It’s no secret that luxury can be attained through a high income or otherwise being in possession of large amounts of money – the counter-intuitive truth is that the more important part of attaining a luxurious lifestyle is how you spend that money.
In all facets of life, conscientious organization of resources leads to improved returns on the use of those resources; this is fundamentally true of one’s finances. The best way to ensure that one achieves this improved return is through frugality and conscious spending. The frugal lifestyle is not the opposite of the luxurious lifestyle, but rather its Siamese twin.
Immediate allocation of one’s income can help reduce and ultimately eliminate overspending by wide margins, as has been proven by multiple studies in a variety of scenarios. Even more notably, keeping a spreadsheet of one’s spendings massively improves awareness of where exactly one’s money is going, and how it can be more optimally distributed. This is a proven method even outside of finances, in areas such as weight-loss and general productivity – writing things down creates a mindset of heightened cognizance and organization, and the awareness of the reality increases one’s ability to exert willpower in those areas.
This awareness will spread to everything, from buying food to paying the bills. Of course, this doesn’t mean that pleasure-spending is something that should never happen – where then would the luxury come from? Pleasure-spending is vital to keeping a high moral, and happiness improves productivity and chance for success in all thing. One can, however, make sure that one is obtaining that happiness in the most optimal way possible.
Once erroneous spending is done away with due to a better understanding of one’s financial allocations, pleasure spending and Christmas presents for family members can be had without worry, but rather with total and complete confidence that the money being used is not being used at the expense of anything else.
Even without extensive documentation of income and spending, there are ways to keep overspending to a minimum. One way to ensure that overspending does not occur in the area of pleasure-spending is setting specific spending limits on certain activities and materials. Love buying makeup? Set a limit on how much money you spend on makeup per-month. Love drinking? Set a limit on how much money you spend on buying drinks per-month. Even for less cut-and-dry hobbies like gambling, setting limits is still possible – the casino site Mr Green has implemented something they call Green Gaming (explained on the Mr Green gaming page), which has new users set limits for things like deposits and wager over the course of days, weeks, or months.
Habits like these help to build a lifestyle of frugality. Once this mindset of careful spending sinks in, the frugal lifestyle – and the path to the luxurious lifestyle – will be within grasp.
