Habits – Sassenach Saving

First up I need to declare a bit of a vested interest. I absolutely love goals. I love everything about them. The thinking about what you want to change, deciding to make a fresh start, working towards your goals and then that wonderful buzz that you get when you achieve them. Goals are kind of my thing. I’m not quite sure how people get out of bed in the morning without knowing that they have goals they’re working towards. One of my favourite books is “Goals! How To Get Everything You Want – Faster Than You Ever Though Possible” by Brian Tracy. I’ve lost count of the number of times that I’ve read that book. It inspires me every time I even think about reading it again.

I used to work in sales and I loved having targets. If I didn’t know what I was supposed to achieve then I didn’t feel like I had a reason to go to work. Working in financial services things changed a bit and you were no longer allowed to have targets. Rightly so you should be providing what’s right for the customer. The thing is though that if sales is done right the customer gets what’s right for them and you hit your quota. If I wasn’t given a target then I would just set one for myself.

As well as targets at work I’ve always set myself goals to work on in my private life. I’m constantly working on my weight, exercise, sleep, studying languages, you name it really. I’m good at achieving goals if I really set my mind to it. My problem has never really been around not being able to hit goals, but rather in deciding what I wanted to work towards. Once I had something in mind then I would do everything in my power to achieve that goal.

There’s been a number of times in my life where I’ve had some pretty audacious goals. When I was in my early twenties I decided that I wanted to go and live and work in Spain. I had just graduated, had a load of debt, no idea how to earn a living over there and I didn’t speak a word of Spanish. Within two years I’d paid all my debts off, had been to night classes to learn enough Spanish to get by and I had been on a two week course to learn how to teach English as a foreign language. Next thing I knew I was over in Spain living my dream.

Another goal that I set myself was around the house that I lived in. After getting divorced I found myself having to start again financially with a two and three year old in tow. The family home got sold and I had to downsize to what I could afford on part time wages with child care thrown into the mix. I made a lovely home for the three of us, and we lived in that house for eleven years. I always knew I wanted something better though. I overpaid my mortgage, scrimped and saved and invested money that was to be allocated for the next home. Four years ago I managed to move us to a much bigger house, with plenty of room for the kids to come back to stay after they’ve flown the nest. It also gives me the option to have my folks come to live with me if needs be in the future. This was a really important goal for me, but not one that could be achieved quickly or easily. I learnt the value of patience whilst working towards this goal.

Whilst researching financial planning I discovered the FIRE movement which then gave me my biggest goal ever to shoot for. On the face of it I wasn’t the ideal candidate for FIRE. I was in my late forties by the time I discovered it. I was in a position where I honestly thought I could never retire. All my planning had been around surviving month to month and trying to improve our living situation. Every time I thought about retirement and pensions I would feel incredibly stressed and that there was nothing I could do about my situation. In just a few years I’ve gone from that point to knowing that I can definitely retire at sixty, probably on more disposable income than I’ve ever had before, and with it looking pretty likely that I’ll be able to afford to go part time in four years time when I hit 55. That’s quite a turnaround.

The way I’ve been able to work my way towards FIRE is with goal setting. I’ve looked at how much I need to have invested to be able to stop working. As time has gone on I’ve adjusted these goals, and decided that I wanted to have a bit more money in retirement to be able to travel when I want to. My goals have changed as a result and I’m definitely on track to achieve everything that I want to. No doubt there will be plenty more adjustments to make over the next nine years, but staying flexible in the face of new information is one of the things I love about goal setting.

As I’m such a big fan of goal setting I’m not sure why I’d need any other way to work towards change. Then I read James Clear’s book “Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way To Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones”. That was a bit of a game changer for me. I am all about habits and routines, probably more than is good for me, but this showed me the benefits of the way that I have naturally organised my life. I already have so many habits that have developed naturally over time, lots of them good, but plenty of them not quite so beneficial.

I tried to think about all of the habits that I have. I’m sure I have missed a lot, but some of them include

Weighing myself every day
Doing physio exercises for my neck in the shower daily
Making my bed every morning
Having the same porridge with raisins and chia seeds breakfast
Strength exercises to help with my running
Meditating
Having a fruit and yoghurt morning snack
Drying down the shower to stop mould developing
Studying Spanish on Duolingo (900 days and counting)
Running
Eating a bowl of branflakes after work
Taking part in parkrun every Saturday that I’m not working
Speaking to my folks every Sunday

Quite frankly the list could go on and on. I am clearly a creature of habit. If I’m brutally honest I’ve always thought that this is a bad thing about myself. I’m stuck in my ways, I’m not good with change and I don’t like to deviate from my norm. After reading James Clear though I’ve started to view things a little bit differently. I’ve realised that a lot of the habits I have in place are really good ones. As I do the same things at the same time every day I don’t have to think about them. I’ve been doing my physio exercises for my neck for about fifteen years since I had a trapped nerve. I don’t give it any thought. I’m in the shower and I do my exercises. I’m pretty sure if I had to make myself do those exercises it wouldn’t happen, but as it is no will power whatsoever is requited. Similarly if it’s 9.30 on a Saturday (9am in England) and I’m not at work I’ll be in a park somewhere lining up to run 5k. No needing to make myself go out for a run. It’s a non negotiable in my life. Saturdays are parkrun days.

I’ve realised that a lot of the things I do in my life are because of how I view myself. I don’t run for exercise or because it’s good for me, I run because I’m a runner (and I like to eat). I realised recently that I’d stopped viewing myself as a healthy person, and as a result my eating habits had got pretty bad. I’d put on weight and I was generally eating a pretty poor diet. I had a word with myself, remembered that I’m health conscious and started to buy more healthy tasty food. As a result I’ve dropped half a stone without really trying. My new mantra is that I’m eating for health not for weight. It’s all about making consistently healthy lifestyle choices. And a lot of that is all about automating my choices. Not having chocolate in the house, but instead plenty of fruit and veg.

Photo by Polina Tankilevitch on Pexels.com

I think for me probably a combination of goals and habits works quite well. I really enjoy the whole thing of setting goals and seeing myself making progress towards them. In all honesty though every time I achieve a goal it’s because I’ve implemented good habits. My most recent habit I’ve introduced is meditation. I’ve always thought it wasn’t really active enough for me and that it wouldn’t suit me. After my recent mental health struggles though I was willing to give anything a go. Of course I set myself a goal around this of completing all the Headspace beginner courses. I’m well on track to achieve that, but I think that’s probably because I’ve instigated a habit of meditating every morning after breakfast and before I start work. So for me I think I probably need the dopamine hit of ticking things off my To Do list whilst working towards my goals, but it’s the habits that I implement that are going to get me to where I want to be.

I’ve made a start writing this on my day off. I’m working the weekend, so I have a mid week day off. It’s useful, as I usually book in all my appointments that can’t be done at the weekend. Not all that exciting maybe, but definitely necessary. I’m not quite sure how I used to organise my life before I had every second Thursday off. Mind you, in my pre-kids life there probably wasn’t quite so much organising needed.

So my question is, where does all the time go? I only work seven hours a day. Add in a lunch break, which I very efficiently make use of by catching up on sleep in my car, but I’m still finished for the day by 4.00. I only live a fifteen minute drive away(let’s not get in to the fact that I almost certainly should be running or cycling to work rather than wasting money on petrol). I get home, catch up with the kids and make tea. One night a week I take one boy to his chess club and the other boy and I hit Aldi to get the food shopping done. I have running club two nights a week and see the boyfriend two nights. At the weekend there’s Park Run and a long run on a Sunday morning. I also go swimming on a Sunday night just to round the weekend off nicely.

Now these are all things that I enjoy doing. Well, maybe not quite so much the Aldi shopping, but you know a girl has to eat. I’m really trying to focus on my running just now, so I’m definitely not prepared to give any of that up. As I’ve only been seeing the boyfriend for four months it would seem a bit churlish to start curtailing date night. Time with the kids is really important to me, and as they’re both teenagers I feel like you just have to catch them at the right moment when they want to chat. It’s not something you can really schedule in advance. I feel like I’m constantly chasing my tail and getting nowhere fast.

Prioritising is clearly the key, but actually doing something about that is another matter. I’ve started using the calendar on my phone to keep track of how I’m using my time and scheduling in the time to do things that are important to me. I’m finding that I’m frequently moving tasks that I don’t want to do to the following week. The fact that they’re not getting done is making me think they’re probably not a huge priority for me just now. Some of them are things that I know are important (like backing up photos), but that don’t necessarily need to be done this very second. The stupid thing is that when I do get around to doing these jobs they invariably don’t take that long, and I feel an immense sense of relief that they’re no longer on my To Do list.

I’ve got a box of flat pack furniture in the hall just now which is mocking me. I meant to put it in my phone to do today, but I must have forgotten. I can’t tell you how happy I felt this morning when I realised it wasn’t on my list. The games we play with ourselves.

I’m trying to build some efficiency habits in to my life. I think the more things that I can do on automatic pilot without needing my brain involved in the decision making process, the easier life will be. I’m starting small. So with two teenage boys in the house the amount of food preparation and clearing up is immense. I try to delegate some of this work. Try being the operative word. They can both cook, and are happy enough to cook or bake snacks for themselves. The bulk of the evening meal preparation falls on me though. The numbers of plates, cups, glasses and pans that we get through in a day is quite astounding. So the dishwasher needs to go on every day. Whether that actually happened or not used to be a bit hit and miss. Now it’s a rule that I need to put the dishwasher on before I go to bed. It’s the kids’ job to empty it, and I fill it and stick it on before I go upstairs at night. I know I have to do it, so there’s no internal argument about how I’m too tired and will do it tomorrow.

I make a salad up every night for my lunch at work the next day. It used to be that I would be on the couch thinking about going to bed and would remember that I still had to go and make my lunch up. Now I make it whilst I’m making the tea. There’s always a bit of waiting around whilst you’re cooking, so that’s my salad making time. It sounds like such a small thing, but honestly the difference it has made is incredible. I need to think of other small changes like this that will make my life easier and keep my brain freed up for more interesting decision making processes.

As far as my finances are concerned I’ve managed to automate most of what I’m doing at the moment. I have my budgeting spreadsheets set up for the year, so I just input the figures every time I spend anything. It’s a good incentive to not spend much as I don’t want to have get my ancient laptop out and wait a million years for it to load up. My mortgage overpayments come out automatically straight after pay day and deductions come straight off my salary before I see it for buying shares. The next job is for me to do some research on index trackers as I want to start investing in those when my I get my payrise in April. Perhaps I should task myself with the research now, so I’ll maybe have got it done by the spring.

I got rid of Facebook from my life just before Christmas. I was finding that I was spending an inordinate amount of time scrolling for no particular reason. I’m not saying I’ll never go back to it again, but for me it’s definitely a great way to carve out some extra free time for more useful activities. I prefer to read blogs and listen to podcasts, that way I feel as though I’m learning things rather than just faffing about. Although I do think there is a danger that you can read and listen to lots of different things that really inspire you, but if you don’t actually take any action then you’re not any further forward.

I find that work just seems to suck all the energy out of me. I get home absolutely drained and with not much energy to want to do much. That’s not quite true actually. The will is there, but the energy is sadly lacking. I know I don’t get enough sleep, and I am working on that, but I’m not sure I’ll ever get quite as much sleep as my body would like. It’s a balance isn’t it? There’s lots of things I want to do with my life, but there are finite resources in terms of time and energy. It’s trying to find the balance to get the things done that need to be done, and making the time for the things that will move you in the right direction for where you want your life to be.

I sometimes think I would be better off working part time like I used to do. My working week is 35 hours, but I used to just work 30. You don’t lose that much in terms of the money, and you don’t need to take a lunch break, so I could be finished for the day by 2.00. That would give me a couple of extra hours in the day to try and get some more things done. Maybe that would give me the opportunity to work on a side hustle. I love the idea of a portfolio career. Not being dependent on one employer for all your income seems really sensible to me. I love the idea of being financially independent, and not having to work for The Man is incredibly appealing to me. I can’t help feeling though that maybe the way to go is to keep some sort of fairly stable income from employment and try to build some side sources of income. I think I would enjoy my work a lot more if I didn’t feel quite so tethered to it and if it wasn’t draining me of all my energy.

So maybe that’s something that I want to try to work towards. If I could get myself in a position where I had developed some sort of a side hustle that brought me in enough that I could afford to reduce my hours at work. Realistically I will need/want to keep some sort of work going even when my pension kicks in at 60. I think that balance is really what I’m after. I am hoping that my dividend income will grow over the years to plug the shortfall in my pension. Whilst I’m waiting for that to happen though some additional income would allow me to hopefully get closer to FIRE and give me the confidence that I could earn enough income later in life to allow me to do what I want with my life.

So I’ll keep plugging away trying to make better use of my time. I’m sure developing better habits is the way to go. Reducing the number of decisions I need to make in a day will allow me to make the right choices when it really counts. No doubt I’ll keep rescheduling things on my To Do list, but as long as I’m moving in the right direction I think I can probably live with that.

Tag: Habits

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Where does all the time go?