JoshNot that you have to choose one or the other, but people tend to find it easier to do one of these or the other. Spending less and earning more are two techniques that will help you achieve greater measures of wealth. Many top finance blogs spend a lot of time emphasize spending less. You’ll see this with incessant repetitions of terms like Frugality and Living Beneath Your Means. While this way of living is great and should be cultivated by most, it might not be as effective as you think it is. Saving methods like www.couponninja.com are helpful, but will need to combine with earning methods in order to pay off big time.
For one, saving money registers in the brain just like physical pain to many people. The same goes for putting off expenditures and experiences in order to have a larger sum of money in the bank account. A few people find saving natural, but these people are the exception. For most of the rest of us, it’s a lot easier to do almost anything but. While we might get wrapped up in frugality as an ethos, most of us find that it goes the way of most New Years Resolutions.
People naturally want a reward for their labor, and they want it soon. Because frugality doesn’t have a big payoff anytime soon, it can feel like we are working for no clear purpose. This is why spending less, on its own, is not enough for most people to meaningfully change their financial situation. To do that, we’ve got to start earning more as well.
Earning more works with human nature much better than savings does, at least for many people. Earning more is about fulfilling one’s own potential, a key part in the development of personal identity and happiness. Even if you don’t feel like it at the moment, deep down you want to feel like you’ve accomplished more than you presently have. This isn’t wrong or bad. In fact, you may find that it makes other aspects of your life a lot better. Higher earners tend to have lower incidence of anxiety and many health concerns. This isn’t just because they can afford better care; it’s because people with few material resources tend to be more stressed out. Becoming more successful may actually be good for your health.
So as you make your personal and financial goals for the next year, make sure to incorporate both spending reduction and earning increase methods. By paying attention to both of these, you’ll be sure to make meaningful progress, financial changes which can build on themselves for many years to come and which will enable you to actualize many of the other changes you want for yourself. Earning more isn’t all about money. The means you have to go through to make these sorts of changes in your life will have far reaching effects to many different corners of your psyche. Do this work and it’ll pay off in many more ways than one.