You Don’t Have to Spend Money Every Day
Basically, having a budget means that you’ve set limits on how much money you spend on certain things. Instead, we often see it as an optional target. Because, in fact, you cannot stop yourself from spending money sometimes. Right?
As the personal finance blog Enemy of Debt points out, not really. Apart from recurring bills and necessary expenses, there is really no need to spend money every day or even every week. Many of us will applaud ourselves for not eating out this week when that could easily be the norm:
I’m not going to pretend for a moment that I can live my daily life without spending money. There are bills to pay and essentials to buy. But why should we spend money beyond the basic cost of living? With my basic living expenses covered, I have a warm home, food in my closet, clothes in my closet, and countless ways to entertain myself.
However, I start the weekend with full expectation to spend the money. In fact, we are looking for ways to spend money. My wife and I really discuss what we want to do. It’s like brainstorming about how to spend money and we always succeed. In most cases, we have more ways to spend money than we ourselves. We determine which activities will bring the greatest benefit to our life. That all is well, but do you know what never happened?
We have NEVER come to the conclusion that NONE of the ideas for this weekend were worth our hard-earned money.
The option of simply not spending money often does not occur to many of us. We might consider two different party options – say, go to a fancy restaurant or just buy Chinese food and watch a movie – but whatever your choice, there’s always a third option: don’t waste your money. Find a free activity at your home (or with a friend!). Obviously, this mindset doesn’t apply to billing, but when you factor it into your extraneous spending, it can change how you estimate the real value of your spending.
Expectation of spending money | Enemy of Debt via Rockstar Finance