Now, let me preface this thought by telling all those who are good at saving that they should probably just stop reading this now. You’re good. No need to change or reframe anything.

But for people who have always struggled to save anything…. guess what?

Saving isn’t a real thing. It’s all spending! All money is meant to be spent… the real question is WHEN do you want to spend it.

Is this money meant to be spent this month?
Is it for something next month?
Do you want to spend it at Christmas?
Do you want to spend it on a new car in a couple of years?
Is it for spending when you’re 80 years old and you no longer want to take bullshit gigs to make rent?
Or is it for your kids to spend long after you’re gone?

We need to stop treating saving like a super power. We need to stop letting it be a virtuous act that those who are good with their money have, and we don’t have.

It’s not a different thing. It’s just a different way of looking at the same thing.

The habit to practice (no matter how much money you make) is to stretch out your spending over a longer timeline. Introduce the thought that some of your money is for spending later down the road.

Don’t ask yourself: is this money for spending or saving?
Instead ask yourself: when do I want to spend this money?

And see if that starts shifting what seems possible.

My wife and I bought an old house (at least it’s old for Canada).

Before we moved we thought a lot about how nice it would be to have ownership over a space. Finally we would be able to make choices on painting and knocking down walls.

And that’s true.

But more than that I think about the history of this place. That we are just a part of its history, and if we do a good job… we’ll send it off towards a bright future with other families.

This is our house. But it’s also a house that belonged to many people before us. I would love it to belong to many people after us.

It’s a shift between seeing something individually and seeing something collectively, and I think it’s an important one. It’s a thought that I’d like to take into all other areas of ‘ownership’.

What happens when we expand our thinking around our assets and incomes past ownership and into stewardship? How does that affect that way we look at our portfolios and our tax returns?

I don’t know, but it’s something that I’ll be thinking of a lot in the coming months.

As things begin to open up, there is an ever growing conversation about what is ‘essential’ and what is not. It’s something those of us connected to the arts sphere have been feeling acutely.

Although there is a lot that people disagree on these days, a general consensus (outside the arts world) seems to be that the easiest thing to dub non-essential is art.

It’s a hard thing to hear, when the thing at the core of your life, the thing that has been truly essential to basic functioning is the first thing the world seems to throw out.

And so we argue. We yell about the importance of art in people’s lives. We tell them that they would miss us if we were gone. We insist that they’re wrong, whether they know it or not.

On a micro level, it’s a fight that I see happen quite a lot. As someone that gets to be part of people’s spending conversations, the argument over what is ‘essential’ is one that dominates, and the thing that I’ve learned is that there are no hard and fast rules.

For some people, spending on clothing is essential. There are lots of reasons this can be true, none of which I feel the need to justify to anyone. It is essential in their lives.

For others, it is the last thing they spend money on. They are happy in the same old shorts every day. It is non-essential. I have to fight for them to acknowledge that one day they will have to replace those shorts, and maybe they should put a few dollars aside for it.

This comes up in every category: food, travel, business, subscriptions.

Something that is non-essential to us seems like a frivolous thing to even think of buying.

…turns out …people are different.

So, to the arts world I say…to some people, art is not essential. I’m sorry, but it’s true. It’s just not a big part of their lives, and they don’t really miss it when it’s gone. Maybe they’re not really thinking it through, or maybe it’s just not a thing for them.

To the rest of you I say…please be gentle on the arts world right now.

For many of us we are nowhere near to getting back to work. The side jobs that we held to diversify income and provide stability in down times, they’ve also dissolved. We are not only dealing with an anvil blow to our industry, but the questions of identity that come with it.

I know we’re not the only ones, but many of us (particularly those in live theatre) are just starting to process what the next 2 years of our lives may be.

I know you need to make decisions about what’s essential and what is not.

But understand that art has been essential to us. It has been essential to our identities and to our work. It has been essential to our families and our homes. it has been essential to our friends and our communities.

To us, it is not debatable. We have lived its essential-ness, and it has changed…and we’re struggling.

I had a lot of resistance to cutting expenses when I first sat down to look at my financial picture at the start of the pandemic.

There was a lot of:

“I couldn’t possibly cut that!”

and

“I need this to run my business.”

In that first session I found it helpful to get up and go for a long walk. When I came back, it was a bit easier.

Now, I’m finding another level to that ease. Looking at what I spend, it’s easier to imagine lowering costs that were ‘uncuttable’ in the beginning.

For me, the failure (if you can call it that) was that of imagination. Now that I have some more emotional capacity, I can more easily imagine what some alternatives to certain business subscriptions might be. Or how I can cut my grocery budget back a bit more. Plus, I’ve realized I never need to cut my hair again (LIFE HACK!).

Maybe that will be true for you too. And if it’s not… walks help.

Sometimes I get bummed out when I think about ‘goal planning’. It just feels like another thing I should really be doing. Another thing that I can use to feel like I’m failing.

But… I also really believe in it. I make all my clients do it. I think it’s the heart of making a space that matters in your money. It just needs some more depth to it.

Here’s how I think about goal setting and financial planning….

In my work, financial coaching is about making 3 dimensional goals, and financial planning is about adding time to that equation and seeing how they stretch out over the years.