The money bucket

Lately it seems like the mound of bills has been piling higher than normal. Even the normal level is too high. It tends to make life very stressful.

But I find myself at a different place about the whole money bucket with its gaping hole in the bottom draining out every penny I make - I find myself a lot less worried. For those of you who know me, that is wholly new ground. I tend to fret and stress and worry, somehow keeping afloat the illusion that I can control it if I care enough.

But things are different now. I don't know what made the difference. Maybe a simple trust that I can only do what I can do and pay the bills when they come. Maybe I stopped caring. Who knows.

Abraham Maslow came up with his famous psychological model of the "Hierarchy of Needs" where physical needs occupy the bottom of a pyramid and things like "belonging" and "self actualization" stand perched on the pointed top. His theory was that you can't move up to the higher needs until the lower ones are met. But I am finding that there might be a substitute to the needs getting met - namely a surrender to the inevitable and a choice to focus on the needs higher up the pyramid. Sometimes it is the only choice. When you can't do much about paying the bills, you do what you can, even if Maslow wouldn't agree.

My hope is to someday wake up in complete financial freedom - not that we have all kinds of money, but that I am free from the pull and push of money all together. On that day I really hope to kick the bucket - not literally, but to put money back where it belongs - at the bottom.