Almost 6 years ago my husband and I quit our jobs to start our business. We lived on savings the first 6 months and then started pulling a salary. We had no experience running a business like ours but we had passion.
We never went into the business wanting to be "rich". I wanted to make the same salary that my husband made at his previous job which was barely above average salary numbers. But, as almost anyone can tell you, owning your own business is hard and making a salary, especially pretty much out of the gate, is practically unheard of.
We actually have settled our lives into making a salary quite a bit under the national average.
Honestly, I couldn't be happier. Why? Because it's enough. We pay our bills. We save. We also have a little fun.
Do we go on extravagant vacations and trips? No. Do we drive new cars? No. Do we keep up with fashion trends? Definitely not.
What we do have is time to breathe. Time to be together as a family. We do have a very slow lifestyle.
I remember crying about not making the money at first and feeling like a failure. I even considered our business a failure. But really it is very successful. I just needed to change my mind and accept that it's ok to not make a lot of money, just enough money.
We have had investors approach us about expanding. They had big plans with an even bigger price tag. What was worse is it would have made our lives very chaotic and very not what we want.
Their minds were on margins, bottom lines and big money.
Ours was on our family.
We then settled into and accepted our salary and our lives grew much more simple.
I no longer feel like a failure because I'll probably never step foot in Europe. I no longer stress about making it to the weekend. Well, I never actually did before this, but now I really don't. I really enjoy our outings way more than I used to. Before being invited to a friends birthday party was just one more thing to add to the calendar, now it's the only thing added to the calendar. We go out to eat maybe once a month and we always love every second and every bite of food.
We do things that are low cost and fun. Bowling for example. We went on a Monday when our son was off of school for Martin Luther King day. We played one game, it was a load of fun and it only set us back $16.00 then we went to a BBQ place we had been wanting to try. It was a great day that I'll never forget.
We still work hard at our business but it feels good to go to work. We don't dread it.
Life is just full of fun now. We appreciate everything we have. A roof over our heads when it's freezing outside, food on our table and kitty cats to cuddle.
We have enough.
I'm so glad to have found this peace.
What a great life I have.
Until Next Time.
