But as I write this, my stomach is growling. I’m hungry, but certainly not starving. When I first noticed the growls, I thought, “Well, that’s good. It’s good to be a little hungry, because that means I didn’t have too much.”

Too much, you see, can be just as dangerous as not enough. Sometimes it can even be more dangerous, depending on the situation.

And I’m not just talking about food here. I’m talking about the things we buy, the amount of work we do for a living, and the desire for bigger and better.

At a certain point, the things we have and do are enough.

They’re worth savoring, and truly appreciating.

What are some of the things you’re grateful for in your life? Things that you have just the right amount of, maybe?

I’ll talk later about some of the financial lessons I learned while on vacation, but for now I want to talk about something more important: gaining clarity of purpose.

Clarity of purpose is just what it sounds like: being clear on what holds meaning for you — and what doesn’t.

Sometimes it takes a break in the routine to figure that out.

Here’s what I didn’t do during my time off: no twitter, no surfing the Internet, no reading blogs, almost no writing of blog posts (I’d written a bunch ahead of time), no staring obsessively at the calendar to figure out how I could get things done, no worrying about how my app was doing, no paying bills, no work for my employer, no taking care of the pets, plants, and house, etc.

With a limited and sometimes erratic Internet connection, about all I could do was check email once a day (at most) and respond to comments.

And you know what? The world didn’t end. In fact, it got a whole lot better.

I spent my time with my family looking at beautiful things and places.

The thing I love to do best came to the forefront: create.

And now, more than ever, I understand how critical it is to make the important things urgent. Not only urgent, but first, foremost, and daily.

I hope you will allow yourself the joy of doing the same.

Being creative often leads to a less costly solution. Sometimes it even leads to a better solution than the first thing that comes to mind. More importantly, being forced to invent a new solution helps us learn that there are alternatives to automatically spending money whenever we encounter a problem.

Take this example of automatically thinking of buying something as the solution: I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people say things along the lines of “My car needs new brakes and it’s going to be super expensive! I think it’s time to go car shopping..” (Never mind that a new car is a whole lot more costly than a brake job…)

When the first thought that pops into your head when something breaks stops being “I need a new one!” and becomes “What are some other ways I could solve this?” or even “Is this something that needs solving?”, your financial life usually ends up looking much better.

It can also be fun to come up with a solution of your own, which was the case for me yesterday.

(Thus ends the money-related part of this post; the rest is just for anyone looking to quickly solve a photography problem. Feel free to keep reading though if you want to see my MacGyvering.)

I needed to take photos of some book covers. Unfortunately, these were books with shiny silver lettering embossed on plain covers. Have you ever tried to take photos of reflective surfaces? It’s not fun, especially if you want a bunch of silver text to stand out crisply with no reflections showing.

But I didn’t want to go buy a light tent. It’s not very often that I need to take photos of items with reflective surfaces, and it’s not like I sell stuff on etsy or anything that I need to make look good. If I bought one, it would just sit around taking up space for probably a year or two before I’d use it again. If I could remember where I put it. (We don’t have a ton of space, so it might end up somewhere odd.)

So I dug around in my closet and came up with a thin white blouse. Then I taped the bottom of the blouse to the floor with some painter’s tape that I had on hand, making an improvised light tent that looked like this:

I left one side untaped so I could slide a gray card and the book inside. Then I stuck my camera and head through the neck of the shirt and my arms through the sleeves, and shot the book cover.

Here’s an example of what the inside of the light tent looked like (using a different reflective object):

To show you the difference this makes, a shot of the item in all its reflective glory taken outside the makeshift light box is on the left. The version shot inside it is on the right, and it looks much more true-to-life.

In this instance I actually like the reflective version better, but if I were going for realism — or, you know, shooting silver text that needed to be legible — the one without all the reflections is the way to go.

And instead of running out and spending $30-$60 for something I’ll almost never use, I peeled my shirt off the floor 5 minutes later, removed the tape, and hung it back up. (Hey, it was still clean.)

Not because we don’t have enough, but because we have too much.

We just don’t recognize it, because we’re conditioned to believe that more is always better. Our sense of normal is distorted by the media. We feel like the things we do have aren’t good enough.

Advertising is everywhere, even if you don’t watch TV. It’s so pervasive that we aren’t even consciously aware of it much of the time.

So how do we get from buy, buy, buy, and I want, I want, I want, to a life filled with satisfaction?

Slow down, and be conscious.

When you eat a meal, think about how good the food tastes. Talk to the people you are with. Don’t rush through it so you can get to the next thing on your list.

When your coworker brings in their brand new cell phone and happily shows off all the features, remind yourself that your phone works great too, and that you were happy with it when you got up this morning. You can continue to be happy with it, if you want to.

When you feel a vague urge to buy, go through your house and select a few items to donate instead. Often we feel this way because we’re bored. Doing something — especially something that shows how much stuff you have already — usually changes that.

Most importantly, be grateful. The more you appreciate what you have, the less you want, and the better you feel.

But sometimes, too much is too much.

How do you know when that is? I think a good rule of thumb is when someone asks you what you got, and you can’t remember everything you received. (Probably excluding little stocking stuffers like a chocolate Santa or a tube of chapstick.)

So in my book, a few thoughtful/coveted gifts = goodness.
A whole pile = too much.

What do you think?

And, what do you do on Christmas to differentiate it from other holidays if gift giving is not a major event? Of course, going to church is probably in there if you’re Christian (or if you just like the songs) but are there special traditions your family participates in?

Maybe you make candy cane peppermint ice cream, or play games with your family after stuffing yourself with Christmas dinner. Or maybe you do a little impromptu gift card swap.

We usually have Christmas with just the three of us on Christmas Eve, and then eat a nice supper, which is often lasagna because that’s what I like to make. Except sometimes it’s ham. Either way, I put it on reindeer plates, so that’s Christmas-y, right?

Then we spend Christmas day visiting family and hanging out. I’d like to start some sort of new tradition though, so I’m curious to hear what others do.

The stories are usually peppered with quotes from astonished acquaintances who say things like “We knew she held her ancient bicycle together with rubber bands and wore secondhand clothes until they were in tatters, but we were surprised to hear that she left so much to charity.”

Translated, that could read “We had no idea she was rich! We thought she was dirt poor because she acted that way!”

The thing is, it’s the ultra frugal folks who later donate enormous sums of money to charity that make news. (Or the big lottery winners.)

But people don’t usually write stories about the comfortable millionaires who leave large sums of money to their kids, or about the comfortable millionaires who dole out smaller amounts to a variety of charities.

That can lead to the skewed perception that there are only three basic ways to become well-off:

1. Be very lucky
2. Become successful at the super-star level
3. Live like a pauper so that you can save every penny

Now we’d probably all like to be very lucky or become extremely successful, but realistically the chances of either of those are relatively small compared with everyone else in the entire world.

That leaves “live like a pauper so that you can save every penny”, but who wants to do that? Clearly, not many people.

And you don’t have to.

The thing is, being well off is relative, and living below your means does NOT mean living a life full of deprivation and artificial hardship.

In fact, you can become wealthy without living like a pauper, and without depriving yourself of the things you really want.

It’s a matter of figuring out what the things you really want are. Those are the things (which don’t have to literally even be things) that make you feel content. The things you really enjoy doing or spending time at.

Once you’ve figured that out, it’s a matter of focusing on those things, regularly spending less than you earn, and then (ideally automatically) saving and investing the money you aren’t spending.

And that million dollars? Contribute $5000 a year to a Roth IRA starting at age 29, and you’ll end up with over $1,000,000 in the account by age 65 at an 8% rate of return and a 25% marginal tax rate.