Finantial goals

In rich countries today, consumption consists of
people spending money they don’t have to buy goods
they don’t need to impress people they don’t like.
——anon


For the first time since we moved into Spain it looks very likely that I'm going to achieve my goal of earning €1,000 a month. I'm not totally there yet as the true goal is to make €12,000 a year (our mortgage payments) and that will take longer as I'm not going to be earning during the school holidays (july and August here in Spain), thus I still need to make more money on a monthly basis.
This is just my short term goal and not very ambitious as that!! But I'm still happy with it. Part of the secret of happiness surely must be to set one self achievable goals and to enjoy and celebrate our successes.

Until very recently I worked mostly part-time because I wanted to be a mum, to take care of my son and all that. Now he's 10 and I can start thinking of working full time and steeping up the pace of my earning years. Setting new financial goals.
So I started to think how much do I need to earn, what do I want to achieve financially, and all.

I'm not considering myself particularly ambitious and I don't share or even like the need to have it all and the love of trade marks.
Of course, since very early in my life I knew about the concept of "keeping up with the Joneses", as even in the third world there's a need to be richer than and/or to have more or better goods than others. I remember my friends in high school diing to own whatever was fashionable in our little town and sure enough, from time to time I did feel that way too. Not often, I have to say, as I grew up in a relatively affluent middle class family and I did have all my needs covered and most of my wanted.
Now that I've been living in the consumer fuelled Europe for a very long time, I do want more "stuff" and I find myself lusting over things and wishing I could be able to afford to live in a more expensive place, a house by the sea, for instance.
However, I don't think that quality of life is the same as the quantity of things in my life. And I certainly don't want to spend my life working solely to achieve my financial goals, there's much more in life than money and stuff.

However, it's much easy to find and try to get material goals that all other sort of more elusive things that together gave us "quality of life".
For instance, how do you get to know and develop new friendships?
It's much easier to say: I'll try to earn XXX a month or I want to pay the mortgage in 10 years.

Maybe that's one of the reason why people in Europe are so concern with financial success and having all sort of material goods. The problem is that after people achieve their financial goals they're not a bit close to achieve true happiness. So, they increase they wants and kept on thinking that when they finally get the Mercedes car, then they'll be happy.

Now I'm chuffed because I reach one of my goals, but I know that any happiness derived of material goods will be short lived.
There's still so much I want to do!!

Yesterday we met a dear friend who lives in a farm near Bristol. (the one who lives in a fancy farm not in a working farm) He's been a friend for long time and he's visiting Barcelona with his lovely (and very new) girlfriend. It was great to seem them both and we spend a lovely evening chatting and catching up with the news. They look very happy together and as he's been single and lonely for many years, I'm really happy for him.
It's been so nice to be around friends!! That's one single thing that I still need and want in my life.
My dear friends, I do miss you all!!