Yostivanich

Every­one has heard about how you shouldn’t spend money on cof­fee every­day, or you shouldn’t spend money on this or that. The money all adds up they say, three dol­lars for cof­fee, for every work day comes to over $700 dol­lars in a year. How­ever I say spend the three dol­lars if that makes you happy. Spend money on what you love. Hon­estly, why else does money exist? No, you should not spend so much money to put your­self into debt and you should bud­get your money and spend wisely, but why else do you have money but to spend it.

So go out to eat every once in awhile, live life, buy a movie, buy a book, buy opera tick­ets, buy a new pair of shoes, do some­thing with your money. I per­son­ally invest cur­rently around 75 – 80% of my income, but I still spend money event though it would be far smarter to save my money and invest it. How­ever I wish to enjoy life, I don’t want to live in a bub­ble for the rest of my life, I don’t want to be the per­son who is in debt because they spend so much yet at the same time I also want to love the things that I do own and allow myself lit­tle plea­sures every so often, so I spend a lit­tle more on cer­tain things.

For me per­son­ally, books, a pair of excel­lent jeans, a great casual jacket, elec­tron­ics, and my cap­puc­ci­nos, these are my weak­nesses. These are all things that I could buy cheaper, but I make the con­scious deci­sion that I want to enjoy what I own, so I spend a lit­tle bit extra on these items. The jeans that I bought, they weren’t in the $200 or more price range, they were more than I have ever spent on a pair of jeans or for that mat­ter more than any other piece of cloth­ing in my closet. But, they look great on me, I enjoy how I look in them, I get com­pli­ments from women with them, my ex-girlfriend told me I had a great ass in them, so for that I’ll spend the extra money. Why, because I want to look good, I like being able to walk out and look great. How­ever I also tem­per that by buy­ing a great many of my clothes on sale or dis­counted, it still looks great and unless you are a real cloth­ing snob, major­ity of peo­ple won’t notice the dif­fer­ence, and those that do, I prob­a­bly don’t want to be around you. The casual leather jacket that I bought is the same thing, I love how it looks, it is prob­a­bly my favorite arti­cle of cloth­ing, and I went and bought it when I was already spend­ing more than I planned to on the jeans, but it was exactly what I was look­ing for, so I bought with­out second-guessing myself, and you know what I would never go back and change my mind about it or the jeans.

What am I try­ing to say, spend money on the things that you love. You know what it is that makes you smile and love every penny you spent, that is the thing that you should not worry about cost. It doesn’t mean you can’t and shouldn’t shop smart, but when you see some­thing you love, don’t think, react. This does not mean to sim­ply spend until you no longer have any money. When I bought my jeans and jacket, I cut back on spend­ing in other areas to make up for it, I also did not buy any­thing out­ra­geous for sev­eral months afterwards.

My gen­eral rule of thumb is for any­thing over 50 or so dol­lars, I wait thirty days to see if I still want it after that amount of time. (Note: Remem­ber that I’m in col­lege, not earn­ing a full time salary here, vary your per­sonal spend­ing limit for your income.) I have bro­ken this rule exactly 3 times in my life. Each time, I broke this rule I smiled look­ing at the bill, know­ing, that I had/would:

1. Spent less than I was will­ing
2. Loved what I was buy­ing
3. Received input from peo­ple impor­tant in my life on the deci­sion
4. Slept at least one night or more on the deci­sion and still wanted to buy it
5. Go back and do it all over again, in a heart beat, even if I could have saved that money and had dou­bled, tripled, or even quadru­pled what I spent by now

So, go out today or this week and real­ize some­thing – money is there to be spent, not locked away in an IRA, or a money mar­ket fund, but money is to spent. Enjoy life, espe­cially if you are young, money you can always earn again. Hap­pi­ness is some­thing that you should have in your life, find what makes you happy and go out and get out.

Notes:
This blog arti­cle was formed from the read­ing of sev­eral dif­fer­ent blog and news­pa­per articles.