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What do you spend your money on?

What do you spend your money on?

When I told my co-worker that we can get by on less than $1,000 a month, I could see the doubt in his expression.

“Really?” He said, quite perplexed. “How?”

“We don’t spend money on anything that we don’t need,” is my standard answer. Then I told him that we own our home and vehicles, and that I don’t have a single loan.

“Wow,” was his response.

I continued to explain that we don’t pay for, and rarely watch any television—that there’s plenty of things available to watch for free. And that, that was just an example—basically, we cut costs anywhere it’s possible. “There is very little leakage.”

“Don’t think small, but make the distinction between the critical and the extra.” -Ryan Holiday

The thing is, I think that the more present you are in your daily life—in the moment, that you simply need less stuff.

I used to think that “stuff” was where it’s at! Happiness is found in MORE STUFF.

Well it isn’t. I was wrong, wrong, wrong. As a matter of fact, I now know that happiness can be found much easier if less stuff is within view.

When I got home from work that afternoon, I took a look at our finances. It’d been six months since doing so, and I wanted to make sure I hadn’t told a lie. But I was right, when I added up all of our household bills they came up to $905.00 per month.

Here’s a breakdown:

• Insurance is our biggest expense at $400 per month.

• The electric bill averages $200 per month.

• Our cell phones cost $50 per month, $25 each.

• The home internet is $55 per month.

We also put $200 per month into a household account—which covers our ongoing remodel, property taxes, and unexpected expenses.

At work the next day, my co-worker said, “I’ve been thinking about what you said.”

I kinda cut him off, “Me too!” I said. “I even went home and calculated my household expenses to make sure I was telling you correctly. And I was, my bills came up to $905.00 a month.”

“And here I was worried whether or not we could get by on four times that,” he said.

To give you a little background, my co-worker has been with the postal service for over 38 years. He is a year and a half away from retirement, and he also owns his home.

I asked if he owned his home, and when he said yes, I told him that while living here in Southern Georgia, there should be no reason that they could not live well off of $4,000 a month. “You just have to stop the leakage.”

What is leakage you ask? Leakage is all the crap that you waste $ each day.

• It’s the fancy 10$ coffee, when you could have made it at home for pennies.

• It’s the 100$ streaming service that fills your brain with medical ads.

• It’s the 1000$ TV and sound system blaring those ads.

• It’s the new vehicle every couple of years, because the old one needed a service.

• It’s the new iphone—why? Well because there is a new iphone, that’s why.

• It’s the 12$ McDonald’s Value Meal, when you could’ve bought a pound of prime ground beef for less.

Shall I go on? How about needing the *Name Brand* anything, when the generic may even be better. And on, and on, and on…

My co-worker said, “What about going out to eat?”

“That’s just it,” I told him. “We go out whenever we want! We enjoy going out, and traveling, so we’d rather spend our hard earned money on that. Experiencing things and places together, and the memories we take from them are worth so much more to us than a bunch of stuff.”

I never said that I don’t spend more than $1,000 a month—I just that our bills are less than that.

There was a time when $4,000 per month wouldn’t cover my bills. Yes I had three daughters at home then too, but I also had two vehicle payments, and owned two more. We had a huge home on a golf course that came with a large mortgage. And so much stuff—too much stuff, like I said in I Worry.

Hell my monthly membership bill at the Country Club would routinely be over 700$ a month! I had no problem swiping my Amex, or adding a four-wheeler to our line-of-credit at the bank. We not only had leakage, we were the freaking Titanic—and I will never be put in that position again.

But the thing is, I don’t miss all that stuff a bit. I am infinitely happier now, than I was when I was weighed down by all those things. My sweetheart and I spend much more time together now, and we don’t have to be “doing” anything—we can just be. And that doesn’t cost a thing.

Being frugal is just mindfulness applied to finances. It’s the act of pausing before we swipe that plastic card. It’s sharing a plate of food with your lover, instead of taking home leftovers that are just going to be thrown away in two days' time. That’s one less styrofoam container too! ♻

When we are mindful of our spending, then we are able to gain more satisfaction of where the money is spent. We can support that starving artist, that’s making a go at their dream—we are better able to help others with the dollars that we do spend. We might buy that item locally, instead of online—then that extra 5 or 10% goes directly back into our own communities, instead of buying another yacht for a billionaire. Not to mention—that during that interaction with others, we get a chance to shine our light, or be uplifted by theirs…

When Ryan says, “Make the distinction between the critical and the extra,” he’s telling us to focus on what’s important, and discard anything that doesn’t help us reach our goals.

The extra is the leakage. And the less leakage we have, the easier it is to stay afloat.

Do you have leakage? Are there things that you spend $ on that do nothing to help you reach your life goals? What have you cut out, that’s helped you stay afloat?

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Here’s I Worry, the essay I mentioned earlier. Things are beginning to settle down a bit now. And publishing this essay, along with the thoughts and discussions with y’all, are part of the reason why. Thank you🙏