This is an appendix to “2014: The year of a new american dream.”

Our resolutions for 2014 have accumulated to three simple perspective shifts that change the way we’re going to allocate our time and money.

1. TIME OVER THINGS.

“To be free, to be happy and fruitful,” says Robert Henri, “can only be attained through sacrifice of many common but overestimated things.”

This isn’t about demonizing money or things – both can be a very integral element of a good life. It’s about not limiting our definition of a good life to money or praising the acquisition of money at the cost of more valuable things. For us, this mindset is all about prioritizing the freedom of our time over aspiring to discretionary income in order to simply acquire more stuff.

My wife and I recently took inventory of the excess in our lives. Here are some of the more fascinating things we found.

• 90% of the time, we only use 25% of the square feet in our home.

• We wear less than 15% of the clothes that fill our drawers, outside of formal wear.

• 90+% of the time, our kids play with less than 50% of their toys.

• 90% of our lives happen within one square mile of our house, which means over 90% of the time that I drive my truck, its unnecessary.

• We are likely to never again use 85+% of the things we keep in storage.

The list goes on, but rarely departs from some level of obvious waste. Our lifestyle-to-income ratio isn’t sinking us, but it certainly hasn’t come without a price. When you take into account that I often can’t pick my son up from school, spend a focused amount of time to read a book, or consistently take my wife on a date because I’m too busy working to maintain this lifestyle full of 75% too much house and a car I don’t need, it simply doesn’t add up.

Tim Kreider, a NY Times writer, says it well when he reflects…

“I did make a conscious decision, a long time ago, to choose time over money, since I’ve always understood that the best investment of my limited time on earth was to spend it with people I love.”

2. RELATIONSHIPS OVER EXCESSIVE WORK.

“I suppose it’s possible,” Kreider goes on to say, “that I’ll lie on my deathbed regretting that I didn’t work harder and say everything I had to say, but I think what I’ll really wish is that I could have one more beer with Chris, another long talk with Megan, one last good hard laugh with Boyd. Life is too short to be busy.”

Though 2014 is set to be a year focused on increased productivity and long term career wins (IE: launching a business and a book), the goal is to cut enough of our expenses to have the time and energy to intentionally invest in our kids, friends and neighborhood just as much as we do our career.

3. LONG-TERM WINS OVER SHORT-TERM WINS.

This mentality is all about cutting the things we don’t ACTUALLY need now to invest our time and money and energy into the future of our kid’s, career & finances. This will look like spending less income on our current lifestyle to make various financial investments for the future – or – not taking a third client just to pay bills to use that time to build a side business.

Now, back to “2014: The year of a new american dream.”