Is it a financial decision or is it an emotional decision?

Spoiler alert: it’s always both, but mostly it is emotional.

For months I have been stuck on deciding whether to make a handful of trips or not. Time is running out for at least one of them.

When I was trying to get my own business as a financial mentor off the ground I had decided to forgo any family and leisure trips. I was going to need that money to cover my expenses while I learned to create some consistent income for myself as a solopreneur.

During the pandemic I learned I did not really have the wanderlust bug I know many people to suffer from. That is, if I do not travel, I do not feel like I am missing out. In fact, I very much enjoy my slow life and my past self would be shocked to know that I even enjoy many routines. Between routines and discipline many from my past would barely recognize myself!

In fact, many of the trips I have made over the years have become a health check of keeping family relationships nurtured. That part I do care about: nurturing relationships. And I know we need them for happiness. This is something that comes with being an immigrant with a distributed family. This also comes with making friendships with the same background: born here, raised there, moved over there.

But I have been grappling with the decision to continue making many of those trips. In fact, I have already forgone a few of them and I feel no regret. 

Everything was a lot easier when it was one trip every couple of years for a big family reunion. Things started to get complicated when possibilities expanded: trips to see family members I had not seen in years, locations not as far as having to cross an entire ocean, friends I have been wanting to reconnect with. The infamous paradox of choice.

The hard part is I do want to see the people involved in all the decisions, but I don’t want to travel. For one thing, all trips take a physical and logistical burden that impact the days before and after the trip. Every time I am away on a trip I am missing out on building my life where I am, which is something I am learning to appreciate more and more. If I add up all the trips I want to make, they amount to about 7 weeks within 8 months. That is without counting the before-and-after effect and the fact that I am in a hormonal stage of my life (hello forties!) that makes my energy levels more unpredictable than ever.

Then there is the financial aspect. The total sum of these trips is the same amount of money I choose to put aside to cover my expenses for about 9 months if I were to lose my job. My 9-month safety net. That is A LOT.

Let me bring you closer to one of these examples: my aunt is almost 90 years old. She was like a mother to my mom. She lives in Venezuela where I have not been since 2016. Back in 2022 I had the luck of meeting her in Valencia (Spain, because there is also Venezuelan Valencia), where she was spending a few months at my cousin’s. I also got to see other family members I had not seen in years or even met some for the first time. It was so beautiful and rewarding. 

This year, she is again in Valencia and she has hinted several times she’d like to see me. She even mentioned having a ring that belonged to my mom that she wants to hand me and that I should otherwise claim if she dies… so she’s obviously having a spiritual faceoff with death and wants to close a chapter.

My struggle? I want to see her, but with a much lesser sense of urgency than she wants to see me. My capacity for these types of trips has been filled this year. Specifically, I have done two trips that for years I had also grappled with. I finally visited my sister in Mexico, who had been living there for decades, but whom I had seen over the years in other family reunions. Then I went to France to my sister-in-law’s childhood home, where she had invited us many times. I LOVED both trips, but I feel they filled my quota for the year.

If we were as rational as we think we are, that would be it. I would not make the trips, would not feel guilty and life would go on… Or conversely, I would make them, not run the math, and just book tickets and plan logistics. But I feel such a pressure because I have received emotional appraisals from others about what I should do. Everyone from their own values perspectives, naturally.

Ironically, what I wanted the most last year was stability. The business not going well for two years in a row was a strong sign I needed to go back to a full-time job, get some financial safety back and free up energy to enjoy other areas of my life outside of work.

Now that I have that stability and I have some financial freedom, I do not feel free. This is but a sign of conflicting values. I have redesigned my budget accordingly, but I have not rewritten many of the values that guide how I make my decisions, including how I decide which of these trips I will ignore and which ones I will pursue.

That all of this is a privilege, and that I am not here deciding which kid I can send to school or whether I can pay for a health treatment that will save my life makes it ridiculous to anyone who is struggling with more fundamental decisions.

But this is exactly what I mean with money will NOT get you happiness or peace of mind beyond the basics. And I find myself writing and thinking more about this lately because having gained financial stability has created a space that I do not know how to fill up. I am glad I am not spending time thinking about marketing and sales to improve my business top line. But I am now finding myself with other dilemmas for which there are no crash courses. 

It is time for me to go back to my own foundational lessons. Because in the end all financial decisions carry an emotion: is it fear and stress of feeling constrained because your needs are not covered? Is it excitement or relief because you finally have breathing space? Is it warmth because you have enough to share with others? Is it uncertainty because it all feels equally important?

Whatever the case, more money is better than scarcity, but with enough money if we still struggle then we need to revisit our values.

Wishing you nothing more than clarity,

Maria 🌺