So often in the solution to a problem in our lives, we wonder what we can add to make our life better.
It is our natural instinct to want more of something. I know because this was me for a long time. Up until my mid 30’s really.
Eating out one night a week, became two nights a week, which became four nights a week
Once a year holidays became twice a year holidays
A nice place to rent became an even nicer place to rent
Ranfurly beer became Heineken beer.
The newness of more feels great initially, but we adapt. That becomes our new normal and we are forever chasing more.
Many of these attempts to get more came from a stressful or busy life. More eating, drinking, travel and a nice house are all ways of trying to reduce our stresses in life by adding more. If we are going to be busy we may as well buy more to help ease the pain right? We deserve it. We work hard. It’s an escape.
LESS IS MORE
But the better answer, is almost always to subtract the bad things so that you don’t have a life you need escaping from.
Adding more often adds to the problem. It costs a lot of money which ties you even more to the undesirable parts of your life you are trying to escape from.
My life used to be full of things that provided me a lot of stress.
Huge hours at work
A massive mortgage that was more than 8 times my income
Money worries about when my next payday was or how I could pay for that unexpected bill
Worried about losing my job since I was living paycheck to paycheck
Stuck in an unfulfilling job
It’s amazing how much of an influence money can have in our lives. Many see it as a tool to buy lots of ‘things’. But I managed to turn a corner and use money to start eliminating my stressors one by one.
First, I downsized house, and reduced many of my other expenses after a deep dive into my budget, and managed to save a lot of money immediately.
This extra money then gave me the confidence to leave my unfulfilling and stressful job without another new job to go to.
Immediately, all my stressors mentioned above were gone. Life was far better than had I tried to eliminate those same stressors with more things. The stressors would still be there. I would just be masking them.
I have maintained this great savings rate for the last 8 years and am very almost in a position to go part time and solely focus on financial advice which brings me great joy. I will be removing 40 hours a week of full time work as an Operations Manager which is much less stressful than my previous job, but still not thoroughly enjoyable for the fact that it takes up so much of my time away from my family and interests. Many people would try to abridge the fact they are spending so much time away from the family by going on expensive holidays a couple of times a year. I am tackling the problem head on by removing it altogether.
Financial independence is so fantastic because it teaches us the importance of prioritising our time over things. The addition of no amount of things will fix our lives.
Drilling down further, financial independence teaches us to prioritise what is most important and only spend money on that. By doing so, you will naturally remove all the fluff from your life and anything that is not as important.
Life is all about trade offs. Buying more on the surface may seem like a good and highly intuitive solution. After all, it is what the majority do. It’s no surprise really, since we are conditioned from a young age to desire more.
But very rarely do we consider the trade off we are making. By spending all our money we severely limit our options. We become shackled to our banks, to our employers and to our lives. The only escape is a short term one until it is back to the grind. Each purchase extending the time required in this grind.
Money is an extremely powerful tool if used well. So before deciding to add more to your life, just take a step back occasionally and ask yourself if that is the solution to a better life. Like me, you may find your money is much better spent on removing undesirable things than adding desirable things.
The information contained on this site is the opinion of the individual author(s) based on their personal opinions, observation, research, and years of experience. The information offered by this website is general education only and is not meant to be taken as individualised financial advice, legal advice, tax advice, or any other kind of advice. You can read more of my disclaimer here