"Too many people spend money they earned..to buy things they don't want..to impress people that they don't like." --Will Rogers
Money is a very powerful tool. It is something that lots of people don't know how to control. This could be a variety of different things like the impulse of buying pointless stuff, losing track of where you spend your money, multiple uses of credit cards, etc. Many of us right on the day we get our checks from work instantly go out and buy our many wants and many things that we think will make us happy forever. When I was in high school, I didn't use the direct deposit option and would get a check each payday. My bank that I was using was one minute away the nearest GameStop. I would go deposit my check, withdraw some money from that recent deposited check, and go to GameStop and buy quite a bit of games. I would go home and my mom would say, "Did you deposit your check today?" and I would reply, "Yes, I did." and then the next question, "Did you go to GameStop?". Sometimes I would tell the truth and sometimes I would sneakily lie and run off.
My impulse buying didn't stop there. While I was on my church mission, I wanted to be the "cool board gaming missionary". I spent over $300 my first month and a half on my mission so I could bring games to our activity days. I wanted to be noticed by all the other missionaries by buying lots of stuff that I would not really want in the long run. As I started to realize, I didn't have a ton to spend in my savings so I better managed my money.
But what really was a wake up call to me for money management was two major events that happened on my mission. First, my companion and I with another set of missionaries were going to a gas station to get some snacks, there were a lot of homeless people hanging around there. Lots of them asked us for money, which we couldn't give them. But seeing them in this situation because lots of them had no money or were in a lot of debt was scary. They had their addictions which cost them lots of money. They kept asking us for money so that they could buy cigarettes or beer or whatever addictions they were in. I didn't want to ever be in that kind of situation ever in my life. Second, I was nearing the end of my mission and my parents and I were talking about what my next step would be when I came home, mostly school. It wasn't until then that I realized how little money I had left. Like the first event, I realized how close I was to having no money to do with.
Overall, I had developed this insane fear of having no money. I didn't want to have my lack of money control me. I wanted it to be the opposite. I wanted to control my money and where it went. I started my personal budgeting plan and started to notice where my money was going and what I was spending it on. I had a emergency account and another small account for activities and food use. Seeing my leftover budgeted money added to my savings account each pay day continue to rise more and more made me feel happy and accomplished.
Since then, I have developed this, I don't whether to call it a blessing or a curse. Whenever I go shopping, whether it be online or at the store, I look at something I want and I ask myself two crucial questions:
- Do I NEED this?
- Will I use this continuously or just use it once or twice and never touch it again?
There are some days where these two questions have saved me a lot of money. There are also some days where I do feel a little annoyed that I asked these questions, but I keep reminding myself that in the long run it definitely pays off. Recently I was looking to buy a new computer just mainly for gaming purposes to play with friends. I looked around for weeks on which computer I would like. My current computer could play the game already. As I was searching, those two questions kept coming up in my head. I already had a computer that could do what I wanted it to do, so why was I looking for another computer to do the exact same thing my current computer can do?
It was also around this time that I discovered a show named the Dave Ramsey Show. Surprisingly, the advice that this show was giving was stuff that I was already doing. It mainly was to help people get out of debt and become free, but the simple steps to take were stuff I had already implemented in my budget. But hearing his show reassured me that I was on the right track and that I was doing better than most people across the United States. The average amount of debt for just credit cards alone in 2017 was $15,654. I would be terrified if I had that amount of debt in just credit cards alone at this certain time in my life.
This quote could never be more on the dot by Dave Ramsey: “You must gain control over your money or the lack of it will forever control you." Too many of us are living just on the edge of financial crisis. We spend so much money as soon as we get it that our lack of money controls how we live, what we eat, where we travel, and how we react. I don't want money to control how I live my life. I want to control my money so that I don't have to stress on how little I need to spend to just get by. Money does not buy happiness, but it definitely PROVIDES happiness.
