Manage Your Budget by Making Luxury a Rarity
Pleasure is great. Like anything nice, it’s easy to turn what should be arare pleasure into an everyday habit. However, this will not only ruin your budget. It can also lower the value of what you like.
As the personal finance blog The Simple Dollar explains, when luxury becomes the norm, it loses a lot of what originally made you enjoy it. Instead, the rare respite from the normal becomes the new normal. This can sometimes be great, but it can also be a burden:
But there is a big problem with luxury goods: they quickly start to seem normal, and when that happens, your life just becomes more precious. How many of you survived perfectly without cell phones 10 or 15 years ago? I know, of course, but now it is a luxury, without which I cannot imagine life. It’s the same with high-speed internet access. For many people, things like cable TV or a new (or new) car fall into the same category – luxury items that you are completely used to, to the point where you cannot do without them.
Of course, sometimes raising the bar to the norm is good. Getting lost used to mean wandering around town for hours or guided by starlight , and now home is a Google search. However, if your new rule is to pay hundreds of dollars every month for something you no longer enjoy, you will only hurt yourself by indulging yourself.
Finding Luxury in a Financially Responsible Life ”wiki useful Simple Dollar via Rockstar Finance