Life Is Meant To Be Lived
Over the past week, there has been a 6 word memoir meme going around some personal finance blogs, and I managed to be tagged not once, but three separate times, first by the Journal of Healthy Living, then by Five Cent Nickel, and finally by Remodeling This Life. And so, here it is, my 6 word memoir:
Life Is Meant To Be Lived.
I think a lot about our finances, maybe because I spent a lot of time in the past not thinking at all about them, and I spend a lot of time and energy trying to use our money wisely, save money, reduce debt, and generally improve our lives for the future. But, that doesn’t mean that I feel that everything should be for “someday”. Life passes all too quickly and life is meant to be lived. I have trouble with this myself - I need to find a balance between living in today and preparing for tomorrow. But I believe with all my heart that I try to live each day to the best of my ability, and be present in that day.
This has come into focus more me more sharply in the past few weeks. It is not completely official yet, but it looks like I may end up ranked in the top ten in my age division in weapon forms for this competition year in the style of taekwondo I study. It has been a dream of mine for a long time to be a world champion in weapons forms, and I have been ranked in the top ten twice before. Once I won the bronze medal at world championships, and the second time I was too pregnant with my son to travel to the worlds competition (he was born a week after world championships that year in fact). I wasn’t aiming to be in the top ten this year - I only competed in our regional competitions where I was required to attend for my job. But I won a number of times in my division ring, and ended up, with the unofficial results at least, ending up in the top ten. To become world champion, you have to travel to worlds and compete.
And I want to. There is no guarantee I’d win, or even place, but I want to try. We can drive there, but it is about 12 hours away so gas would not be an insignificant cost, and we’d have to stay in a hotel for two nights. It would be another delay in our plans to get out of debt.
So the question remains - which do I want more? To be out of debt, or to have the chance to be world champion? I can’t quite answer that question yet. The competition is in late June, and I basically have until then to decide.
With that, I am instructed to tag five more people. So I shall tag:
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
You can also: Stumble It! Bookmark Submit to Reddit Submit to Tip'd
May 23rd, 2008 at 7:18 am
You know what I am going to tell you. Congratulations on getting this far and as much as I advocate being debt free, it can wait for this. You go to world’s and kick some butt and then come home and keep kicking your debt’s butt.
May 23rd, 2008 at 8:26 am
My advice is to plan for the trip and go. Obviously you may have another opportunity, but there is a chance that you won’t and will regret not going this time.
May 23rd, 2008 at 8:38 am
I say Go For It!
Congratulations!
May 23rd, 2008 at 9:23 am
Go to the competition. You quite literally have the rest of your life to pay off your debt. Hopefully won’t take that long and how many people can say they have competed for a WORLD CHAMPION title, maybe even won it? Seriously, you can always make more money but you might not ever compete as well as you are now or have in the past.
May 23rd, 2008 at 9:48 am
I say go for it! how often do you have a chance to take your family on a trip like this to see their mom compete on the world stage. The memories alone for them will be great.
May 23rd, 2008 at 9:54 am
Congrats. Go to the competition, have fun, compete, go fight win! Take your kids the memories alone for them will be priceless. Would it be more cost effect to take the train maybe?
May 23rd, 2008 at 10:14 am
Boy, I have to go with going to the competition. That’s just one of those things where you have to do it when you can. And how much time could it really delay your $ goal?
To even be in the running for something like this just calls out to TRY it. And who knows what doors this could open for you? It might PAY you to go?
May 23rd, 2008 at 10:48 am
You’ve been kicking your debt’s butt right and left. I think you’ve got the skills to pull off this trip and then return to kicking more debt butt…even if it slows you down just a bit. And as you say, life is meant to be lived.
May 23rd, 2008 at 12:04 pm
Hey! Some things are more important than debt.
The debt (and the trickle-in of money to pay it) will always be there. This opportunity won’t be. Go for it!!
May 23rd, 2008 at 3:03 pm
I find myself in this situation CONSTANTLY- the balance between trying to make wise financial choices and live life at the same time. This seems to be getting harder and harder to do as simply living an enjoyable life is costing more and more (gas, groceries, etc.) This seems like a once in a lifetime opportunity- plan as well as you can for it and go. You only live ONCE and you must enjoy life.
May 23rd, 2008 at 3:43 pm
Great memoir. Go and enjoy every minute of that competition. [Weird, I suddenly have the Rocky song running through my head. hehe] Keep us in the loop so we can all cheer you on
May 23rd, 2008 at 5:05 pm
Life is meant to be lived! Win or not, this experience will be one that you will never forget and treasure always. How many of those will you be able to buy with money once your debt is gone? Good luck!
May 23rd, 2008 at 10:55 pm
Go to the competition. Sufficient to the day is the debt thereof.
My 6 word memoir?
Really, I do my own stunts.
May 24th, 2008 at 1:02 am
Just do it!
May 27th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
PT - Great post! Here is how we made decisions like this when we were getting out of debt.
1) It’s not tough to estimate the costs of such a trip, so run some rough numbers based on what you know + some cushion and come up with a total.
2) If you stopped maying extra on debt and saved this money into a trip fund, can you come up with that cash before the event?
3) If yes, then then by doing this, how much longer would you be in debt? Are you willing to make that trade (this trip, or X# of months longer in debt)?
4) If yes, then is there an opportunity cost, or something else we will miss out on by doing this now (there is no trip AND family vacation, this IS the family vacation)?
If you get through this and still want to go, then go for it! With these steps, we were always aware of the trade we were making (or thought about making), and never regretted any of them.
Personally, it sounds like this means a lot to you, and unless the family is dead-set against it, I’d say go.