Find Your “satisfaction Point” to Keep Your Spending and Indulgence in Check

There is nothing wrong with a little pleasure. Sometimes, however, we indulge to the point where we no longer even enjoy it. Maybe it’s shopping until you’re tired and exhausted, or eating ice cream until you’re full of fun and feeling bad. To get the most out of your money, look for what Karl Richards calls your “satisfaction point.”

As Richards explains, this is essentially the law of diminishing returns in action. In short, your return (pleasure) decreases as your consumption increases. It could be watching Netflix, watching social media for hours, or spending too much money. Richards says:

… that at some point, pleasure and more become inversely proportional, and “more” becomes the name of the place where you end up when you don’t know when to quit. There is even a place before more, and we will call this place “enough”. We all know where enough is what you are happy with.

This is as true for high-priced foods as it is for cheap ones, but let’s stick with the financially cheap (but high-calorie) frozen treat. Enough is probably not at the bottom of the pint for you. Maybe a quarter or half of the second ice cream has passed. Wherever it is, learn to recognize it and stop there.

The solution is to pay attention to your consumption habits and look for that “satisfaction point”, which is, in fact, the peak before indulgence becomes overkill. Read more at the link below.

Learning to Stop Before “Enough” Becomes “Too Much” | New York Times

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