Links to Make You Think- Shift in Thinking Edition

Lately I’ve been noticing a lot of personal finance blogs focusing their attention more on the value of time rather than the value of a dollar bill.  Much of what I write about on this site attempts to make a connection between the need for a balance between the amount of time we spend earning money and the amount of time we spend enjoying our lives and the money we’ve earned.  Here are a couple of the better articles I’ve found about this subject recently.  I encourage you to reflect about your own personal life situation as you read these articles as the concepts discussed may encourage a profound shift in your own thinking.

J.D. at GetRichSlowly writes about Finding Balance Between Time and Money.  Unfortunately for many of us we don’t realize what is truly important until it is too late.  Don’t regret the things you should have done in your life.  We only have one life that at any moment can be taken away from us.  We may lose our own life, or even worse, the life of someone who is very dear to us.  Life isn’t always about chasing after the mighty dollar.  Life is about living.

Frugal Dad brings up some great points in his article about Living Off of the Grid.  Wouldn’t it be great if we could “unplug from our hectic life?” 

Jason writes, “We spend the majority of our lives working to pay for the stuff that keeps us from living a life with more freedom.” 

So true.  I write about this same concept in my article Prison Walls of Barbie Dolls.  We are accumulating more and more stuff which is, in essence, causing us to build our own prison as we are restricting our freedom, either through debt accumulation or simply the accumulation of Stuff.

Lately I’ve been giving consideration to the idea of finding ways of creating more freedom in my own life.  I will need to undergo some very life-altering changes in order to fulfill my dreams and ambitions, but despite the overwhelming fear of breaking out of my comfort zone and taking on new challenges, I know that the changes will bring me closer to my idea of an ideal life; one where I enjoy what I am doing and have more freedom to live.  That is what really matters.  If you have happiness in your life, the dollar bill will lose much of its appeal.