Giving Away a Part of Your Life
 

Now that your accounts are balanced you may be tempted to reward yourself and spend some money. Before you do that there’s an extremely important lesson to take to heart. You’ve probably been trained by the marketing school of consumption to think you deserve the finer things in life, whatever your heart desires. You do don’t you? Well, maybe. Here’s how to decide. So far we’ve talked about saving. Now let’s talk about spending and how you can make that work for you too.

Your opponent in this game is business in general. Businesses are not evil, but they exist for one primary reason: To make money. If they don’t make money they don’t survive. Kind of like you. And in order to do so they have to find ways to entice you to part with as much of your money as possible. They do that through advertising messages that make you want to buy. The reason you buy is because those messages make you think that by purchasing their products and services, your life will be better and far more enjoyable than if you hung on to your cash. And if you don’t have the cash they will gladly welcome you into the open cage of indebtedness and finance your purchase. This is the way commerce works and you need to recognize that. Don’t fall for it.

So when do you get to spend any money? The way to wealth is to maintain positive cashflow, save a certain percentage of what you earn, and live on the rest. You can spend any amount of money you want, as long as the total you spend is less than “the rest” each month. The trick is to find ways to enjoy your life that don’t cost more than what you can spend and still grow wealthy. There are many, many ways to do this, especially by developing a skill or hobby that doesn’t require a lot of money. Use your imagination, be creative. Have fun and get rich at the same time.

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