"But we probably spend it all cause the pain ain't cheap"
The title of this post and the line above are just two lines of lyrics from Jay-Z and Kanye West's song 'No Church In The Wild'.
Those two lines stood out quite poignantly to me, so the topic of discussion in this post is; is there a certain way to spend your money? Should we enjoy life to fullest and splurge on new and exciting things everyday? Or should we hold back and save all those pounds and pennies until retirement or for any hospital needs in our old age?
In the notion of living from 'day-to-day', we could work our fingers to the bone every day of every month, but at the end of every month we could go out and spend our months salary package to buy a new dress/phone/car etc. This then provides us with instant gratification which is fairly short lived, which then begs the question of; why do it if you're only going to enjoy it in the short-term? For me personally, I enjoy shopping, I enjoy the feeling at the end of the month when that paycheck comes in and I can happily hand my Debit card over to the store clerk and pay for my new clothes/shoes/jewellery. I can only describe the feeling as being one of elatement. But believe me, this is short lived, within a week I have already moved onto the next consumer product that has caught my attention.
However, on a different end of the spectrum, my parents are incredibly good at saving money every month (something I unfortunately have not yet learnt how to do). They say that they are saving money so that they can invest in the future, because you never know what is around the corner, and if the worse should ever happen its comforting to know that they have money set aside for such an event. After asking around at my place of worked, I discovered that many share these values. A lot of them felt that saving money for the future was their way of enjoying life. Of course there were others who said they live life like me and spend when they have the money to do so.
Investing in your future seems like a stable plan, but what happens when you reach your old age and you are so set in your ways that you don't actually want to spend all that money that you have saved? Was there any point in all those years of missing out on nice holidays, lovely cars and big houses? Everyone is different so everyone will hold different values on this topic, but if the very worse should happen and you were diagnosed as terminally ill tomorrow, do you feel that you have done everything in life that you could of done so far? Also what if tomorrow you suddenly became a billionaire? Would you still set money aside or would you enjoy having all of that money at your dispense? There is no right or wrong answer, what you choose to do with your money is your prerogative, but when we die, any materialistic objects that we have get left behind. Does this change the way you think about money at all?
I would like to think that one day I can look back on my life and say that I'm happy with everything that has happened to me so far! How many of you feel that that is something you can say about your lives? As always, please let me know what your thoughts are on this post.
