Nothing to debate here.
I would call myself relatively frugal.
I think.
Maybe.
Eh... I hope so?
As we celebrate frugality in our community, I felt the art of spending money has gotten a bad rep, and unjustly so.
Look, frugality is more about will power and discipline. You don't need mastery, craftsmanship or competence to do it.
Would anyone pay $3,000 to attend a seminar or course on how to be frugal? If you do, you have other problems to worry about... namely the IQ part.
OK, if you don't have will power or self discipline, that's another story. Maybe some coaching sessions with a psychologist would help?
Foreplay done.
Now to the main event - spending!
Spend our way to financial freedom
Hands up anyone who had or seen the below experiences:
1) Skimp and save money here and there for many years only to see them blown away by one untimely purchase of your property or equity investment.
2) Skip meals to save money and then develop stomach ulcers. Or buy cheap shoes only to suffer back or foot injuries.
3) Avoid social gathering at "atas" coffee shops because you rather freeload on your office's 3-in-1 coffee. Why pay when you can get coffee for free?
And you do silly math like if I save $6 per day by avoiding "atas" coffee, and multiply by 365 days and times 20 years, you feel "shiok" thinking of the "big" sum of money you would have saved!!! In 20 years time!? How's that for living in the future? (There must be a medical term for this kind of sickness)
Without the social glue in making people connections, you scratch your head as your peers start to move up the corporate ladder without you. You blame it on favouritism or nepotism.
Some would call it networking.
In short, have we not found ourselves in situations where we suddenly get the epiphany that we have been penny wise but pound foolish?
None more so than in our journey towards financial freedom right?
In this journey, we would have discovered we are quite lousy at spending money.
We are forever envious of those who have a knack of spending money at the "right" time.
Spending money to get rich is not easy right?
It requires mastery of our craft - be it investing or trading. Very meritocratic. Those with competence and those with less will be poles apart in performance. Unless Lady Luck messes with us!
Self discipline helps here - especially in money management. But no amount of will power will make a difference - you can't chant "If I think I can, I can" your way to financial freedom. Or?
And what's the biggest irony of all?
We need to SPEND quite a lot of money to achieve financial freedom!
Less analysing; more investing (Stolen with pride from the fisherman CW)
The butterfly has written an excellent piece to illustrate the above concept.
Yup. That's how you know whether you have gotten better at spending. Wink.
