DO you enjoy expensive meals at fancy restaurants, owning more shoes than you’ll ever need, collecting sports memorabilia, or riding a horse on a beach wearing only a leopard print onesie?
Whatever your quirks and passions — weird or otherwise — never let money come between you and them.
Nobody likes being lectured about how to spend money, and we’re often told to bring our own lunches to work, negotiate better deals for utilities and loans, and cut back on various fun stuff.
But what too few money experts say is that the fun stuff is what makes saving money worthwhile.
Saving and investing is rarely fun but people do it to achieve a goal. And if that goal is simply to save more and invest more, the true purpose of money isn’t being harnessed.
So give yourself permission to embrace your quirks and spend money on them.
You’re not alone. Actor Angelina Jolie has a passion for knives, singer Rod Stewart collects model trains, former boxer Mike Tyson races pigeons. Outside the celebrity sphere there are interesting passions including ferret racing, giving money to strangers every day, collecting snake skins and extreme ironing.
Everyone’s motives for making money differ, and many people don’t ask themselves the real reasons for wanting to be wealthier.
More family time sits atop many lists, travel does too, while other people enjoy the anticipation from buying lotto tickets or the social aspects of drinks with friends. It doesn’t matter what your spending is as long as it’s important to you.
Try to regularly remind yourself of your motivations. Goal lists are great for setting monthly, annual and longer-term targets, but your trigger could just as easily be a few photos of something desirable stuck on a wall at home or some inspirational quotes.
Knowing what you want is great, but getting it can be trickier. Many people find they never seem to have money left over to spend on themselves as their bills and other life pressures pile up.
The key, as The Karate Kid’s martial arts master Mr Miyagi once said, is balance: “Balance good … everything good. Balance bad, better pack up, go home. Understand?”
If you want to spend more money on something valuable to you, try to balance it with cutbacks elsewhere or earning extra cash on the side — which is easier than ever in today’s sharing economy world.
There are a couple of simple steps to growing wealth.
Number one, spend less than you earn. This is where many of us fall over, and online budgeting tools can help here.
Number two, put your money to work for you so it earns more money. Options for investing are growing every day and come with different levels of risk — from bank deposits to bitcoin.
When investing, spread your money across several assets to lower overall risk. For example, if you bought bitcoin at its December peak, you would have lost two-thirds of your investment by early February.
Savings and investments grow over time, and soon there will be enough money to buy that leopard print onesie.
