2-3-4 Friday 14 April 23
‘Seeking to spark the most potential
within you per word of any online newsletter’
1
thought
Recently a friend came back
from travelling the world on a shoestring budget. What he said changed how I looked at money.
Over time, I’ve learnt that it’s not about improving my standard of living.
I’ve learnt that it’s about improving my quality of living.
Many of us, me included, tend to relate what we live on, to how we live.
When I quit my job and was suddenly forced to live on $500 a month in
Singapore, one of the most expensive cities in the world, it suddenly made me realise that:
I could decrease my standard of living without decreasing my quality of life.
What do you mean?
I don’t just mean using less fancy toilet paper. Yes, you know what I mean.
Using those without the little animal imprints on the toilet paper. Or those that are nicely scented.
Or not using known brands of soap, and simply using house brands from the supermarket.
Yes, I do think there’s a point where you need to pamper yourself, but then
you do realise that if you learnt how to find the balance between pampering yourself, and paying less, then you will find freedom.
In 2022, as I was interviewing people for my book, I met Ser Jing, an investor behind The Good Investors.
He said this,
One day I came to an epiphany. That a lot of us spend our lives earning money doing something we don’t want to do,
so that we can
do the things we want to do.
The moment we reduce what we want from our daily essentials, we reduce what we need from our jobs.
What we may not realise is that the money we spend on things like:
- Fancy bags
- Branded shoes
- Soaps
- Toiletries
may be salves for our soul. We want to treat ourselves, because we have a bad day at work. Or we want to plaster over the fact that actually, we are not enjoying ourselves a lot
at work.
And as we do this, we spend
more, and find ourselves looping ourselves in more and more shackles.
Don’t lose your freedom in the process of that quick, short-term goal.
1 talk
Know what you enjoy, and spend on things that maximise your joy.
1 tip
Maybe today, take some time to record down everything you spend on, and ask yourself,
Do I really need
this?
Is there
something less expensive I can use?
Secondly, ask yourself what kind of spending brings you most joy.
According to research done at Cambridge University, which studied the spending habits of 625 customers, and mapped them according to the Big Five personality traits, ‘spending buys
happiness when spending fits our personality’.
As one of the researchers Joe Gladstone shared, “spending can increase our happiness when it is spent on goods and services that fit our personalities and so meet our psychological needs.”
