the danger of delusional thinking

Not too long ago my husband and I came into a large sum of money, the likes of which we'd never really seen before. We live quite comfortably already, and did not have an immediate need for all that money, though some of it did help to offset some missing income when Jonathan was out of work for a bit. But even with that spent on bills and necessities, there was plenty left over.

We thought quite a bit about what we wanted to do with that money, and made mostly careful decisions about it. Investing some was obviously part of the plan, along with some home improvements and a vacation. But even when we had a plan for all that money, I noticed a change in our mentality. And we started acting differently. Like we had a bunch of money or something.

It caught me by surprise, this false-abundance feeling. Suddenly we started buying things that we might not otherwise have purchased, or at least not immediately, like new living room couches. We had no intention of paying for the couches with the money - we had a plan for that money, remember? But for some reason because we knew that money was there, it was easy to spend other money. Because, you know, we had that money.

Even as I write it now it makes no sense to me, but I'm sitting on the proof of that way of thinking while I write this. We overspent and overindulged because we felt so positive about the money we'd been given. We were rich! (or more correctly, we felt rich)

Then, as would be expected, the bills started rolling in, and we'd spent and invested the money just like we'd planned. And suddenly we didn't feel so rich anymore.

I've learned, as a result, to be a little leery about that kind of abundance thinking that we got trapped in. While I always want to operate out of a place of abundance (in a dorky, theological way), I think it's probably a good idea to operate our finances out of a slightly more conservative place.

Or at least I thought I'd learned that. But what do you know, the Stuff Stand-off comes along. And while the purpose of this Stand-off is not, I repeat - not to save us money, we have at least considered that saving money will be a possible side effect. And so what do we do? We start dreaming about what we can do instead of shopping.

"Let's go to Europe!"
"Let's spend a weekend in New York!"
"Let's spend two weeks in AUGUST on the Carolina coast with a house right on the beach!"

Before we'd gotten too far though (or made any reservations, thankfully) reality came crashing back down on us today. This reality looked something like a root canal and a destroyed transmission. So long New York.

The thing is, life always happens. And we might save money in one area, but it's never a bad idea to set that money aside for the day that life dishes us up some expensive challenges. Painful as those reminders are (I mean literally - my root canal was really uncomfortable) it's good to have them. Saved money can be just that - saved money. Not "spent someplace else" money. Sigh.

I'm glad we caught ourselves in the act this quickly, actually, before I bought another couch or something. The truth is that it's shopping that got us to this place in the first place, so we have a little hole that we can dig ourselves out of. No need to get delusional, not to mention WAY ahead of ourselves, and start spending that which we have not yet saved. Instead of our expensive travel plans, we might just hunker down and enjoy this house we've put so much work into. I need to get my money's worth out of these couches.