Life with Margin

For the past three weeks, Pastor Dave has been preaching a series called “Living with Margin.”  I’ve found that there is a definite need for these principles in my life.  Margin refers to the space between my load and my limits, between what’s on my plate and what I can handle.  When I hear this concept, my mind immediately goes to the financial.  Because my wife and I have been attacking our debt for about 15 months now, finances are often at the front of my mind.  And attacking the debt is one step in the path to building financial margin. 

When we started this debt-free journey, we were in a place where we felt like we didn’t have enough money.  At the end of the month, there just wasn’t any money left.  We fell into the trap of thinking a larger income was the solution.  Once we started Dave Ramsey’s Baby Steps, though, and did our first budget, we realized that our income wasn’t the problem.  We were spending our money like crazy, and large portions of it were being spent on things that have no future value (like eating out).  We were living with no financial margin because we were spending every penny that we brought in.

Let me tell you guys, it was stressful.  If anyone else has been or is there, you will know what I am talking about.  It eats at your mind causing unbelievable amounts of stress.  I really felt the stress of it because I feel like it my duty to provide for my family, and I didn’t feel like I was doing a great job of that.  That stress bleeds over into relationships.  Interactions with other people become tense and short.  I found myself getting irritated very easily with my wife and my kids.  As you can imagine, that’s not great for those relationships. 

We still feel the stress of finances because we’re not out of debt yet.  Every penny of our money is going to necessities or throwing large chunks of money to get out of debt.  However, it feels much better than it did before we started.  Now, we are doing something about it, and we can see the light at the end of the tunnel.  We are almost there! 

The financial portion of our lives is only one part, though.  It’s probably the easiest one to visualize and apply the lessons of living with margin, but it is only one part.  When I think of my life, I am also very bad with my time.  I want to fill up all my time doing stuff, especially while we are getting out of debt.  But it is exhausting.  Just like living with no margin financially stresses my life and my relationships, living with no time margin does the same.  I don’t take time for my wife and my kids.  I feel like there are thousands of things that need done, and none of them are being accomplished. 

Just as budgeting and working on a plan helped in my financial world, it can help with my time as well.  It may sound a bit weird when I say I am budgeting my time but hear me out.  A budget for your money is really just a plan.  It is you understanding how much money you are going to bring in and what that money is going to be spent on.  The same principle can be applied to time.  There is a fixed amount of time per day, and a good portion of it must go to resting.  That leaves a finite amount of awake time that you can plan out.  I started this out by writing a very general, generic version of a “typical” day for me.  Since I work from home, I found this to be especially important.  It is very easy to get distracted from work by the things going on or that need done around the house.  So, I planned out my day.  It is amazing how much more efficient my days became. 

Like our money situation, I was wasting a lot of time on unproductive tasks.  Once I planned my day out, I found I had time to devote to work with plenty left over for household tasks and time with the family.  Step 5 in Pastor Dave’s “First Steps to Living with Margin” is to regularly prune in my life. 

Prune (v): trim (a tree, shrub, or bush) by cutting away dead or overgrown branches or stems, especially to increase fruitfulness and growth.

My wife and I had done this (mostly) with our financial life.  I am starting to do this with my time, as well.  I must regularly ask myself the question: “Does this activity/expense further my goals?”  If it doesn’t, I probably don’t need to spend my time or money on that.  It’s something that I know will take a lot of practice and discipline.  I am still struggling with it, but I can see and have already felt how much of difference it can make in my life.