What Is Your ‘why’?

July 27, 2022 This week was our first recording with WKOW 27 for the commercials they are putting together for each of the different Project Money teams. To prepare, the Marketing team at Summit Credit Union kindly sent us some questions to look over and discuss. The questions gave us a chance to reflect as to why we joined Project Money; a question we have been mulling over in different parts of our life, too. Hopefully this isn’t a bit too deep of a question for whatever time of the day you are reading this, but “why” anything, each day? For the most part, we have been going about our life together pretty Bird Box-ish for the last few years. Stuck in the same pattern of where we put our extra money each month; continuing the same patterns of what we spend our variable monthly bill (i.e., water, electric & gas, groceries, etc.…), without really stopping to think if we should do anything differently. However, when we chose to buy a house and when we both individually decided it was time to finally pursue a master’s degree, we did have a discussion as to why. So, what were those whys?In 2019, at near height of the crazy housing market, we thought it would be a great idea to save some money by moving in together. When all the numbers were run on the house we fell in love with, did we actually end up saving money? Not really. However, our house was bigger than both of our houses combined, came with a 2-car garage, and felt like the right time in life to build some equity. An important item now only because of winter in Wisconsin, but especially when living in a city. Little did we know that 8 months later we would be pushed to work from home full time and the extra rooms in the house were used for us to each have our own ‘home office’. We couldn’t have imagined living in a small apartment with no outdoor space to go, had we not bought a home the summer prior. While the initial cost of buying a home didn’t save us money, our sanity during those trying times was, and always will be, seen as priceless.We both had different ‘whys’ for going back to school. When I, Krystal, was sharing with a family member that I had decided to go back to school in 2021, they were in shock that 1. I was going back to school so soon (I graduated in 2017) and that 2. concerned because I still had student loans. It was funny as I actually had never intended for so many years to lapse between my graduating of undergrad and starting my graduate degree, but I had started a job in 2018 that required a lot of travel and going to school in tandem was not an option. Enter the pandemic where all my work travel was halted, and I had copious amounts of free time on my hands and decided there was no better time than now to start. Alisa graduated about a decade before me, so while she still has some student debt, her tuition costs were nowhere near what I had to pay to finish my undergrad. She was accepted into a graduate program shortly after she completed her undergrad degree, but felt the timing was not right and withdrew, while always looking for the right opportunity to go back. With the world still not fully normal at the start of this year, Alisa, also decided 2022 was a great year to also start her own graduate degree journey to better secure her future.Is it a lot to juggle full time work and school together? It sure is, but we know our ‘whys’ outweigh the stress we have right now; that it is all temporary and is just another step to better secure our future, financially. Also, we have both been lucky where both of our employers offer some amount of tuition reimbursement assistance to offset the loans in which we are taking out each semester. A major perk we are both thankful for!Our finding of ‘whys’ continues into other areas of our daily life as we further work with our Project Money coach, Samantha, to dissect our tranced daily habits: 
  • Why do we spend so much on $X bill each month? 
  • Why are we putting $X extra towards X loan each month? 
  • Why haven’t we investigated opening $X account for retirement? 
  • Why do we use $X towards travel each year?
All great questions for us to marinate on and take more of an active role in knowing why we do what we do (or don’t) to help us change our mindsets and further assist us in achieving financial success.
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