As I spend more on food for these 10 days. I keep thinking to myself. Why do I save on $10-$20 for meals. When I can save so much more if I just don't follow my wife to Paris? That would straight-out save $1300 at least.
It's like skimping on the small stuff but making poor decisions on the big stuff.
Then after that, I continue to think. If I continue to work or take up part-time work, what's another few dollars here and there?
The train of thought is neverending. Save a few cents at supermarkets vs save a few dollars at restaurants, vs save a few hundreds, vs save a few thousands. Then the thought becomes, why not just work a bit more and don't need to save so much.
And I was having difficulty reconciling this, cos as I spent more on restaurants this trip, I thought to myself, I could easily have saved more than this by not doing one of my Paris trips. AND that would probably have saved even more.
Then I stopped thinking about it...
You see, there's no end to this. Everyone lives their lives differently. Some people want to eat more, travel more, buy stuff, etc. And there's really nothing wrong with that.
Some people start out with $1 others start out with $1,000 in their bank. Some people earn $1,000 others earn $100,000.
If you earn $100k, then even after flying a few trips to Paris the savings after expenses will still be more than the person who earns $1k.
So how to reconcile? Cannot reconcile la!!!
Everyone starts differently, lives differently, and ends differently.
The best we can do, I think, is to live within our means, we save where we can, spend when we feel we need to spend. Cos there's no end if I keep questioning each and every one of my decisions.
Of course saving more is better, but if I scrutinize my every spending, then I might as well save all my money and live homeless.
Cos that's the cheapest way of living right? Live without a home, but have a lot of money in the bank, or I rent out my current home and I live on the streets. Then I only need my handphone and insurance coverage. And I can probably even find food, water and shower for free. Everyday live in a tent along east coast.
But I don't think that's the kinda life anny of us wants to live. So as much as I'm an advocate to cut expenses and keep high savings rate, I think we all need some balance to live life the way we want to. Or to maintain a certain level of acceptable lifestyle.
We're not trying to reduce expenses from $50 per month to $40 per month. We want to live well on maybe $400-$600 per month. Sometimes more, sometimes less, depending on situation.
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