You remind me of me several years ago. I had a life coach at the time and he introduced me to financial discipline, in the particular form of Dave Ramsey and his debt snowball. We paid $47k of debt off in two years, and things have only improved since. We're saving to do a $30k kitchen renovation, something that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. Two years seems like a long time, but the time will pass anyway. How would you feel to be debt free at the end of it? Something to think about.
After buying the iPhone X for me and my wife, debts are the next target. Let this not sound dismissive but we don't need books and coaches to apply common sense to money; we always knew how to manage money but the income simply wasn't there up until several months ago.
I firmly do NOT believe in the philosophy of "don't make more, spend less". To us this is BS. We only have one life -- as far as we know -- and spending it trying to achieve a monk level of discipline with money is a waste of happiness of the soul.
The harsh truth is -- money does make a difference. It's absolutely not the center of happiness but it's a solid side contributor.
Many people fail to account for that.
In truth, being more happy with my woman (not because of the money -- but because of the relationship gradually developing and improving with time) also made me more financially-aware so at certain point you have to wonder if this isn't the chicken and the egg problem. :)
> I firmly do NOT believe in the philosophy of "don't make more, spend less". To us this is BS. We only have one life
You really remind me of me. I had this exact conversation with my life coach. And you're right, this isn't rocket surgery -- it's grandpa's wisdom. The difference is in intentionality. Now I decide how I'll spend my money before I spend it (i.e. budgeting). That doesn't mean leading an ascetic lifestyle; we go out to eat, and I buy beer, video games, magic cards, etc.
It's all summed up by one of my favorite Dave Ramsey lines: "A budget is telling your money where to go instead of wondering where it went."
Edit to add: We also bought a brand new vehicle because it was something important to us. $33,000. Cash. (well, almost -- we ended up paying ~$200 in interest, but that's a longer story)
Apologies for me misunderstanding. I can only hope I didn't come off as an asshat.
Point by point might be better:
- Budgeting: 101% agreed! Doing it for ~19 months now. I have a spreadsheet comparing money available vs. money spent. If I forget to put an impulsive eating outside I catch it no later than 2 days down the road. HELPS A LOT. Made me much more aware of how do we spend money as well. We didn't, like, stop eating out, but we're more conscious of the impact 10+ such meals a month might have on our budget and we made the conscious and informed decision not to splurge so much -- because we care of better investment of our money. Hard to quantify exactly but I believe you already get it. It's basically a data-driven approach, not an intuition-based approach (which is very often wrong when one has expectations and desires).
- My wife's ancient Android charging cable broke... has to be the 8th one for the 2.5 years she used it. However, since we're gonna be getting iPhone X for both of us, we figured she can temporarily use the charger of a Bluetooth keyboard we have until we get the iPhones. A new charging cable is $5 max around here. But we still won't buy it -- it's a waste of money even though we can easily spend $250 on cables and accessories anytime we want (and we recently did just that to prepare for the iPhone X). I believe this is the attitude you describe -- you have money but you don't give them for stupid crap. You're conscious about how you spend. You're practical.
- As for the car: bravo! That's how it's done. Same thing happened here with my iPad Pro. One day I was like -- crap, I am sick and tired of reading good books and watching interesting videos on my 5.2 inch screen! I am consuming media and reading material quite often. Time to invest in some eye care and convenience, I thought. Me and my wife consulted our budget, checked the money that were soon to arrive, figured we should wait one week. We waited, then ordered, I have the device for 3 weeks now, and the sky didn't fall. :D
Overall, we really were speaking about the same things with different vocabulary (me not being native English speaker surely contributes to this).
I can see us being friends.
Thanks for your calm and warm tone. It means more than I can express electronically. ^_^
