How to Create Margin in Your Life

 

Money management experts advise us to live on 90% of our income and to save 10%. Time management experts tell us to only schedule 65% of our day. These principles seem reasonable enough. Not only do we need margin in our finances and time, we need emotional margin. We shouldn’t take on every single project or involve ourselves in every single problem. When we have no emotional margin, small annoyances will seem like crises because we have no mental room or energy. So, how do we stop overspending, over-scheduling, and over committing emotionally? Consider these tips:

1. To instantly create margin in your budget, take out enough cash every pay day to pay for groceries, gas, meals out and incidentals. Whether it’s $150 or $300, when you know that the cash has to last for two weeks, you will spend less. After two or three pay periods, you will find that you have a cushion in your checking account. Leave it there. When an unexpected expense comes up, you will have the margin to handle it.

2. To stop over-scheduling yourself, pause before you commit. If someone asks you to serve on a committee, tell the person you need to think about it or check your calendar. Before you click “buy now” for a conference or an online class, figure out what you’re going to stop doing so that you can add this activity to your schedule. Once you get into this habit, you’ll find yourself having extra time to rest, exercise and work on projects that are important to you.

3. How do you stop getting too involved emotionally? You don’t have to adopt a problem to assist with it. For example, if your coworker is in an emotionally abusive relationship, you can listen to her and help her find resources, but you don’t have to listen to her problems over lunch five days a week. Save your emotional energy for close friends, family and the projects that you know are in your zone of interest and expertise.

Allowing space between where you are and your limits will help you to stay financially and emotionally healthy, and having margin allows you to be available to your loved ones.

What do you need to do to create margin in your life?