Last night, and the night before, and the night before that I was up until past midnight.  Working.  You see I’m attempting to wrap up two side-jobs in an attempt to pay off debt faster.  Faster than I would be able to pay them off if I was just working for my normal big client.  It eats into family time.  It eats into time to do things like blog on the many blogs I have (I’m rather embarrassed to say I have five), it eats into time that I have committed to doing other things like Sunday School preparation.  But I’m focused on doing it because I’ve got to get it done.

Dave Ramsey calls it Gazelle-like intensity, I call it focus, and the reality of things is that if you don’t have the drive to get out of debt, you’ll simply be in it for a lot, lot longer than you would otherwise.  Possibly thousands down the tube in interest payments and weird fees.  My buddy worked 90 hours a week for about six weeks to get the major thrust of his debt paid off.  I can’t manage that due to various limitations on my body, but it was the very same drive to have the debt behind me that pushes me to work extra side-jobs.  There’s no reason not to just dive in and get it done.  Yes, it will cost you time and friend and family time in the short term, but it may gain you that back afterwards and if you add financial liberty to free time… you’ve got something.

What if you lose everything that makes you financially wealthy? I am going to explore some of this in a video podcast soon, but I wanted to share a story I heard recently that just hit this point home. I know a person who had a tremendous job that promised above average income and a whole list of benefits - but that job came at a cost: it began to affect his relationships.

A time came when the financial pursuits and the relational pursuits had come to a very strong and intense decision making point. The person had to ask himself: what matters most? The way he put it was very powerful: if you lose something and it hurts, you’ve given it priority. The question that he had to ask himself was whether or not his priorities were right.

His story ended well because he was able to continue to earn a solid income, and maintain his relationships as well as strengthen them. This isn’t always the case, but you need to be prepared to let go of what doesn’t matter - and as much as this blog is about personal finance money should not be your number one priority.

My wife and I have a great marriage. I’m not going to lie: she’s awesome and I’m truly blessed to be married to her. She’s got patience, talent, intelligence and determination. I could list off a long series of qualities she has, but I’ll spare you the reading time because this blog isn’t about how much I love my wife. However, we do have disagreements at times about where our money should go. Not severe disagreements, but disagreements about how our priorities fall. I always find that the resolution doesn’t come from a technique that you can master to get what you want. The resolution that comes comes from a character trait that I have had to cultivate, one that is against every single strain in my pride, but critical to success: humility.

• Humility is a requirement for priorities because you have to admit it when you’re priority is selfish.
• Humility is a requirement for priorities because you have to love your spouse enough to think of your spouse first, or at least as a higher priority than finances!
• Humility is important because if you have children they need to see that a strong leader is humble and not harsh or dogmatic.
• Humility is a critical tool when it comes to dealing with conflict.  Own your mistakes.  Apologize for them and move on to resolution of priorities.

There are very few things that I can think of that have been more valuable (with the exception of my faith).  Humble priority setting will help keep your marriage focused on the things that matter, keep things growing, and keep your marriage hat like dynamite.