When Katie and I had just gotten married and were moving to Houston, it was a really tough year for teachers. Our State budget for education had a serious deficit and most school districts were on hiring freezes. Some were even letting teachers go.
Thankfully, Katie got a job, but I didn’t, and I just remember feeling crushed. I had never imagined that I wouldn’t be able to get a job right out of college. But we were thankful that Katie had gotten a job in Houston, which was one of our places that we were wanting to land.
That first year, we just didn’t have a lot of money. Since my degree was in music education, I started teaching private lessons, which definitely helped. But especially in the beginning, I was really worried because we definitely weren’t making the kind of money that I thought we would be.
Two teachers together can make a pretty good living, but things felt tight with just one of us working.
We didn’t have a lot of margin.
That’s the extra space you have between how much money it takes to pay your bills each month and how much you’re earning.
That space ends up being everything in personal finance.
The next year when we were both working, didn’t have a mortgage, and didn’t have kids yet, our margin was huge.
We were able to devote half of our income to saving it.
You want to have control over that margin. The best way you can do that is with a budget. With a budget, you’re simply telling your money what to do. You’re also telling yourself when to tap on the breaks on a certain category.
With your margin, you can really focus a large sum of money at your biggest priorities. If you’re saving for a house, you can work to save a huge down payment. If you’re saving for a trip, you can get there faster.
Margin is how you get there and when you don’t have any margin, it feels tough. It feels like you’re walking a financial tightrope.
We have definitely felt that way recently, having a mortgage and two kids in daycare. So if you’re feeling the squeeze of not having any margin, we’re right there with you.
When it comes to margin, you can only do two things. You can either cut more or earn more.
You’ll always be able to spend what you have if you don’t learn to have good budgeting habits now. Even if you were to earn more, you’d just feel the same way you do now. You’d spend it.
However, when you get on a budget, and you have a more fine control over the jobs your money has, earning more can be huge.
You can use that extra income to put a laser focus on those goals.
What would it be like if you earned more?
Remember that it’s all about growing your margin to the biggest it can possibly be either by cutting more or earning more. You just get to decide how you want to do it.
Jared
P.S. If I could snap my fingers and you could fix anything about your financial situation, what would that be? I love keeping the conversation going. Leave a comment below and let me know.
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