Actual vs budget. How we live and what we do is often the difference between a great and a great deal. We’re all guilty of this in some way most of the time (i.e. when we get home from work, we might not have the money to pay our bills), but we would be foolish to not take that into consideration. It can be helpful to think about things in that light.
The main reason we have the money isn’t just that we’re on a budget but that we use the money to pay for things, like flights, clothes, food, and so on.
We spend too much money. In general, it’s the things that we don’t get to spend on that seem to be the most expensive. If we can’t get a decent hotel room on a budget, we’ll head to the local mall and get something decent, but if we can’t buy a TV to go with our TV, we’d rather just spend the money on something we really like.
This is a big one because it is a direct result of our budgeting. The amount we spent on a particular thing, whether that be buying a TV or a plane ticket, or any other purchase, is not an accurate indicator of just how much that purchase cost.
I used to be a huge budget spender, but then I started to look at it more critically. I started looking at how much we spent on a single item before deciding whether or not I should spend the money on that single item, or instead on different things. There is nothing wrong with being a budget spender. It’s perfectly fine to budget for groceries. In fact, most people would be shocked if they knew someone who wasn’t a budgeter.
This is a bit of a technical issue, but if you’re a budget spender and you want to invest some money into an item you can probably buy a few hundred dollars or so from a friend, and you can probably save a lot of money.
The thing is, most of us budget for our own things but when it comes to investing in things, we don’t really know what the return on investment is. We just want to make sure we are not burning any cash. The best we can do is to try and figure it out. We can also ask others what the return on investment is and try to figure it out for ourselves.
It’s a matter of perspective. We can’t be sure whether a brand new product will really get us to the point where we can afford the same price as that brand. However, if a brand is really good, then it should earn us some money, but if it is, it should save us a lot of money. Most brands that invest in things will have very little to lose, so you can be sure you can afford to spend some money.
We had to get some of our money back on the car this year. We were out of cash for a while. This was one of those “we can’t afford to buy something new, and we’d rather just have it a few years from now” moments. Our car was a piece of junk that was a “good deal” at the time we bought it, but it is now a pile of rust.
Buying a car is one of those things you shouldnt have to ask yourself “am I willing to pay a lot of money for it?” Most cars are built to last and are not going to be driving your car in a couple of years anyway. So if you want your car to last and you are willing to spend some money, then you should be able to.