I can control how I use my time. And so can you.
What do you spend your time doing? If you’re in a season of chaos, it probably feels like you’re running around like a chicken with its head cut off. But really think about it. What are you doing with your time? Because you see, in family life, it’s easy to slip into drifting and “auto-pilot.”
Running around as you manage appointments, doctor’s visits, work, sports, education, cleaning, meal prepping, home maintenance, shopping, taking care of children, paying bills…it’s overwhelming. You’re being pulled in a million directions. And this doesn’t even include dating your spouse, daily prayer time, exercise, and living into your own personal priorities.
That’s why you have to budget your time. If you don’t budget your time, it’s too easy for all these extra things – that, yes, are maybe good things – to steal your time. You must discern what is most important to you and your family.
2. What’s most important to you?
Now in order to budget your time well, you need to make time for what’s most important to you. Just like we have to prioritize in our finances what’s most important to us, we must prioritize our time. I mean, at the end of your life, do you want to remember your time at this age as one where you spend shuffling kids back and forth from this activity to the next in a never-ending pattern of drive-thru food eaten on the run? Or do you want to remember the one night a week where you prioritized having a sit-down family meal?
So let’s do something a little weird. I want you to picture yourself on your deathbed. (I said it would be weird…) Now I want you to go through and remember your life. I want you to remember your life right up to this moment that you’re reading these words. Now ask yourself:
What’s currently going right in my life?
What currently needs to change in my life?
What is causing stress in my life? (be super specific here. Don’t say, “my husband is stressing me out”. Instead, get deep – what about your relationship with your husband is stressing you out?)
Do I like the direction my life is headed in?
Okay so now back to you on your deathbed. Ask yourself what you hope your life would look like as you get ready to move on from this world? What are you most proud of? What types of memories are the most meaningful? What kind of legacy have you left behind?
Now use all these thoughts and ask yourself this:
What do I need to change to get me closer to that end-of-life vision?
3. The Next Five Years
If you’ve read my book, Getting Good with Money, you know all about this exercise and the power it holds! If you want to really get clear on what’s important to you and your family, sit down and go through this exercise. It’s less morbid than the previous one, but I believe it’s super effective after going through the previous exercise.
Write down today’s date but five years in the future. So since I’m writing this in the year 2023, I’d change the year to 2028. Then write down how old you’ll be on this day five years in the future. Then write how old your spouse and children will be (if you don’t have either of those, pick others that are close to you, like parents and siblings). Then imagine your typical day – what does it look like? Chances are, if right now you have a 2-year-old and a newborn, you’re not going to be caught in the trenches of parenthood five years from now. Those kids are going to be 7 and 5 years old. So what does a typical day look like for you five years in the future?
4. Putting It All Together
Okay, so we’ve gone through a lot! Let’s put it all together! From doing these exercises, what have you determined to be the most important to you? Once you know what’s most important to you, ask yourself how you can prioritize those things. For example, let’s say that you want to prioritize spending time with your spouse. If you constantly have events and activities that cause everyone in the household to run around and never be home for long, you may need to make some tough decisions.
Would it make sense to have the kids only do one extracurricular every season to help free up some space in the calendar? Would it make sense to go ahead and schedule that every second Friday, you and your spouse will have a date night? Struggling to make regular church attendance a part of your weekly routine? Make it a priority! Schedule the times your church as worship times and say no to any activities or events that will interfere with that time.
The point here is to examine your current life and decide where to cut. What things need to be removed? Just like we do with our financial budgets. We look where we need to cut, and we cut with abandon. We need to do the same thing with our time. Where can you cut? What needs to go? Don’t make excuses – keep that vision of five years in the future you in front of you. You’re making these cuts – as painful as they may be – for that person and that family. They’re worth it.
5. Ending the Chaos Starts with You.
You don’t have to keep spinning all the plates. Feeling out of control all the time doesn’t have to be the norm. Yes, there will be times and things that are not in your control. That’s a fact of life. However, there are things you can control, and one of those things is what you say “yes” to. Once you’ve decided your priorities, it’s up to you to stick to them. You will have to develop boundaries around those priorities and work to keep them. It won’t be easy. It’s very easy to drift in family life and stop paying attention to the nuances of daily life. However, if you want to stop living in chaos, you have to decide to change things.
You can’t take proper care of yourself if you don’t prioritize it! Want to take a yearly family beach vacation that doesn’t wreck you financially? Well, guess what? You have to plan for it! Set up a Sinking Fund and start saving for it. If you don’t, then you’ll find yourself either not going on that family beach trip, or you’ll find yourself sinking even further into debt just to pay for the trip. Neither option lives into your goal of spending quality time with your family.
Again, if you want to rein in control over your life and stop the chaotic tailspin, you have to make the changes necessary.
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