Do You Have (life) Margin?
get on it
Even the classically blind and un-self-aware Reddit rabble in their echo chambers seem to be catching onto the fact that there is a slight possibility we might be entering a strange and uncertain time.
Parts of the economy are flying along seemingly unaffected by the larger hoopla in the world, while others, like tech, can’t seem to lay off enough people … fast enough. We live in a whiplash world, one minute we are at war, the next we worried about ending up in the unemployment line.
Just today, Meta (Facebook) decided to give the boot to more than a few thousand employees, in the name of AI, and simply trimming the fat. Sadly, they are only one in a long list, that gets longer weekly, of a new distopian world where white collar workers are the new peasant, liable to be cast to the dogs at a moments’s notice.
I suppose this sort of topsy-turvy world makes a lot of suburbanites squirm and lie awake a night, sweating and worrying if it will be their head next on the chopping block.
One can image going from worrying about the next weekends socoor and dance schedule, to how they will make the next mortgage payment is enough to give the cold sweats to even the most emotionally disconnected Starbucks drinking and phone scrolling, middle-class American.
Why?
Because they have no (life) margin.
The Truth is …
The truth is that the world has always been an unstable place full of the coming and goings of disasters visited upon the unsuspecting, for no apparent reason and without warning. That’s kinda what it means to be human, here on this spinning rock.
Sure, based on the decaded and zip code you were brought screaming into this world, you may, or may not, have experienced anything truly difficult.
That, or maybe like the rest of your compatriots, you’ve just become numb, the endless stream of Amazon packages delivered to your door so you can live a life of luxury and ease. Netflix shows, weekends with friends and family, where you strive to show your stability and success.
The truth is … life in the western world built on capitalism, can turn bad lickety-split, and you better be ready.
Yeah, like other wise one’s have said, you can’t really prepare for the bad things that might come. But, you can plan to be prepared for the possibility of something not positive, aka … Murphy, showing up on your doorstep with a pink slip.
Find Margin
Pretty much the only way, if there is even one, to prepare for the unknown future is to plan your life around having margin, both personally and financially. If we think back to our frontier forebears, who hacked out a living on the edge of the world, maybe we need to imbibe some of that spirit that has been lost.
There are two types of margin …
financial
personal
The first one is obvious, which is exactly why people never find it, or live by it in any meaningful way, for long periods of time. It requires discipline that isn’t easy to cultivate and is not celebrated by our culture.
We are told to get school loans, car loans, credit card payments, and mortgage payments that are way above our means … and that is just the starter. Most people live to the end of their paycheck(s) every month. The future is some far-off thing that will never come; unfortunate circumstances are things that happen to other people, not to us.
It doesn’t take much financial margin to build a buffer up.
Just a little bit over the long term builds discipline and a healthy financial picture that is at least in part impervious to the rains of life when they come. Nothing puts Murphy in his place like a 6-month+ emergency fund.
Financial margins gives you choices and options when the bitter times come.
Personal margin is just as important.
This is more esoteric, but still very important: living in a way that enables you to create a financial margin and personal resilience required to weather life’s storms.
You shouldn’t have a job you hate; you should have good and strong relationships all around you, with family and friends. A strong faith, reasonable physical fitness, quiet time, and personal growth time.
In short, a life worth living should have some personal margin built in. You should have the bandwidth to read a book, go for coffee with a friend, take a vacation, or go for a bike ride with the family on the weekend.
Personal margin breeds positivity and resilience because you are recharged, not always running on empty.
Control the controlables.
Look, all I’m saying is that you can approach life in two sorts of ways. Stick the ol’ head in the sand and hope nothing goes wrong … sometimes that works. Most likely, something could go wrong at some point.
We can’t control what, or who, or how. We can control what we do right now, today, tomorrow, for some unknown future … good or bad.
Margin provides stability both financially and personally. Being a healthy person with good habits, going to bed at a reasonable time, and working on Monday without hating your life are good things.
Put a little money away, however small, every paycheck, and pay your future self some dividends by building in a margin every month. Live on less than you make. Be able to say no to yourself, to understand what your budget looks like, what money comes in, and what goes out.
Being able to control yourself and say no, that’s not a wise financial decision, breeds a sort of resilience of character that comes in handy.