How To Live Your Best Life Without a Lot of Money

September 18, 2019 by One Frugal Girl

Live Your Best Life

I sit on the floor, surrounded by a group of smiling first graders. “What do you want to be when you grow up,” I ask. Their hands shoot up high into the air as they enthusiastically call out their answers.

“A doctor.”  “A nurse.”  “A basketball player.”  “A builder.”  “A teacher.”  “A zookeeper.”

They are so excited they have a hard time waiting for their turn to share. As we go around the room, each child speaks confidently about their desired career. Their futures are full of possibilities. They have big plans to live their best life and no fear that they may fail.  After class, I reminiscence about my childhood desires when an unexpected longing arises from deep within. A desire to go back to a time before obligations, bills and responsibilities altered my goals. A desire to live the best life I dreamed about as a kid.

Live Your Best Life

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” How did you answer this question when you were a child?

Around the age of ten or eleven, I wrote a report about the greatest speeches of American presidents. Speeches like John F. Kennedy’s “We Choose To Go To The Moon”:

“But why, some say, the Moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? We choose to go to the Moon! We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard…”

Or Ronald Reagan’s Brandenburg Gate Speech:

“General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

At the time, I couldn’t imagine anything more thrilling than becoming a speechwriter. (Looking back, I suppose I was an unusual kid.) I was certain I could write the words that would inspire a nation.  Of course, that never happened. I graduated with a degree in English Literature and went on to become a software engineer. I enjoyed my career, but I never forgot about that original goal. Even now, three decades after I first dreamed about it.

What Is Important To Me?

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