Work to live or live to work?
How much do you need to earn to sustain your lifestyle?
My mates pull figures out of thin air. On the weekend one of them said that if he could earn $100,000 he’d be happy, and he’ll do anything to earn that sort of money… “Even work 80 hour weeks!”
But to me, I think we’ve all got it a bit wrong sometimes. Why is it, that when I earned around five grand a year working for McDonald’s, I never had enough money, yet now that I’m earning over ten times that, I still “don’t have enough money”. Well, to be honest, that last bit is a lie.. I do have enough money, but only because my lifestyle has changed. My change of income hasn’t changed my situation, but rather my change of mindset. For most people I know, and most people I don’t know, they simply never have enough money because they always spend the extra money they earn on more “stuff”.
It’s not our fault that we always want more “stuff” (it’s what we’ve been taught for a long time), but it really locks us into our working life. Put simply, I have no intentions of working for my whole life. I am working full time now while I’m “getting set up”, but later in life I hope to be able to have my wife as a stay at home mum (as that’s what she wants), and ideally I will just work a few days a week.
I think the biggest issue with being able to do this is the ongoing costs that come attached to almost everything in our life nowadays. Mobile phone contracts, Internet contracts, pay tv contracts, petrol, car rego, club membership, insurance, etc. We’re committing to more than we realise. Now obviously some things you can’t live without, and obviously most people need to spend money to make themselves happy sometimes. For instance, I enjoy using the Internet, and I spend more than most people I know on it, but it’s a genuine interest of mine. I don’t have pay tv, because I don’t really watch much TV. I feel as though I can justify that expense.
The issue is that most people don’t really think before they commit to things (eg, $99 a month on their phone), and before long they are so used to having it, they “need” it. Now when you stockpile all of these weekly, monthly, yearly financial commitments up, plus the combination of getting into the habit of buying things regularly (eg, DVD’s, clothes, even expensive food), you end up broke. (Once again, I’m not saying “you should never buy a DVD”.. Some people love collecting them, it’s their hobby. Good on them. But so much stuff is thrown at us, that we just don’t think sometimes and that pay packet ends up spent.)
I tried to explain to my mate that if he earned $100,000 a year by working an 80 hour week, he wouldn’t have the time to service his car. He’d have to get someone else to paint his house… And so on. Heaps more outgoing funds, so his massive income would be eroded.
I’m actually starting a veggie patch at the moment. I intend on having a big one eventually, but I don’t really know what I’m doing so I’m starting small. A veggie patch is a prime example of an area where time means money. Later in life, my family could end up being self sufficient, but it would take a lot of time to do that. I don’t believe you could work full time and be self sufficient. But even having a small veggie patch, and working on it after work would save a family quite a lot of money. If you work an 80 hour week it’s the last thing you’d want to do in the dark when you get home, so inevitably you’d just end up buying more from the shops. More outgoing funds that erodes the huge pay packet.
I link to a blog by a dude that calls himself durianrider. He’s pretty “out there” for a lot of people, but I admire the guy. He’s stoked on life, yet works very little and just earns enough to eat and live. Now I’m not saying that I want exactly that, but I think it’s a perfect example of the other extreme. How can one man that earns next to nothing, be so happy, yet others that earn more than most of us can comprehend be so depressed that they have to be on drugs daily, and often end up killing themselves in the end because “it’s all too much”.
It gives me hope that in a financial sense, there IS more than one way to live your life. I intend on “playing the game” for the next few years and getting setup for life, but after a few years I intend on scaling back work so I can enjoy life with my family.
I work to live, and I only ever want it that way.