Do You Live A Financially Sustainable Lifestyle? (1/2)
Living A Financially Sustainable Lifestyle
Do you live a financially sustainable lifestyle? Or a lifestyle that is headed for debt?
Answer the following questions to find out.
• Do you often eat out or have food delivered to your door?
• Do you spend a lot of money on going out?
• Do you often or treat yourself to new designer label clothes?
• Do you spend a lot of money on electronic equipment, movies or music?
• Do you see your car as a status symbol?
• Do you often forget or loose track of how much money you spend?
• Are you in debt?
If you answered yes to any of the questions above, then you are most likely living a financial lifestyle that could result in you being very poor by the time you retire.
What’s even more alarming is that this lifestyle describes around 80% of all young people, which means that if this trend continues, there are going to be a lot of poor pensioners in the future who will be almost completely dependent on others for support.
In this article we are going to be looking at how to reverse such an unsustainable lifestyle, and create a new one so that your future will become much more financially secure.
What Do You Expect Things To Be Like?
The first step when it comes to changing your financial lifestyle, is to re-evaluate your expectations as to how things should be.
For example, if you expect your first house or flat to look like something you see in a magazine, then it is going to cost you a lot to get it looking that way.
However unless you have a lot of money coming in, these expectation are both unrealistic and dangerous when it comes to your finances, as they could not only leave you with little or no money to save, but could also land you heavily in debt.
So take some time to think about your current expectations as to how you should live and the things you should own.
If you find that your expectations are too high (i.e. you want more expensive things than you can afford) then you must realise right now that this is a financially unsustainable lifestyle you are living, and unless you change you will never get a grip on managing your finances.
This is not to say you shouldn’t have high expectations for the future, as everyone needs goals they can work towards.
But it does mean that if you want to live like a king, but have the money of a pauper, then you better be prepared to make some short term sacrifices so that you can reach your long term goals.
If you have high expectations as to the type of lifestyle you should live, you are not alone. The fact is that the large majority of people (both young and old) desire a lifestyle than is greater than what they can afford, and the main reason for this is the media.
High Expectations From The Media
Ever since we are children we are constantly exposed to new products that we are told to buy. First it begins with small stuff like toys, breakfast cereals and sweets which we relentlessly beg our parents to buy for us.
Then as we grow older we start to pressure our parents for other things such as clothes, music and video games.
By the time we are adults we want more expensive items such as cars and computers, only this time it won’t be mom buying these things it will be you.
Next thing you know you have gotten all the things you wanted, but you’ve also run up massive credit card bills and possibly even put yourself into debt.
Buying Junk You Don’t Need
It is quite clear that throughout our lifestyle we are slowly moulded into consumers, consumers who are regularly told to buy (and desire) what they see advertised around them.
However most of this “stuff” that we buy we don’t actually need, and as a result end up wasting our hard earned money on things we could easily do without.
A good example of just how much junk we buy can be seen at your local car boot or garage sale. Here you will find all the items (which were once “essential” purchases) that the owner has now decided they don’t need or want and so is attempting to get rid of at rock bottom prices.
Another example could probably be found in your own home! Think about how much stuff you have that you once really wanted, but is now lying on the shelf gathering dust.
Why Do We Buy So Much?
Although there are many reasons why people buy things they don’t need, in general most of these purchases are due to the endemic low self esteem of westernised society.
The products we see advertised to us all promise to improve or enhance our life in some way. As a result, we lead to believe that buying them will make us happy.
This is essentially a form of something I call “fake self esteem“, because we allow how we feel about ourselves to become dependent on the things we do or do not have.
So as long as we are purchasing new products (and the promises they give us) we feel happy and content, at a least for a short while.
Eventually however we grow bored of these products, and feel let down because they didn’t really make our life any better than it originally was.
As a result, we look to new products to makes us feel happy and content and so the cycle begins again.
Does More Stuff Make You Happier?
The trouble with this consumerist mindset is that it continually reinforces the message that external things are the key to internal happiness.
In other words, we are lead to believe that the more “stuff” we have the happier we will be.
However as you have probably already discovered for yourself, no product can truly change the way you feel about yourself on the inside.
Sure it may make you feel good for awhile, but as soon as you realise it doesn’t fulfil your unfulfilled needs you start to grow bored of it, and then start searching for something else that will fulfil that void within you.
This is the basic principle behind advertising. Make you the consumer feel inadequate with yourself or your life in someway, and then present a solution to your worries in the form of a product.
From an advertiser’s perspective, the unhappier you are with your life the easier it will be to sell you a product.
If you are trying to managing your finances but are struggling to cut down on your expenses, try doing the exercise below before moving onto the next article.
Self Esteem – Money Exercise
Look around your house and at all the things you own. Is your house full of junk that you don’t need? Are there items that at the time you bought them excited you or made you happy, but now no longer do so?
If so then you most likely have low self esteem and you don’t even realise it. Unless you are able to create a genuine sense of self esteem (one that comes from within) you will find it very difficult in life to resist the promises of the media and advertising.
As a result, you will continue to accumulate more and more things, but at the same time feel more and more unfulfilled in your life and have less and less money.
For this reason alone, when it comes to successfully managing your personal finances it is absolutely essential that you understand and develop your level of self esteem.
As without a healthy and genuine level of self esteem, you will most likely have a very unpredictable and unstable financial future.
To learn more about self esteem, see the following article series:
Note : I am not saying that buying things is bad, or that you shouldn’t buy anything. But rather to recognise the connection between the things you buy, the way you feel about yourself and your financial situation.
In the next article we will look at the essential things you cannot avoid spending your money on.
Part 2
