Abundance: Taking Stock of My Hidden Solutions

My 2018 Word of the Year is Abundance and I’m reserving Fridays to explore that concept. I originally chose abundance because I am overwhelmed with the amount of debt and stuff that I have and want to learn to focus on what truly makes me happy without buying things or spending extra money. I’m hoping to look at the other areas of abundance in my life throughout the year, but want to start here: with my financial impact.

I’m always worried that we won’t have enough (MUCH more about that in a future abundance post, I promise), but I don’t always look around to see what exactly we do have that can fill the gap that I’m worried about.

Here’s a perfect example: the beginning of the year is always hard for us financially. We are recovering from Christmas, my husband and I both have to get our cars registered and inspected, and there are monthly heating oil deliveries to get us through the cold New Hampshire winter. And this year, my husband and I both have to get our licenses renewed, which is going to be an additional $100!

I have us living on a very tight budget, including a new rule which bans us from using any of our credit cards. But I’ve been wondering how I was going to manage all of these extra costs this year without falling back on my old faithful: my Mastercard. A couple of weeks ago, it occurred to me that my solution has been sitting in our foyer for at least two years.

Every few years my dad gives us a bucket of his spare change. In the moment, and I’m embarrassed to admit this, it is so annoying that he’s giving me this huge bucket of pennies, nickels, and dimes and expects me to somehow find the time to roll it all and then take it to the bank to deposit. So it always just sits in the same place and becomes a part of the background until I finally reach the moment when I’m desperate for cash.

And that’s kind of the beauty of these hidden solutions. They’ve been there the whole time, but you’re only going to put in the work when you really need to. Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been spending a lot of time rolling all of that money into wrappers.  And guess how much there was? $555! That’s enough to pay for our licenses as well as the registrations and inspections of our cars — which is exactly what I was worried about being able to cover without using the credit card!

My abundance task over the next week is to look for more of these “hidden” solutions. What else is lying around that could probably make us a few extra bucks to put towards our debt?

How about you? Do you find yourself ignoring solutions because they sometimes require too much energy? What other hidden solutions have you been overjoyed to find in your own moments of desperation — even if it’s not money related? Anyone else working through a theme for the year that you want to chat about? Leave a comment and let me know 🙂