SPENDING MONEY WISELY

Real richness is in how you spend your money.
- Jacques Lipchitz

Spending a lot of money will get you trapped into thinking you are having a good time when all you are doing is spending a lot of money.
- from Career Success WITHOUT a Real Job       

Knowing yourself and what drives you to spend your money - whether it's for cars, homes, fashions, or cool stuff - is essential for having total control of your finances. It can be the difference between having a million dollars for retirement and not having anything.

Your mind may be your greatest nonfinancial asset, but remember, it can play tricks on you as well. The most common trick it plays is making you believe that you need all the things that you buy. If you allow it to keep playing that nasty trick, it can cost you your money, your health, your individuality, your self-esteem, and your sanity.

Indeed, it can cost you a happy and satisfying life.

The best way for you to attain financial freedom is to earn more cash and save more of what cash you earn. You save more money by spending money wisely instead of foolishly.

Before you purchase some more clothes, gadgets, or trinkets that you probably don't need, consider what a large consumer you are. The average American and Canadian consumes five times more than a Mexican, ten times more than a Chinese person and thirty times more than a person in India.

Here are some tips on how to save cash that I liberated from a book called Don't Hurry, Be Happy (written many years ago by no other than yours truly and for which I received an advance of $21,000 cash).

#1 of Top-10 Tips on How to Spend Money Wisely

Buy quality instead of luxury.

#2 of Top-10 Tips on How to Spend Money Wisely

If you are pressed for time to relax, don't be penny wise and dollar foolish. Spending two or three hours driving across town to save a few dollars is crazy. Your time is worth more than that.

#3 of Top-10 Tips on How to Spend Money Wisely

Don't make hasty decisions when making major purchases. Take at least a day or two to think it over.

#4 of Top-10 Tips on How to Spend Money Wisely

Try integrating your material needs with your spiritual needs. Purchase things that speak of your essence and not of your friends or the advertisers.

#5 of Top-10 Tips on How to Spend Money Wisely

On September 24 of every year (November 28 in Canada) try to go through the day without making any purchases. This day has been declared Buy Nothing Day by the voluntary simplicity movement. Take whatever money you would normally have spent on any other day and put it in your retirement fund so you can retire earlier.

#6 of Top-10 Tips on How to Spend Money Wisely

Don't hang around with the Joneses and you won't have to keep up with them. Since we tend to adopt the values and beliefs of the people around us, hang around people who are more in-tune with voluntary simplicity, have a good work/life balance, and are making the world a better place to live.

#7 of Top-10 Tips on How to Spend Money Wisely

Pay attention to what the Buddhists advise: "Want what you have and you will always get what you want."

#8 of Top-10 Tips on How to Spend Money Wisely

Avoid any Martha Stewart books, magazines, or TV programs like the plague. Go even further. Give up all the Martha Stewart values you have and watch your quality of life go up.

#9 of Top-10 Tips on How to Spend Money Wisely

Pay attention to what you do with your money on a daily basis. Are you getting your money's worth. If you aren't, change your spending habits.

#10 of Top-10 Tips on How to Spend Money Wisely

Don't forget your own ingenuity in saving and spending your money wisely. Make a list or idea tree of the many things you can do to handle money so you don't have to work as hard to get money.

The Money Cafe is brought to you by Ernie J. Zelinski, an innovator and content creator of best-selling books, creative free e-books, and websites.

Ernie Zelinski is the author of the international bestsellers How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free (over 125,000 copies sold and published in 8 foreign languages) and The Joy of Not Working (over 250,000 copies sold and published in 17 languages).

Quotes and Quips to Help You

 Spend Money Wisely

Draw you salary before spending it.
- Artemus Ward

What a lot of things there are a man can do without.
- Socrates

The money you enjoy spending frivolously is well spent and a sign of your prosperity consciousness.
- from Career Success WITHOUT a Real Job

Don't ask the barber whether you need a haircut.
- Daniel S. Greenberg

My first rule of consumerism is never to buy anything you can't make your children carry.
- Bill Bryson

Don't buy expensive socks if you can never find them.
- Unknown wise person

Never buy expensive wine, luggage, or watches.
- H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Never buy a hat with more character than you.
- Unknown wise person

Never buy a thing you don't want merely because it is dear.
- Oscar Wilde

When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.
- Eramus

Let the buyer beware.
- Latin proverb

What costs little is little worth.
- Baltasar Gracian

When I have money, I get rid of it quickly, lest it find a way into my heart.
- John Wesley

America's best buy for a nickel is a telephone call to the right man.
- Ilka Chase

Shopping tip: You can get shoes for 85 cents at bowling alleys.
- Al Clethen

Buy old masters. They bring better prices than young mistresses.
- Lord Beaverbrook (1879-1964)

He that pays for work before it's done, has but a pennyworth for two pence.
- Benjamin Franklin

Life is too short to do anything for oneself that one can pay others to do for one.
- W. Somerset Maugham

Your best purchases will turn out to be the ones that you never made.
- from Career Success WITHOUT a Real Job

Spending Money Foolishly at The Money Café

Ninety percent of my money I intend to spend on wild women, booze, and good times and the other ten percent I will spend foolishly.
- Tug McGraw (former professional baseball player)

The waste of money cures itself, for soon there is no more to waste.
- M.W. Harrison

City dwellers who purchase sport utility vehicles must be [mentally] arrested or not highly evolved.
- Michael Enright (Canadian radio personality)

I don't think you can spend yourself rich.
- George Humphrey

It is wonderful to think how men of very large estates not only spend their yearly income, but are often actually in want of money. It is clear, they have not value for what they spend.
- Samuel Johnson

Never buy what you do not want, because it is cheap; it will be dear to you.
- Thomas Jefferson

People will buy anything that's one to a customer.
- Sinclair Lewis

There's a sucker born every minute.
- P. T. Barnum

How much did you pay to be poorer today?
- Graffiti in a women's washroom

Watch out when the auctioneer calls some nineteenth-century wine "a graceful old lady whose wrinkles are starting to show through layers of makeup." That means the wine is undrinkable, and some fool will spend $500 for it.
- Robert Parker

He who buys what he does not need steals from himself.
- Unknown wise person

People want economy and they will pay any price to get it.
- Lee Iacocca

The most delightful day after the one on which you buy a cottage in the country is the one on which you resell it.
- J. Brécheux

The value of anything is not what you paid for it, nor what it cost to produce, but what you can get for it at an auction.
- William Lyon Phelps

What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet.
- Woody Allen

 

THE MONEY CAFÉ COPYRIGHT © 2011 by Ernie J. Zelinski
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