My Money or My Life

Week 1 was disbelief.

Week 2 was anger—why didn’t we do more sooner? Who can I be mad at? Why, just as things were going so well did we have to say goodbye (for now) to a business we were trying to launch, to our beloved salsa club that brought hundreds of people together every Friday night, and the true gut punch—a delayed book launch of But First Save10, a book three years in the making that was set to launch May 4? Why am I having to work from home trying to still run Aptus, my financial planning company, to calm people’s nerves and keep them from doing something terrible with their retirement accounts, all while needing to nurture and homeschool kids? Its too much.

Week 3, this week, is acceptance. Thankfully, it’s not the same as being beat down into submission, but it is a new reality.

Last night over dinner at the table with our three children ages 7 - 3, unrushed, unhurried because of bed time (who cares?), my husband looked up and said, “this is life.” It was a simple declarative sentence that spoke volumes.

From those words, the most beautiful conversation unfolded. Amidst the uncertainty and angst, we described our new reality: we had eaten breakfast, lunch and dinner as a family; I listened to my son read to me without checking my phone or ticking off to do lists at the same time; I cut out butterflies with my daughter; I took endless walks that had no cutoff or deadline to get back to.

Soccer, ballet, PTA meetings, ALL meetings were cancelled. Ugh. We hadn’t heard the alarm clock for two weeks. There was no reason to wake up and hit the ground the running.

Wait—ugh? What?

As a financial planner and a member and contributor to our harried society’s existence, I and clients would theorize what a simpler life would look like. We would try to simulate a process of values—what do we love the most in life and how can we put money toward it? But how could we cut through the noise of other values that seemed so important—the car we drove, the house that we got to give visitors tours of, or the club’s membership that brought status?

I happen to be married to someone who is a naturalized citizen. He grew up a very different way. Going to school, playing pick-up soccer games after school until it was dark. Then returning home for family dinner, which was served at a table. This was life for him and all his cousins and friends in Medellin, Colombia. He has constantly pushed back against American drive to be constantly busy, constantly achieving. Whenever I would suggest we add tennis or gymnastics or piano lessons, he would fiercely defend a simpler life. But even with the boxing gloves on, it seemed that most nights there was something planned, whether it was soccer or ballet or some meeting or work event for my husband or me. Every weekend felt more scheduled than the work week with birthday parties and soccer games and play dates and dinner dates and, yes, work.

Now here we are, all of that wiped away, without notice, in an instant. My life became a chiaroscuro painting. The light and dark contrast became instantaneously obvious and unrelenting, like the difference between hypothermia and being warm.

No schedule. This was warmth. This was the blanket Mother Nature had thrown on us. But because Mother Nature is indifferent to us, it had come in the form of Covid-19.

We looked around at the kids and realized that this was it. This was the point. This was our joy and our purpose.

I have spent the last two weeks figuring out federal stimulus, unemployment, student loan and credit card decisions that would impact my clients. I have figured out what we need to do to cut costs so that we can keep our precious salsa club alive without income for at least a year. We are so thankful for an emergency fund. I always told my clients when they would ask, “what’s an emergency?” “You will know when it happens.” It happened and everyone knows it.

But now I realize I am overlooking the biggest, most profound decision of all, the decision asked by Vicki Robin in her iconic book that used to be a statement but now seems more like a question begging all of us:

“Your money or your life?”

Time is money. Work is time. Those harried trips to practices and meetings and posting on social media – we pay for it all with our time. If this is so, then this is our moment to figure out just what our time is worth. And how we want to spend it. Because instead of assuming that we know what time might feel like, we have it. We can taste it. We can feel it. By measuring what it is worth now, we will know just how expensive it is when it is time to spend it again.

Maybe when this is all over we will spend it differently.

In these hours since my husband made that statement at dinner, my mind has raced with possibilities of time.

In the previous reality, when I wanted to simplify, I felt the weight of peer pressure of other parents with kids in other activities. I felt the pressure to say yes to so many events and meetings when I wanted to say no—when I wanted to spend time with my family at dinner. Sometimes when I was really pressured but didn’t want to do an after hours’ meeting, I felt the need to give an excuse of work or some other obligation—a clear reflection of where our society had helped me rank my dinner time with family.

Those are gone. Our kids are still here. The world didn’t end for them. How crazy. Going forward, long past the quarantine, the answer is no. Hard stop. Want to know why?

I AM HAVING DINNER WITH MY FAMILY THAT NIGHT.         

DONE.

The other day, a particularly hard day, a friend drove up in her car with her two daughters in tow. They surprised us with a load of toys and puzzles and games for my kids on the porch. We spoke at a distance, and as they turned to walk away I suddenly broke down crying. Worried that it would scare her daughters I rushed into the house then sent a text. “What I would give at this very moment to be sitting at your kitchen island sipping a glass of wine while the kids played downstairs.”

That longing was so hard. But now I realize that that longing was there because all the noise in my life is gone. I only occasionally could join her at the kitchen island. I remember the time I drove past her house after my daughter got out of ballet, laser focused on getting dinner on the table in time to get the kids to bed on time. She saw me drive by and waved us to pause and come by and chat. But I couldn’t. I had a schedule to keep.

Without the noise, that cacophony of modern activity, which sounds a lot like static, those pangs of longing are treasures…those pangs try to break through all that static and tell what not to miss. When am I ever going to have a time in my life to find what I really want? When am I going to get the opportunity to sit for days in yoga pants and have no peer pressure for how I dress, how many meetings I can fit in, how productive I can be, etc?

Instead, in these quiet days my heart gets to tell me what I really want in life. Those pangs of longing are hard, but I will write them down as they come, a list of all the things I miss, from dinner club to kitchen island last minute gatherings to our family eating together around a table. I have tried to get myself to miss taking vacations. I have tried to get myself to miss my book launch. Those were the things I would have put on the list before. But nuthin.’ It ain’t there.

My money or my life. My money or time.

I will never get this opportunity again, to be in a quiet place, (with three kids under 7?) to know my heart’s true desire. Whatever is in store for us over the next several months, the most profound decisions may rise to the surface. We may find the pearls tucked inside our quarantined shells.

Maybe I will find it was never about the money, really. It was always all about the time. And as I am not yet 40, I get to learn a lesson probably not scheduled to be learned until much later in life, when it is usually, cruelly, a little too late.