Figuring Out Your Values

How we manage our money is one of the principal ways we express our values in the world.   What are our values?  Our values are standards that we hold in high regard and live by.  Your values may seem difficult to understand, but your standards are fairly easy to capture.  If your standard of excellence in academics is straight As, you will likely have an A average.  If you say your standard is straight As, and you have mostly Bs, then straight As are actually your ideal, and Bs are your standard.  

When I am talking about values I mean primarily your standards, not your ideals.  I have a lot of ideals, but I don’t live by them all the time.  Most of us do.  I have an ideal of a clean, minimalist home with beautiful furniture.  My standard, by contrast, is a clean, efficient home with functional furniture.  When my home is messy, and I see some sticky mystery on the kitchen floor, I go clean up (or have someone else on the family team clean up).  When I notice school papers or other items are getting lost, I figure out a new system with my spouse that works for our family flow.  When I see functional furniture instead of beautiful furniture, I don’t go out and buy new furniture.  The reason is that I live my life to my standard, not my ideal.  My time and money match up with my standard of living.

We all have goals that we aren’t quite meeting yet.  My spouse and I have a goal of giving generously.  We have some ideas of how to do that, and are working on them, but we are not experts in this area, and we are not always sure where to give or how best to give.  We keep talking about giving, and we take practical steps monthly to give to priority areas.  But we have a couple decades to go before we’ll be where we want to be.  That’s OK.  Our standard is that we are actively pursuing philanthropy, and we meet that consistently.  We learn and stretch every few years.  Philanthropy isn’t an ideal.  It is a reality we are making happen every day.

Most of us aren’t very clear on our values, and our lives show it.  You say you value the present and living spontaneously, but most days look just like the others.  You aren’t planning, because you want to be spontaneous, but then you find that you wake up and squander a lot of days.  Or perhaps you are tired of living with heavy student loans, but instead of throwing every dollar you can at fighting them off, you still won’t get a second job or sell every spare item you own.  Our problem isn’t with our ideals, our problem is that we aren’t bringing our standards for living in line with what matters to us.

Here are questions that helped me figure out my values over time:

• What really matters to me at core?  Freedom and independence.  I don’t care much what others think, if I believe I’m right.  I want a life with a legacy.
  
• What would freedom and independence look like concretely?  Not having to answer to anyone else.  Having enough money to start my own business.
  
• What legacy do I want to leave?  I want to have the ability to self-finance research in the areas of finance and autonomous systems/robotics, as well as helping babies/young children. 
• What would stand in my way of that? Paying on debt, and a higher level of living will decrease my ability to save for my future and for philanthropy
• Who do I need to be to live this way?  I need to care about people and practice giving now.  I need to find people that are doing what I want to do and copy them/take their advice.  I need to focus 80% of my time on items that create direct revenue.
• What does this mean financially?  We need to practice a habit of giving – need to give monthly automatically.  We need to save aggressively for retirement, and also have some outside passive income.  I’ll need to keep working my current job or find other similar income.

These are not the only things that matter to me, but I’d be a fool not to respect themes that keep coming up in my life.  You might not value early financial independence or giving out grants.  My parents are a different example.  They valued a life of service, and made precious little money in their life together.  They were also committed to not being a burden on me and my brother, and have purchased long term care insurance, prepaid for their funerals, downsized, and carefully planned for the next 15 years so that my brother and I won’t have to take time and money to move them into other programs.  They are light years ahead of many of my friends’ parents, including ones who considerably out-earned them.  They spend their money and time on things that matter to them: going to concerts, giving in smaller ways to friends and family (my Dad often uses airline miles to pay for someone’s ticket).  Their values are their standards to live by, not an ideal to dream about.

So what are your values?  If you were on trial for what you say you value, would there be enough evidence to convict you?  Consider asking some of the questions I pose myself.  They may help you align your financial choices with your life choices to live a life built on what you value.  

Photo by Ariel Scheirer on Unsplash