Great Expectations
For the last several weeks we have been shopping and baking and cooking and talking about Christmas. We built up so much anticipation for the day. And then, in a matter of hours, it was over.
Our day was a wonderful couple of hours, but it came and went so quickly. I almost felt a little disappointed, like perhaps there should have been more. Not more gifts or stuff, but more… something. Maybe just something more to match the month of anticipation I created. I feel like this happens for a lot of holidays – we build them up to be so much, and they don’t always meet the expectation of the buildup. It’s not always a bad thing, but perhaps an opportunity for us to reframe our expectations.
Because I can’t help myself in tying this idea to money…
What happens when we finance something that we have built up and then it doesn’t meet our expectations? Take for example a car, or home ownership, or maybe even an education. What happens when we finance that thing, and then, it doesn’t meet our expectation, but it also doesn’t go away because we still have to pay for it?
Have you ever found yourself in this situation? In the past, I’ve certainly been here. I financed law school, only to later realize I didn’t enjoy being a lawyer. We financed a car, only to realize we didn’t love the car. In both these situations, we had to keep paying for the decisions after learning of our changed minds.
Because of this, I created the following framework. Whenever we buy anything, we ask these questions:
1. Does it align with my/our values?
2. Does it align with my/our goals?
3. Is it within my/our budget?
If I/we can’t say yes to those questions, then I/we don’t buy the thing. Sometimes, this means that we have to say “no” to things we otherwise want or that we think might be a good opportunity. We’ve found over the years of doing this work that if we can say “yes” to all three of these questions when making a purchase, we are much less often disappointed and our expectations are more frequently met.
Let me know if you follow any similar framework or think this might help you.