There is something about knowing that your rent is paid for the next three months that makes you breathe a little differently. I don’t know how else to explain it. Nothing extraordinary has happened. I haven’t suddenly become wealthy, my business hasn’t started making millions, and I haven’t received some life-changing amount of money. I have simply made a decision to pay my rent in advance, paid my electricity, and given myself a few months where I don’t have to wake up thinking about those particular bills. Yet, the relief I feel is something I don’t want to dismiss.
Perhaps because I know what it feels like to have money come in and immediately start calculating where it needs to go. You receive a payment, but before you can even appreciate that you’ve made money, your mind is already distributing it. Rent, electricity, food, business expenses, that pending payment, the next deadline. Sometimes you can make money and still feel broke because every shilling already has somewhere to go. You don’t really get to experience the feeling of having earned it. You’re just moving money from one obligation to another, trying to stay ahead of everything.
And I think I’ve grown tired of living that way. Not tired of working, not tired of building, but tired of the constant feeling that there is always something waiting to consume whatever I manage to make. I want to experience a different relationship with money. I want to make money and actually have the mental space to decide what I would like to do with it. I want to look at my account without immediately seeing all the things that need to be paid. I want to plan something enjoyable without feeling irresponsible for even considering it. I want to be able to make a decision about my business without having to ask myself whether it will bring money quickly enough to take care of an approaching bill.
January was particularly on my mind when I made this decision. Everyone seems to know how January can be financially difficult. After the holidays, there are school expenses, household expenses, bills, and all the other things that seem to arrive at once. For someone running a business whose income isn’t always predictable, that can become an uncomfortable period. I didn’t want to enter another January with rent sitting at the back of my mind, wondering how I would manage it while also trying to keep my business moving. I wanted to handle that responsibility while I had the opportunity, so that when January arrives, I can concentrate on the things I actually want to be doing.
And there’s something else. I want to enjoy the holidays. I want to travel. I want to buy something nice for myself, experience a few things, perhaps spend a day somewhere beautiful without constantly thinking about how much money I am spending. This season, I worked. I made and sold success cards, handled customers, dealt with orders, and did what I needed to do to make the business generate income. I don’t want the only evidence that I worked hard to be the bills I managed to pay. I want to have experiences too. I want to look back at this season and remember that I enjoyed some of what I worked for.
For a long time, I think I’ve had this tendency to postpone enjoyment until everything is in order. Until the business is making more money. Until I’ve saved a certain amount. Until I have a better financial cushion. Until I have moved to a better house. Until I’ve achieved another milestone. There is always another level to reach, another responsibility to handle, another reason to tell myself that perhaps I should wait a little longer. And while I understand the importance of building financial security, I am beginning to question the idea that I must postpone every enjoyable thing until I have achieved some enormous financial milestone.
I don’t want to build a business that makes money but leaves me with no memories of the life I was living while building it. I don’t want to spend years working towards financial freedom only to realise that I never allowed myself to experience any freedom along the way. I want both. I want to build wealth, and I want to enjoy my life while doing it. I want to be responsible with money without making my entire existence revolve around financial responsibilities.
There is also something interesting about what happens when the immediate pressure of bills is reduced. My mind starts thinking differently about the business. Instead of looking at every product and asking whether it can make money immediately, I can start asking what else it could become. I can look at my website and think about the things I could improve based on the interactions I’ve had with customers this season. What questions kept coming up? What information were people looking for before making a purchase? What made someone hesitate? Which products attracted attention? Which ones sold without much convincing? Where did I make the buying experience unnecessarily complicated? These are things I can now sit down and examine properly.
I want to use the quieter period to improve the website, not just keep adding products and hoping people will buy them. I want to understand the people who visit it. I want the experience to feel trustworthy, easy, and worth returning to. I want to improve the product photographs, descriptions, categories, checkout process, and all those small details that can make the difference between someone browsing and someone actually placing an order. I want to stop treating the website as something I simply need to keep running and start treating it as an important business asset that deserves attention.
I also want to work on traffic. I know how much advertising revenue can fluctuate when traffic, RPM, and CPM change, and I don’t want to keep depending on whatever the numbers happen to do. I want to publish more useful content, improve existing articles, understand what people are searching for, and build something that attracts visitors consistently. I want to experiment with different content ideas and see what works. I want to give the website a better chance of earning even when I am not actively making a sale.
And then there are the products. I have so many ideas, and sometimes the problem is not a lack of things I could create but the pressure I put on myself to make every idea profitable. I want to experiment more freely. I want to test products, create small batches, try different designs, explore new categories, and learn from what people respond to. Not everything has to sell immediately. Not every product needs to become a bestseller. Some things will work, some won’t, and some might surprise me. I want to give myself the opportunity to find out.
Perhaps that is one of the things financial breathing room can offer: the ability to experiment without attaching your entire sense of security to the outcome. I still need to be mindful of costs. I still need to calculate my margins, manage my cash, and avoid spending money simply because I have a few months of rent covered. But I don’t want every business decision to come from a place of urgency. I want to have enough room to think, test, observe, improve, and try again.
I am beginning to understand that a business doesn’t only grow during the months when customers are buying. Sometimes the most important work happens in the quieter months, when you have time to look at what happened, identify what needs fixing, and prepare for the next opportunity. The sales season gives you revenue, but it also gives you information. It tells you what people want, what they are willing to pay for, what they struggle to find, and what you could do better. I don’t want to waste that information by immediately moving on to the next thing without examining it.
I think I am also learning something about abundance that I didn’t fully understand before. I used to associate abundance so much with receiving more. More money, more sales, more opportunities, more clients, more growth. And while I still want all those things, I am starting to appreciate the other side of abundance: having enough room to make choices. Having some money left after taking care of important responsibilities. Being able to plan ahead. Having the freedom to take a trip without feeling that I should have spent every available shilling on something more productive. Being able to try something new without needing it to rescue me financially.
Maybe abundance is also being able to look at what you have and use it intentionally instead of living in constant anticipation of what you might lose.
I don’t want to romanticise spending money, either. Paying rent three months in advance doesn’t automatically make me financially secure, and it doesn’t mean I can stop paying attention to my finances. I still have to earn, save, plan, and make sure the business has enough working capital. I still need to think about what happens after February. I don’t want to create a temporary feeling of relief that leaves me unprepared for the next few months. But I also don’t want to dismiss the value of the relief I have created today. Both things can be true. I can appreciate this decision and still be financially intentional about what comes next.
I think the woman I am becoming is learning to distinguish between having money and having a sense of financial security. They are related, but they are not exactly the same. Security comes from knowing what your money is doing, understanding your responsibilities, having some room for unexpected things, and trusting your ability to keep generating income. It comes from building systems that make life less chaotic. It comes from not leaving every responsibility until the last minute and not expecting every business idea to produce immediate results.
And perhaps this is why paying the rent in advance feels so significant to me. It is a relatively ordinary financial decision, but it represents something I want more of in my life. I want fewer situations where I am forced to make decisions under pressure. I want to plan better. I want to have money allocated for different purposes. I want my business to have its own resources, my personal life to have room for enjoyment, and my savings to grow without constantly being interrupted by expenses I could have anticipated.
I want to reach a point where a good sales season doesn’t just help me survive the next few months. It helps me prepare for them. It helps me upgrade equipment, improve the business, develop new products, build savings, and enjoy a little of what I’ve earned. I want each season to leave me in a better position than the one before it.
And I don’t want to overlook the small victories while waiting for the big ones. I have a business. I have products people are willing to buy. I have equipment that allows me to create more. I have a website that I can improve. I have ideas I haven’t explored yet. I have customers whose behaviour can teach me something about the market. I have another opportunity to do things differently. These things might not yet look like the business I ultimately want, but they are part of building it.
I am not where I want to be financially, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. There is still so much I want to achieve. I want consistent monthly profits. I want my websites to attract substantial traffic. I want advertising revenue that doesn’t make me anxious every time the numbers change. I want a wider product range, more customers, better equipment, and eventually a physical space where people can walk in and experience what I have created. I want the kind of financial capacity where paying several months of rent is an ordinary decision rather than something I have to think about extensively.
But I also want to enjoy the version of my life that exists before all those things happen.
I want to take the trip. I want to have the cake. I want to buy myself something nice. I want to sit somewhere beautiful and not spend the entire time thinking about orders, customers, website traffic, or what I need to do when I get home. I want to be present enough to actually experience the things I have been working towards. I want to enjoy my own company and the little freedoms that come with having some responsibilities taken care of.
Maybe this is what I need to practise more: allowing myself to experience the rewards of my effort without feeling that I have to justify every enjoyable expense by turning it into an investment. Not everything I do needs to improve my business. Not every day needs to produce something. Sometimes I can simply live.
For the next few months, I want to work from a different place mentally. I want to build without panicking, experiment without demanding immediate success, earn without immediately feeling that the money is already gone, and enjoy without being reckless. I want to be grateful for what has come in, intentional about what remains, and open to what I can still create.
I don’t need to convince myself that the universe will somehow arrange everything because I paid my rent early. I can simply acknowledge that I have made a decision that gives me more room to participate in creating the life I want. I have handled something important today. Tomorrow, I can work on something else. I can keep showing up, keep improving, keep learning, and allow the results to develop over time.
And when January comes, I want to wake up knowing that I don’t have to start the year worrying about rent. I want to look at my business and see possibilities rather than immediate financial emergencies. I want to have room to think about growth, not just the next payment. I want to enter the year feeling that I have given myself a little head start, even if there is still a long way to go.
Perhaps that is the real luxury I am trying to create.
Not an extravagant lifestyle. Not the appearance of having money. Not spending just to feel abundant.
The luxury of knowing that something important has already been taken care of. The luxury of having time to think. The luxury of making a business decision without desperation. The luxury of taking a break without feeling guilty. The luxury of enjoying something I worked for. The luxury of having a little room between what I earn and what I owe.
I want more of that.
I want a life where money doesn’t only pass through my hands. I want it to build something, protect something, create experiences, and give me choices. I want to become better at keeping it, growing it, and using it. I want my business to support my life, not consume every part of it.
For now, my rent is taken care of. My electricity is paid. I have some money left, some ideas to explore, a website to improve, products to experiment with, and a life to enjoy.
That is where I am.
And for once, I don’t want to rush past this moment because I am too busy thinking about everything that is still missing.
I want to appreciate what I have handled, enjoy what I have earned, and get to work on what comes next.
I am not just building a business that makes money. I am building a life in which I get to enjoy having made it.
