Your spending habits show your true priorities. ~Chad Howse
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Are you more concerned about how you look or your work? Are you trying to build a business or a persona?
Are you spending money on things or experiences?
Are you investing or spending?
We live in a consumer society. It’s also a myth. It’s a myth that tells us that stuff is valuable. It tells us that if we buy stuff, that we somehow become valuable.
It keeps us sedated, focused on the wrong things, things that don’t matter, that are even destructive, and it’s a mindset that prevents us from living an awakened life. We compare ourselves and what we have to our neighbors. We use spending as a momentary antidepressant. We work hard, giving our time to something that we get paid to do only to spend that hard-earned money on something that gives us nothing.
No matter what the thing is, save for maybe a gun or something you’ll use for fun or to find food or to get out there, the post purchase reality is always one of disappointment or at the very least a calming of the enthusiasm that existed pre-purchase.
So, what are you spending your money on? (Read This: How to Budget Like a Winner)
BUSINESS
Are you spending money on acquiring knowledge, on learning, on working, investing money into your project or your career?
Investing in a business, your business, is money well spent even if it’s lost. Even if you fail, you learn, you gain something from the time and the money that went into the failure.
EXPERIENCES
You cannot waste a penny on an experience like travel even if the trip’s a complete disaster for the very same reasons that you can’t waste money on building a business or improving yourself. Regardless of the outcome, you win because you learn, grow, and improve.
STUFF
Here’s the kicker, this is where most people spend the most money.
We buy things we don’t need to feed a desire that isn’t real.
We want the idea of the thing we’re after, but that thing won’t make us the confident, proud, awesome fella that we think the thing will help us become. (Read This: 7 Ways to Become a Better Man)
It never works like this, and yet so many of us continue to buy the shit that weighs us down, the stuff we’ll toss or sell to someone else in a garage sale when we’re trying to de-clutter years from now.
Task: On a piece of paper, write down your last 15 purchases, if you can remember them, excluding the necessities.
Not to plug my stuff, but spending money on a program, a book, or a course, is money well spent. Money spent on clothes or accessories or vehicles or trinkets is money that’s not only lost, but given to your destruction.
Know what you’re spending money on, then set out to spend it on things that will give you life, not take it away.
