What do you consider most important: Making money OR Spending time with family? What is your answer? It’s pretty obvious right? Most people would say that spending time with family is most important and you know what…they are exactly right!

That is more important, but, if you have no money, are you going to enjoy that time you spend with your family? Or are you going to even have that time to spend? Money isn’t everything right, but what is everything without it? What is your life like with money….and without it? Think about it a bit.

I will be honest. I put money-making above family time. Yes, you heard me right. I put making money above family time, but I have a good reason. Here it is…If I am not making money, I cannot fully enjoy my family time.

If I can’t provide a good living for my family, while I am with them, I will be thinking of what a failure I have been to them. While with them in physical form, my mind will be somewhere else! My mind will be thinking about the money I am short that month or the bills coming up. So in reality, I am not even truly spending that time with them.

Time spent half-heartedly is time wasted

If you aren’t giving something all you’ve got, if you aren’t completely present, it would have been better if you weren’t there at all. If I am to truly enjoy my family, I must know that I have everything else in order. Given I don’t have to have billions of dollars coming in before I am comfortable. I just have to know that my short term future is immediately taken care of. For example, if I know that my rent or mortgage is coming up next week and I don’t have but fifty bucks in my bank account, my wheels are turning.

Since I work from home, I have the freedom to choose my schedule. So, if my kids get home from school and want to go catch bugs at 2:30 in the afternoon I can.

In order to be truly present in the lives of my family, I must make money

I must provide. That is my first and foremost responsibility to them. Once that is done, I can then devote all of my energy, authentically, to them. Family is always first in my mind, that’s why I make the choices I do. It’s to ensure that I will always be there. As a father who missed out on 8 months out of the first year of my oldest daughter’s life, I know what it’s like to have your child look up at you and not recognize who you are. It’s not something every father dreams about.

Money is a lifestyle tool

Make enough of it and you can live your life however you want to. That’s an important principle here. Now let’s make it happen!