Financial manifesto of sorts
A couple years ago, two friends and I went to Slumberland Furniture to plan on how we were going to furnish our new apartment.
We were young and naive and silly, our heads filled with materialism, and we spent a most enjoyable afternoon plopping down on massive designer leather sofas, exclaiming over exotic-wood coffee and end tables, and testing out massage chairs (which we planned to buy secretly and hide in the closet so nobody else came over to visit and hogged them). I doubt if anything we looked at was under $400, even the side tables; most of the sofas ran around $1500. We weren't too surprised when it didn't happen, but the plans were definitely genuine at the time.
I've always loved nice high-end things, and to some degree I've associated success with them. In the worst of my moods, in the worry and dispair that any life deals out in some measure, I've distracted myself with visions of a successful future---me at twenty-five or thirty, still young, with an apartment or house full of beautiful, perfectly-arranged designer furniture, a closet full of leather and silk, and a collection of vehicles to rival that of Jay Leno or Lara Croft.
I still do that.
The furnished apartment did not pan out; one of the other girls decided she wasn't going to go to school after all; the other often couldn't pay part or all of her share. I paid all the utilities, and in the middle of winter I got behind on those, the triple-digit gas bills horrifying me with my inability to cover them, and I paid them months behind until my mother found out and showed me how to put them on my credit card. I paid them off over the following year; they're probably still on my credit report.
I hate what happened that year, financially---paying for an apartment that was much bigger than we needed, a premium in the renters' market for being so close to campus, the fact that it was a tenant-pays-heat apartment with practically no insulation, on the first floor with the heat vents up near the ceiling---hot air rises---I hate that I chose poorly in a multitude of fashions and they cost me money and cost my parents money and cost me points on my credit score, and I should have known better. In some cases, I did know better.
There are two things, however, that that year gave me, which I value a great deal, even enough to make up for the money lost. One of course is my cat, whom I was able to adopt specifically because I chose that apartment. The other is the lessons I learned---about wasteful spending, about friendship and financial accountability, about what I need and use in a dwelling space---and the fact that while this cost a lot of money, it did not cost that much.
This economic recession has been a good wake-up call to a related issue: I most likely will not be able to---and should not---fund a lifestyle of luxurious excess, regardless of my economic success in the future. I would love---and might to some extent plan to have---various assorted luxuries, but the dream of effortless wants-buys-has living, which I've always upheld as the ideal, I shall now put firmly aside. It is hollow---there is luxury there, but no real satisfaction, no real accomplishment, and too much of anything automatically lowers the value one puts on it, the joy one gets from it. And defining one's success by one's economic status is, in a financial environment like this one, a path to ruin. More than anything, I do not want to be the type of person who feels her life ruined by a drop in prosperity. It is suffering caused by blindness to what really matters and what makes life worthwhile---it is avoidable and stupid.
Notice I have said I like luxury. This is unlikely to change. I have image galleries saved on my computer, whole folders dedicated to stuff I want. I add to this and go there; it is a sort of escapism. However, I have recently made a conscious decision that it is not a shopping list.
My pursuit of luxury I now define as two things:
1) Limiting obtainment of luxuries to what I actually value, and endeavors kept proportionate to how much I value them.
That is, no seven hundred bucks a month for a bigger apartment than I need. No buying stuff I don't really care about just because it's shiny, especially if it's expensive. Consideration of putting certain things off until later. Raising criteria so what I purchase are things that I greatly value.
2) Creative or proactive obtainment of said luxuries.
I do not mean stealing, as "creative obtainment" might be interpreted to mean. I mean buying things in sources and conditions where they are cheaper, and in adding to their value by my own efforts. I mean noticing where what I want or can live with conflicts with what's favored or desired by other people, and thus are available at a favorable price. And I mean working at the luxury items I decide to obtain, so they gain value to me.
I am greatly fond of sports cars. I want several. But I am turning over the idea of, rather than driving off a dealer's lot with them, purchasing damaged ones and restoring and repairing them. This a) saves me money (and allows me to get more), b) indulges an interest I have (auto mechanics), and c) means that the obtainment of a perfect-condition, running car is also a significant personal accomplishment---it becomes something I created, not just something I bought. It also allows for customizing to my own preferences.
Ditto a house---I'd rather put sweat equity into remodeling a fixer-upper than spend more money on one where the work is already done and probably not completely to my aesthetic preferences or to my needs.
As for what I want in other matters? Despite the large image folder marked "clothes," I don't wear a huge wardrobe. I have a small number of pieces of clothing I like and mostly that is what I wear. I look at new computers online sometimes, but mine is three and a half years old, works wonderfully, and, unlike any new ones, has Windows XP. My flat-screen monitor was a luxury when I bought it; I made a good decision choosing it over the cathode-ray-tube varieties due to its minimal space consumption; it fits me and I love it and I will use it until the day it stops working, at which point I will probably attempt to fix it before I replace it. I do not need the latest and the greatest here.
I have recently been exposed to the term "frugality" as something other than bare-bones subsistence on the cheapest things possible (which was always the image the word conveyed to me). It means spending wisely for best value, and spending good money where it will go furthest. Buying expensive, well-made stuff to last when that is the most cost-effective thing to do.
We shall see how this works.
We were young and naive and silly, our heads filled with materialism, and we spent a most enjoyable afternoon plopping down on massive designer leather sofas, exclaiming over exotic-wood coffee and end tables, and testing out massage chairs (which we planned to buy secretly and hide in the closet so nobody else came over to visit and hogged them). I doubt if anything we looked at was under $400, even the side tables; most of the sofas ran around $1500. We weren't too surprised when it didn't happen, but the plans were definitely genuine at the time.
I've always loved nice high-end things, and to some degree I've associated success with them. In the worst of my moods, in the worry and dispair that any life deals out in some measure, I've distracted myself with visions of a successful future---me at twenty-five or thirty, still young, with an apartment or house full of beautiful, perfectly-arranged designer furniture, a closet full of leather and silk, and a collection of vehicles to rival that of Jay Leno or Lara Croft.
I still do that.
The furnished apartment did not pan out; one of the other girls decided she wasn't going to go to school after all; the other often couldn't pay part or all of her share. I paid all the utilities, and in the middle of winter I got behind on those, the triple-digit gas bills horrifying me with my inability to cover them, and I paid them months behind until my mother found out and showed me how to put them on my credit card. I paid them off over the following year; they're probably still on my credit report.
I hate what happened that year, financially---paying for an apartment that was much bigger than we needed, a premium in the renters' market for being so close to campus, the fact that it was a tenant-pays-heat apartment with practically no insulation, on the first floor with the heat vents up near the ceiling---hot air rises---I hate that I chose poorly in a multitude of fashions and they cost me money and cost my parents money and cost me points on my credit score, and I should have known better. In some cases, I did know better.
There are two things, however, that that year gave me, which I value a great deal, even enough to make up for the money lost. One of course is my cat, whom I was able to adopt specifically because I chose that apartment. The other is the lessons I learned---about wasteful spending, about friendship and financial accountability, about what I need and use in a dwelling space---and the fact that while this cost a lot of money, it did not cost that much.
This economic recession has been a good wake-up call to a related issue: I most likely will not be able to---and should not---fund a lifestyle of luxurious excess, regardless of my economic success in the future. I would love---and might to some extent plan to have---various assorted luxuries, but the dream of effortless wants-buys-has living, which I've always upheld as the ideal, I shall now put firmly aside. It is hollow---there is luxury there, but no real satisfaction, no real accomplishment, and too much of anything automatically lowers the value one puts on it, the joy one gets from it. And defining one's success by one's economic status is, in a financial environment like this one, a path to ruin. More than anything, I do not want to be the type of person who feels her life ruined by a drop in prosperity. It is suffering caused by blindness to what really matters and what makes life worthwhile---it is avoidable and stupid.
Notice I have said I like luxury. This is unlikely to change. I have image galleries saved on my computer, whole folders dedicated to stuff I want. I add to this and go there; it is a sort of escapism. However, I have recently made a conscious decision that it is not a shopping list.
My pursuit of luxury I now define as two things:
1) Limiting obtainment of luxuries to what I actually value, and endeavors kept proportionate to how much I value them.
That is, no seven hundred bucks a month for a bigger apartment than I need. No buying stuff I don't really care about just because it's shiny, especially if it's expensive. Consideration of putting certain things off until later. Raising criteria so what I purchase are things that I greatly value.
2) Creative or proactive obtainment of said luxuries.
I do not mean stealing, as "creative obtainment" might be interpreted to mean. I mean buying things in sources and conditions where they are cheaper, and in adding to their value by my own efforts. I mean noticing where what I want or can live with conflicts with what's favored or desired by other people, and thus are available at a favorable price. And I mean working at the luxury items I decide to obtain, so they gain value to me.
I am greatly fond of sports cars. I want several. But I am turning over the idea of, rather than driving off a dealer's lot with them, purchasing damaged ones and restoring and repairing them. This a) saves me money (and allows me to get more), b) indulges an interest I have (auto mechanics), and c) means that the obtainment of a perfect-condition, running car is also a significant personal accomplishment---it becomes something I created, not just something I bought. It also allows for customizing to my own preferences.
Ditto a house---I'd rather put sweat equity into remodeling a fixer-upper than spend more money on one where the work is already done and probably not completely to my aesthetic preferences or to my needs.
As for what I want in other matters? Despite the large image folder marked "clothes," I don't wear a huge wardrobe. I have a small number of pieces of clothing I like and mostly that is what I wear. I look at new computers online sometimes, but mine is three and a half years old, works wonderfully, and, unlike any new ones, has Windows XP. My flat-screen monitor was a luxury when I bought it; I made a good decision choosing it over the cathode-ray-tube varieties due to its minimal space consumption; it fits me and I love it and I will use it until the day it stops working, at which point I will probably attempt to fix it before I replace it. I do not need the latest and the greatest here.
I have recently been exposed to the term "frugality" as something other than bare-bones subsistence on the cheapest things possible (which was always the image the word conveyed to me). It means spending wisely for best value, and spending good money where it will go furthest. Buying expensive, well-made stuff to last when that is the most cost-effective thing to do.
We shall see how this works.