To be carefree with money

These days I'm more carefree with money. To others, it might not be a good thing, but for me, I think it's good progression towards the kind of person I want to be.


When I was younger, I'm a lot tighter with money. I guess the circumstances necessarily force one to become like that, so as to survive. Hence, to be able to become financially free, that is, to be free from thinking about money, I need to be able to spend money without worrying so much. It's not as if I'm being irresponsible and start spending more than what I earned. I don't think I will ever become like that. It's just that I started off in one extreme, and now I'm going in baby steps towards the other extreme, and then settling somewhere in between the two. It's about walking the middle path.


I think that's a good direction to be in.


I can imagine there will be other people who are spendthrift. Their direction is therefore not to spend more, but to walk the other path of spending lesser. I wonder which is the easier path to way: thrifty then slowly learn to spend more, or spendthrift then slowly learn to save more? I'm biased, so I think the former is the one which is easier. I might be wrong.


I remembered an incident recently. I bought a moleskine organizer for my work. I'm old school this way and prefer to write down my many appointments on paper. I've tried different sort of organizers, usually those hard cover ones where you can change the insides year after year. These are really more efficient and cost effective. But choosing a moleskine organiser is a want, definitely not a need. Any non-branded organizer will do the same job. I bought one, got addicted to the feeling of such organizers (it makes you want to write on it!), and got another. I remembered my first two purchases I've to check out different foreign websites to save a dollar or two, because they are so pretty but so costly! The second purchase is a limited edition "Little Prince" version, and I also have to think a few days over it, checking and rechecking the item.

The third purchase (above), which is for year 2016, is done very differently though. I looked at it, I liked it, and I bought it. That's it. Not a lot of thinking is involved, not a lot of comparison is done and definitely not a lot of unnecessary waiting. I see that non-hesitancy as a sort of progression for myself, where I stop worrying that I won't have enough money to last me the week or the month. Again, I stress that this isn't good for everyone but it's good for me. I need to learn to spend without worrying and that had always been a little problem for me.


Besides learning to let go of my mind regarding spending, I guess it's also about valuing my time more than money also. All of us had been poor students once and we had periods of our life where we really have more time than we have money. We all have gone to great lengths to save a few dollars or two. I had queued for guitar overnight to save about $600 bucks or so, but these are things I won't do again. Sleep is more important. Time is more important and I've blogged again and again regarding this theme of money and time.


But back to spending in a carefree manner again, I think this is also about growing bigger than your problem. When you grow sufficiently bigger than your problem, there is really no reason not to indulge in your wants responsibly. Maybe a little? If you did not do that, at least that's what I think, you're still bounded by money and hence, by my definition, you're still not financially free. Deep in your psyche, you're still a little poor student thinking that you don't have enough to spend, even though in reality, you have more than enough.


That, I think, only ranks slightly higher than thinking you have a lot when in fact you have very little. Why? Because in both cases, reality and mind are decoupled.