Are You Trading your family for "Stuff"

The pursuit of money and material possessions truly decreases the quality of one’s life even though the "stuff" looks like it makes life better.

If economics class has taught me anything it’s that there are limited resources in each person’s life.

We make a choice to trade a day with our children for whatever item we want to purchase. Buying anything more than we actually need is like trading out time with our children for “stuff”.

Here is an example. If you make $10 an hour and you buy something that is a luxury for $30 then you have traded three hours of family time for that item. I’m not talking about paying the bills but we have to take that in to consideration.

Our land payment, which includes our trailer, costs us $200 a month. That would be 20 hours of work for our place to live. If you choose to live in a fancy home that costs you $500 a month then you are trading 50 hours of your family time for your home.

My question to you is this – Is that extra luxury important enough to give up 30 more hours away from your family than you have to?

I can’t answer that question for you, it’s something that only you can answer.

Here is another scenario. I have the truck of my dreams. We spent about $1600.00 on it.  That’s about 160 hours away from the family under normal conditions. Some of these new trucks cost $30,000.00 and after financing the total cost can be over $40,000. That’s about 4000 hours away from your family. That is 3840 hours more away from your family for a vehicle that is shiny and new instead of used and banged up. Is that shiny luxury worth an extra 3840 hours away from your family?

This next one really makes me cringe to think about. Our lawn isn’t pretty and our property will never be in better homes and gardens. The work that gets done outside for the most part, gets done by my wife and I when were spending time together and the kids are outside playing when we do it.

Our neighbor spends countless hours out there making his lawn perfect, his girlfriend spends so much money on fixing up the house and building things that aren’t needed to survive that he has to be gone most of the time just to earn the money and when he is home he is constantly busy making things pretty that they hardly ever spend time together.

We make choices when it comes to luxuries. The choice is “family time” or “stuff”.

Now comes my dilemma

I really want to live out in the woods. I want Mandy and I to have 20 to 30 acres of woods and live in a house in the middle of it. This isn’t a desire to move up in the world, it’s a desire to move away from people and to have a life that is more peaceful.

Would I be going against my beliefs to make a decision to put the money in to the land that we want and to increase our quality of life by being left alone? Would that be wrong even though it would be for a limited amount of time?

I don’t have the answer

But rest assured that it’s been weighing on my mind for a long time and it will continue to do so until this is resolved in my mind.

Money, status and “stuff” are not my thing, I would rather have my family time, but I think the solitude and the comfort of being out there in the woods would be worth the opportunity cost, especially if we could find a way to make the acquisition a family project that earns the money.