Every Monday is Intents and Purchases day at Living Behind the Curve.
You don’t need more money. All the frugality and personal finance bloggers that teach you the esoteric methods of growing your net worth like a vine of plump, juicy tomatoes are wrong. Living with generic toilet paper and suffering through recycled leftovers just so you can have more money is wrong. Money isn’t the point.
Save me the spluttering and indignant declarations of how you need money to pay for living, and how we can’t retire without money, and whatever else. I know that already, and you do too. I’m not saying that money isn’t essential to life, because it is when you live in a capitalist economy. What I am saying is this: people all over the Internet are posting their financial goals and net worth with almost pornographic zeal. There are bars and charts and numbers everywhere to show you just how close a person you’ve never met is to reaching their two million dollar goal. You can find out how much money a mom in Wisconsin saved by switching to cloth diapers, and how to bully your banker into giving you the highest return for your deposit. It’s numbers and percentage points and compound interest all over the place, and for what, a fat bank balance? All the money in the world isn’t going to do you a lick of good if you don’t figure out what you want to do with it.
Look, money is a tool. It won’t buy happiness, but it’ll get you one hell of a lot closer. Before you go drafting a budget or butchering a case of whole chickens, you’ve got to sit down and figure out your big goals and your little goals. My big goals are to live in The Perfect House, and not have to work very hard for someone else so I have the time to enjoy my house. My little goals are to finish college, pay off my credit card debt, and buy a new bed. I’ve sussed out the numbers, and I don’t need to be rich to do this.
Once I do reach one of my goals, big or little, I sit down and reevaluate everything I’m doing. The money I was paying on the credit card balance now goes to the bed fund. I take stock of my life to see if there’s anything new I need or want to do. Say I need to buy a new car. Is it more important than buying the bed? It’s a constant cycle of pondering exactly what it is I want to do with the rest of my life. And I don’t need to be rich to do any of it.
So what are you doing it for?
Categories: goals| intents and purchases| lifestyle| personal finance| wealth
Exactly. Many frugal blogs out there that talk about net worth or coupon clipping or where you can buy sweatshop tshirts for $2 and miss the big picture. ‘What’s your personal frugality for?’ is a good question. It’s easier to meet a goal if you have one.
Mine is to:
a) work hard and save a packet now to move to a calmer, less rat-racy area for a more relaxed existence where I do more of the things I like and less of things I don’t.
b) Vote vote with my money for the dumbed-down, overcommercialised, soul crushing world that’s being created for us.
b) ‘not vote’
On the other hand, I accumulate net worth the same way I collect stamps and coins - just for the fun of it. I set my financial goals based on what should be attainable given my risk tolerance, savings rate and knowledge (eg. asset classes, gearing, tax effectiveness etc). If I was only saving and investing in order to reach specific goals such as having enough to retire with, I’d quit now. But then I’d have to give up on one of my favourite hobbies - investing.
My goal is to get to the point where I can buy what I want, and pay for it in cash. Whether it costs $5 or $3000, it must be in cash or not at all. I don’t think I’ll get to that point this year (though that was the original plan), but hopefully by spring next year, if the house doesn’t fall apart again.
@Lowbudgetlife: thanks for commenting. it’s nice to know that *it’s not just me*. I just checked out your site, and and aside from the retina-searing green, it looks great!
@Enough Wealth: You could say that you live behind the curve so you can have the resources to dedicate to investing. “Maximizing my etrade account” sounds like a perfectly justified reason to me.
@Jtrumbore: Does that mean you’re looking to pay off X debt, or get a certain bit ahead? Your noble goal just sounds a little vague, so I’m curious how you’ll know when you get there.
Our big goal is a house WITH LAND! Not a lot…I just want 1-2 acres. But it must have trees.
And my small goal…totally selfish…i want to go to Disney every other year. Maybe every year. I haven’t decided yet. lol That’s all I need. I don’t live big. I don’t want to live big. I like it small and simple. 
@Ann: As long as you and i don’t get into a major rumble over real estate, it’ll all be good, because a place in the middle of a couple of wooded acres sounds ideal.
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