{"id":2084,"date":"2010-03-31T23:38:41","date_gmt":"2010-04-01T07:38:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pickthebrain.com\/?p=2084"},"modified":"2013-08-21T13:23:40","modified_gmt":"2013-08-21T21:23:40","slug":"its-okay-to-spend-on-stuff-you-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pickthebrain.com\/blog\/its-okay-to-spend-on-stuff-you-love\/","title":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s OKAY to Spend on Stuff You Love"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div><p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bitwords.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/shopping-cart.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>With personal finance, as with so many areas of life, <strong>we have a tendency to swing between extremes. <\/strong>Often, an excess of spending \u2013 with accompanying credit card debt, clutter and stress \u2013 prompts us to take a good hard look at our finances. We make all sorts of good resolutions: a plan to reduce our debt, a savings account for our emergency fund, and so on &#8230; and somewhere along the way, we pick up the idea that we should <em>only<\/em> spend money on absolute essentials.<\/p>\n<p>We might start off sensibly, cutting down on unnecessary spending to put some money aside for the future. But <strong>before long, we end up obsessing about every penny<\/strong>, denying ourselves even tiny treats like a weekly coffee or a magazine, because it&#8217;s a &#8220;waste of money&#8221;.<\/p>\n<h2>Are You Enslaved by Your Money?<\/h2>\n<p>Usually, being &#8220;enslaved&#8221; by our financial situation means we&#8217;re in debt, struggling to stay afloat. But I feel that there&#8217;s another sort of enslavement which we can fall into: <em>forgetting that money is just a tool for us to use in whatever way we want.<\/em><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Do your money anxieties look anything like this?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>You&#8217;ve already got three months&#8217; living expenses in an emergency fund, but <strong>you&#8217;re obsessed with driving up that figure<\/strong> every month<\/li>\n<li><strong>You feel guilty about any unplanned spending<\/strong>, even if it&#8217;s just a few dollars (e.g. you end up buying lunch because you forgot to take your sandwiches with you)<\/li>\n<li><strong>You won&#8217;t spend any money to advance your career<\/strong> (e.g. on studying or business materials) because it&#8217;s &#8220;not strictly necessary&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>You often think about a smallish purchase which you&#8217;d really enjoy (perhaps a DVD box set, or movie tickets, or some equipment for your hobby) \u2013 but <strong>you keep telling yourself &#8220;I don&#8217;t really <em>need<\/em><\/strong><strong> it.&#8221;<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Why Spending (Consciously) Could Help You Save<\/h2>\n<p>It isn&#8217;t healthy to deny yourself everything. Of course, if you&#8217;re undergoing a financial turn-around, that might mean some radical \u2013 even difficult and painful \u2013 changes to your spending habits. But, just like dieters tend to fail when they attempt to cut out <em>all<\/em> &#8220;naughty&#8221; foods, <strong>your motivation is likely to drain rapidly if you take all of the fun out of your money.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Adam Baker puts it well, explaining how \u2013 in the context of getting out of debt and building a secure financial situation \u2013 it&#8217;s still important to spend on what you really love:<\/p>\n<p>Find your passions and feed them. Of course you need some limits, but the limits need to be higher than zero dollars. Starving yourself of healthy spending is a surefire way to blur your focus and kill your momentum.<\/p>\n<p>(Adam Baker, <a href=\"http:\/\/manvsdebt.com\/unautomate-your-finances\/\">Unautomate Your Finances (ebook)<\/a>, p24)<\/p>\n<h2>True Frugality<\/h2>\n<p>&#8220;Frugality&#8221; is a loaded word. You might feel a bit uncomfortable describing yourself as &#8220;frugal&#8221; \u2013 especially if it makes you think of a penny-pinching approach to life.<\/p>\n<p>True frugality isn&#8217;t about being cheap or hording away your money while living on a pittance. <strong>It&#8217;s about making sure that you get the most bang for your buck. <\/strong>It&#8217;s about cutting back on expenditure which isn&#8217;t adding anything to your life \u2013 saving on the things which don&#8217;t matter, or which you don&#8217;t care about, so that you&#8217;ve got more money to enjoy!<\/p>\n<p><strong>Things that provide genuine personal value to you are not a waste [of] time or money.<\/strong> Playing board games forces me to think deeply and it also provides a powerful avenue for socializing \u2013 those things provide genuine personal value to me.<\/p>\n<p>(Trent Hamm, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thesimpledollar.com\/2010\/03\/24\/what-exactly-is-wasted-time-or-wasted-money\/\">What Exactly is &#8220;Wasted Time&#8221; (or &#8220;Wasted Money&#8221;)?<\/a> on The Simple Dollar)<\/p>\n<p>I love to read, but I very rarely buy new hardback books. I generally wait for the paperback release \u2013 and often pick that up second-hand. I also use my local library. The net result isn&#8217;t that I miss out on any enjoyment \u2013 it&#8217;s that I can afford more books overall, and that I have enough to spend in other areas of my life.<\/p>\n<h2>Enjoying Your Money \u2013 Guilt-Free<\/h2>\n<p>So how can you spend money without feeling guilty about it? How can you trust yourself to spend sensible amounts, and not get back into debt?<\/p>\n<p><strong>One easy way is to allocate a certain amount of cash for &#8220;fun&#8221; spending.<\/strong> You could set an entertainment budget for the month, or even for a whole year. You could get an envelope each week and put $20 into it. Whatever works for you!<\/p>\n<p>I like to look for ways to get lots of enjoyment for a small sum of money. A coffee and a long chat with a friend costs much less than a meal out \u2013 but it can be just as enjoyable.<\/p>\n<p><strong>You&#8217;ll also want to think hard about what <em>really <\/em><\/strong><strong>matters to you, and what you care about spending your money on.<\/strong> Don&#8217;t let other people&#8217;s views and values sway you here. Perhaps home entertainment is really important to you, whereas you don&#8217;t really enjoy eating out at fancy restaurants. Ramit Sethi makes this point forcefully in his book I Will Teach You To Be Rich:<\/p>\n<p>My friend &#8220;Lisa&#8221; spends about $5,000\/year on shoes. &#8230; And on the surface, that number is indeed large. But if you&#8217;re reading this book, you can look a little deeper: This girl makes a very healthy six-figure salary, has a roommate, eats for free at work, and doesn&#8217;t spend much on fancy electronics, gym membership, or fine dining.<\/p>\n<p>(Ramit Sethi, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Will-Teach-You-Be-Rich\/dp\/0761147489\/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1269865677&amp;sr=8-1\">I Will Teach You To Be Rich<\/a>, p98)<\/p>\n<p>Now, I&#8217;m not a shoe person myself (I wear my shoes till they&#8217;re falling apart, then I buy another pair). So my first reaction was <em>$5,000 on SHOES?<\/em> But I take Ramit&#8217;s point: his friend is spending on what really matters to her, and saving money in lots of other areas.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What do you really <em>love<\/em><\/strong><strong>? Can you cut down on your other spending, and put more money into that?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t Forget To Follow PickTheBrain on <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/pickthebrain\">Twitter<\/a>!<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Related Articles:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pickthebrain.com\/11-ways-to-live-healthier-save-money\/\">11 Ways To Live Healthy and Save<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pickthebrain.com\/common-money-mistakes\/\">10 Money Mistakes To Avoid<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With personal finance, as with so many areas of life, we have a tendency to swing between extremes. Often, an excess of spending \u2013 with accompanying credit card debt, clutter and stress \u2013 prompts us to take a good hard look at our finances. We make all sorts of good resolutions: a plan to reduce our debt, a savings account for our emergency fund, and so on &#8230; and somewhere along the way, we pick up the idea that we should only spend money on absolute essentials. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pickthebrain.com\/blog\/its-okay-to-spend-on-stuff-you-love\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12163,"featured_media":12888,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[22,6],"tags":[59,364,78,363,4641,90,66,358,4629,365,362],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>It&#039;s OKAY to Spend on Stuff You Love<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"With personal finance, as with so many areas of life, we have a tendency to swing between extremes. Often, an excess of spending \u2013 with accompanying credit card debt, clutter and stress \u2013 prompts us to take a good hard look at our finances. We make all sorts of good resolutions: a plan to reduce our debt, a savings account for our emergency fund, and so on ... and somewhere along the way, we pick up the idea that we should only spend money on absolute essentials.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pickthebrain.com\/blog\/its-okay-to-spend-on-stuff-you-love\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"It&#039;s OKAY to Spend on Stuff You Love\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"With personal finance, as with so many areas of life, we have a tendency to swing between extremes. Often, an excess of spending \u2013 with accompanying credit card debt, clutter and stress \u2013 prompts us to take a good hard look at our finances. 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