{"id":37,"date":"2008-09-26T20:48:56","date_gmt":"2008-09-26T20:48:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/flirtingwithfaith\/2008\/09\/money-isnt-everythingpart-1.html"},"modified":"2008-09-26T20:48:56","modified_gmt":"2008-09-26T20:48:56","slug":"money-isnt-everythingpart-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/2008\/09\/money-isnt-everythingpart-1.html","title":{"rendered":"Money isn&#8217;t everything&#8230;Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I find myself in the exciting, yet precarious position of having everything I ever wanted\u2026except for money.<span>\u00a0I have a fantastic marriage to a talented artist and musician who is, hands down, my best friend.<span>\u00a0 <\/span>I have three healthy and mostly happy children who, at ages 19, 18 and 10, are constantly growing and changing and becoming the people that they are meant to be.<span>\u00a0 <\/span>I live in a 100 year-old home that is ripe with the kind of character that comes from slightly crooked ceilings, original moldings and recently repaired plaster walls. I am an adjunct professor at a welcoming University and a writer whose work is slowly but surely finding an audience.<span>\u00a0 <\/span>I play the bass in my husband\u2019s Spanish rock band and I have good friends who are interesting and creative. <span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span>All in all, in the midst of historic economic uncertainty, I am living just the kind of relaxed, avant-garde lifestyle I\u2019d aspired to when I was an idealistic kid. <span>\u00a0<\/span>Back before I abandoned these dreams to go out and make some money,\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Now don\u2019t get me wrong, I have nothing against money.<span>\u00a0 <\/span>And, when I was a single mother with two kids, I needed money to pay the rent, put food on the table and build a life for my fractured little family.<span>\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">So I did.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">And, as one job led to another, I went from living paycheck-to-paycheck to actually having a little more than I needed to keep my head above water.<span>\u00a0 <\/span>Things got even better when I met and married my husband Martin. A Uruguayan immigrant who\u2019d shelved his own artistic aspirations in exchange for a body-crushing but lucrative job in the construction industry, he went from working full-time making $10 a day at age 15 to building a profitable small business.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">As our careers took off and our coffers filled, our quest for the American Dream began to take shape.<span>\u00a0 <\/span>Sure, we noticed that there was less and less time to do the things we loved, but we thought that was just the price of growing up and getting ahead.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">I can\u2019t pinpoint the moment when we crossed the line from working-to-live to living-to-work\u2014or when accumulating things took priority over having time to relax or create or spend unencumbered time with our kids.<span>\u00a0 <\/span>But cross that line we did.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">The houses got bigger, the investments more substantial and our dreams of a simple, creative life became a distant memory. We worked all the time and were dead tired when we were off.<span>\u00a0 <\/span>But somehow it seemed like working ourselves into the ground was a fair exchange for the security, prestige and stuff that came with having a healthy disposable income.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">The money that had once served our needs had somehow become our master.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">So, about five years ago, we made a change.<span>\u00a0 <\/span>Stepping out in faith, we took some bold steps, left our careers and began to pursue our passions.<span>\u00a0 <\/span>As a result, we have more time, more peace and a lot less money.<span>\u00a0 <\/span>We haven\u2019t taken a vow of poverty. We\u2019re actually quite hopeful that our new endeavors will bear monetary fruit one of these days. <span>\u00a0<\/span>But if they do, I believe we\u2019ll handle it far, far differently.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><!--EndFragment--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I find myself in the exciting, yet precarious position of having everything I ever wanted\u2026except for money.\u00a0I have a fantastic marriage to a talented artist and musician who is, hands down, my best friend.\u00a0 I have three healthy and mostly happy children who, at ages 19, 18 and 10, are constantly growing and changing and&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":181,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-living"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Money isn&#039;t everything...Part 1 - Flirting with Faith<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/2008\/09\/money-isnt-everythingpart-1.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Money isn&#039;t everything...Part 1 - Flirting with Faith\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I find myself in the exciting, yet precarious position of having everything I ever wanted\u2026except for money.\u00a0I have a fantastic marriage to a talented artist and musician who is, hands down, my best friend.\u00a0 I have three healthy and mostly happy children who, at ages 19, 18 and 10, are constantly growing and changing and&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/2008\/09\/money-isnt-everythingpart-1.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Flirting with Faith\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-09-26T20:48:56+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Joan Ball\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Money isn't everything...Part 1 - Flirting with Faith","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/2008\/09\/money-isnt-everythingpart-1.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Money isn't everything...Part 1 - Flirting with Faith","og_description":"I find myself in the exciting, yet precarious position of having everything I ever wanted\u2026except for money.\u00a0I have a fantastic marriage to a talented artist and musician who is, hands down, my best friend.\u00a0 I have three healthy and mostly happy children who, at ages 19, 18 and 10, are constantly growing and changing and&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/2008\/09\/money-isnt-everythingpart-1.html","og_site_name":"Flirting with Faith","article_published_time":"2008-09-26T20:48:56+00:00","author":"Joan Ball","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/2008\/09\/money-isnt-everythingpart-1.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/2008\/09\/money-isnt-everythingpart-1.html","name":"Money isn't everything...Part 1 - 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