My Journey From “Cheapskate” to “Enjoyer” of my Money
If you're anything like me, you may struggle with not spending enough of your money. I know that doesn't seem like a problem people struggle with, does it? I live in America. We love buying things, especially if it’s on credit, but if you have spent any time in the finance space online you don’t typically hear people talking about how to enjoy your money.
You hear people talking about how to live on 10% of your income and how much you can earn with compound interest if you invest a certain amount of money.
Save, Save, Save … Invest, Invest, Invest is the song us finance content creators love to sing.
And it’s true. Saving and investing is a key part of being financially fit. So is paying off your high-interest debt and navigating taxes. All of these are core principles and you should spend time learning and applying them.
The question I found myself asking recently however is …
“How do I enjoy my money?”
I will tell you a bit about me. I have a wife and two children. I make a good living with multiple streams of income. We have hit some major financial goals and we save and invest a good portion of our income each month. It hasn't always been like this, but we are now at a place where we are able to do this and it feels great!
I read books, listen to podcasts, and watch YouTube videos about how I can be better at investing — how I can cut the fat off of our monthly expenses to allocate a larger percentage of our income to the “smart things” we should be doing with our money.
I have a tendency to become completely saturated in the topics I am learning. There is no middle ground for me. If I start learning more about eating healthy we are all of a sudden buying only veggies, fruits, and organic food. If I am going through a stint of working out I all of a sudden have aspirations to complete an iron man. That’s simply who I am. So when I spend my time learning about personal finance I want to do it all the way.
This “all the way” mentality can be a great thing, but it can also be detrimental. With my family, I have a tendency to force my ideologies on them when it comes to our money. This hardcore way of doing things leads us to not enjoying much of the money we saw coming into our household.
We aren’t people who like overly extravagant things, but my financial goals started to make me stress overeating at Chipotle or buying clothes we needed for the changing seasons. I also noticed it was causing me to burn out a bit with my saving and investing.
One thing I’ve learned is that if you aren't able to taste a bit of the success you are having you have a tendency to fall off in a major way. Think of the times you have started a diet. You swear you will never eat anything with sugar again, and maybe you do well for the first couple of weeks or months, but one day your sad deprived self has had enough of the “healthy” lifestyle and you binge on sour gummy worms and toaster strudel.
This can happen with your finances as well. If you don’t have balance in how you handle your money you will burn out and find yourself binging on something you would never normally purchase.
Balance is key.
We need to enjoy the money we have just as much as we need to save and invest it. If we learn to live in all three of these worlds, spending, saving, and investing, we will build habits that will last a lifetime.
It’s ok to splurge every once and awhile. It’s ok to take a vacation. It’s ok to drive a nice car … as long as your balancing it with a strong discipline of saving, investing, and giving.
If you’re reading this and your anything like I was I would encourage you to go treat yourself. It doesn't have to be anything big, or maybe it does. For me, I bought myself a watch. Maybe for you it’s taking your significant other on a date or taking your family on their first-ever trip to the beach.
Whatever you decide to do, live your life in balance. If you learn to do so you will find sustained success.
