I have a friend who claims food delivery is too expensive and would just go and pick it up themselves. To me, if I’m hot and tired from working on some house thing, I love just hitting a button and hopping in the shower knowing some kind soul will deliver food to my door by the time I’m out. Ethical concerns about food delivery companies aside (I try to tip well), it’s something I value more than my friend does. On the flip side, my friend owns multiple Nintendo Switches.
Multiple.
I’m not here to put my friend down by saying your shouldn’t collect video game consoles but my point is that we value things differently and we should take that into account financially.
Some of the best financial advice I’ve read is to be selectively rich.
Decide what things are important to you. A good rule of thumb would be things you’re already willing to spend more money on. The next trick after identifying what things you care about is to aggressively limit the number of things you choose to be rich with.
Perhaps it is eating out. Perhaps it is home improvements. Or collecting video game consoles.
The key takeaway is that you cannot be rich all the time. But choosing to be poor all the time to maximize savings isn’t a very fun way to live (if you do that, more power to you).
Chose two things your life that you want to spend less on and one thing that you want to spend more on. Will your overall financial outcome change? Probably not by much.
But if you do it right, your life will feel all that much richer.
Image from Mathieu Stern on unsplash