Dewe Life
step by step
My husband and I were talking about that balance between hard work and a joyful life.
We’ve always had a philosophy that we would never commit ourselves financially to something or engage in activities that would create unnecessary demand or stress to support or keep going.
Let me give you an example. We bought our car in 2008. It was paid off fully by 2013 which brought the insurance payments down. We raised three kids and two dogs with that car. Needless to say over time that car got dents, stains and it was even stolen once on Christmas Eve! The theft was my fault. I left the key in the car while it was parked in the driveway. It acted as a shelter for someone for 7 days when it was finally recovered in the Tenderloin District of SF. By 2021 I was really ready for a new car but not having a car payment and low insurance and how low stress that is was the pay off for not having to experience the pressure of coming up with an extra $700 to $1000 a month for a new car. Those funds were otherwise allocated to food or school tuition. So we kept our Honda CRV until December 2023 when it just died on I-5. This forced our hand and we bought a new car.
Interestingly enough that new car payment is hardly noticed now. It’s sort of like life has a tendency of scaling you up. I always wanted three children but after having two kids and knowing where we were at financially, a third baby didn’t feel like the responsible choice, but that third baby in 2012 did something to us. It lit a fire within us very different than a dumpster fire. She came and awoken something within both of us and life just started to go better. I think the upturn our life took with the addition of our third baby has a lot to do with the type of person she is and how she enhanced our life and made us bigger. I wouldn’t advise having a baby in order to scale your ability, but who knows. There is some truth to learning to swim by jumping in.
This mindset of not over committing ourselves has either held us back from full success or has been the key to everything we have accomplished. I think it’s a little bit of both.
I guess you could call this “living within our means” but more so it’s deciding what is important to us and where we want our attention to be. I have no doubt that if I spent less time volunteering, working on self-improvement or otherwise doing activities that don’t have a huge monetary pay off I could make the funds to support 2 new cars and an Equinox membership. But that brings up a very interesting question. Why? Why do that? Maybe an Equinox membership would have so much joy payoff that it’s worth it to me to figure out how to make an extra $400 a month to support it but I don’t think so.
It’s also not just about material things. As your children grow and as your interests in life expands the simple fact of the matter is that life costs money. Renovating a home. Building a wardrobe. Healthcare costs. Travel. Taking up a creativity pursuit. Food. Creating time to have meaningful conversations. All of it takes some form of money. So where is that balance between hard work, finance and joy?
These thoughts are not fully flushed out. I am in an interesting period of my life where I started my own business in 2020 and it has morphed and changed over the past 5 years to an incredible online community (YOU) and I am building a tech company right now. I am making more money now than I have ever made in my life, but with it comes more spending and more commitments. While I’ve been scaling so have my children. We have new schools, college, weddings and things we want to do together as a family. Then of course there are the inevitable disasters like last week when my husband needed surgery, the dog had a blockage in her stomach and life just felt a little TOO much.
Honestly, If I am not following my own advice and keeping in my 10 Day Life Support Checklist sometimes managing all of these different areas of my life and work starts to feel more stressful and I sit and wonder… is it worth it? Why am I working? What am I trying to do?
While my husband and I were talking about life and our goals over the next few years he gently pointed out to me that while we are expanding, creating more experiences, upgrading our home and building our businesses it’s not worth it if we are just stressed and worried all the time. Right in that moment I realized it was not the work itself or the recent life experiences that were stressing me out, but more so my approach to them.
That baby in 2012 brought so much more work and demand but somehow she expanded us and made life so much better. The new car in 2023 didn’t stress us out. In fact feeling safe during very dangerous road trip through an intense winter storm in February 2024 made every dollar I am needing to make to pay for that car worth it.
Money is interesting. At the end of the day it is just energy that gets used to accomplish goals and as long as you maintain your ethics surrounding its use there is a magic quality around creating it.
I would never ever want to become the type of content creator or life coach that tells you, “Here is how you manifest 1 million dollars.” “Buy this course to learn how to make an extra $10K.” “Think these thoughts every morning and it will all come out right.” “The most important thing in life is for you to make money.” - I actually detest all of that high-performing life coach content that feels like a veiled sales pitch mixed with manifestation and sprinkled with advice that leads you to a black hole of debt. I don’t want to be like that.
One’s relationship with money, success and what is important in their life changes a lot as time marches on. It certainly has for me. So discussing money and big goals is a natural part of my story having come from a position where I was living week to week on food stamps after my mom died in 2010 to where I am now.
So I did a little review of what I am trying to do from a very high level goal standpoint with this community we have built, the content I am creating and my new business venture. That helped me to clarify why I am working and gave me more understanding of what I am working to build.
Ultimately what we were trying to do in the past while not over-committing ourselves was simply ensuring we saved energy for what was truly important to us. The stress of over-commitment was not worth it, but there does come a time when that concern for over-commitment is just an excuse that will hold you back from greatness.
The reason why it was important for me to review the overall goal of what I am working to accomplish, which is not a financial goal but more so a creative and community pursuit, is it rekindled within myself joy connected with work alone.
When I understand what I am working towards and can see myself heading in that direction, work is no longer stressful and the work itself brings the joy.
I think this is something that can be applied to all areas of life.
As a woman we are taking care of so many things. Some things pay us and some things don’t. I need to care for my body, my pets, my home, my business, my community and my family. Working out your purpose for all of those different endeavors can at least create a stable base from which to build a life.
My tech company - Dewe.Life (do life) has the purpose to help women act on their goals by assisting to establish the basic first step and build from there. I am going to start by refining and upgrading my 10 Day Life Support Checklist to make it more user friendly and more effective. There are a lot of ideas for Dewe and I can’t say too much now but I am pretty excited about it.
I don’t believe in work-life balance. I feel that is a marketing line designed to sell wellness products. What I do believe in though is finding joy in all activities and endeavors in life whether it be work, taking care of yourself, or cleaning the house. Sometimes, like last week for me, life can get a little overwhelming. Sometimes, during a period of growth or hardship you will be all in on one area while another part of your life goes underwater. While I was nursing my mother through cancer our finances went into the trash bin, but I would not trade that time for anything.
This is a long and introspective email and thank you if you have made it this far. I do not know exactly where you are in your life journey. I do not know if you take care of your family while your partner works or are the primary financial provider for your family like I am — both roles are equally valuable btw. Where ever you are in your life journey and your relationship with money and building a life I thought it might help you if I shared some of the things I was going through in mine.
This past month has shown me that if the work itself and the activity of living starts to feel like a chore it’s possible I have lost sight of the overall goal. It has also clarified that while you cannot be reckless with money or commitments, you cannot allow fear to hold you back from growth.
You build a life step by step. You Dewe it step by step. ;)
L J
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Here are some things I have been enjoying this summer. These are affiliate links by the way. I do need to pay for college after all.
Love your perspective, and your willingness to recognize what’s working (and when it’s detrimental to do what used to work). Introspection is a lost art. And money is truly energy at play, it seems very often. Thanks for the list at the bottom!!