We all need to treat ourselves from time to time, but many of us don’t afford ourselves that opportunity. It can feel particularly difficult to do that when we’re trying to save money and spend less out of financial necessity. It’s never a bad thing to try to live within your means, but it can make certain things difficult when it comes to treating yourself and bringing joy to your life. So is it possible while also being financially cautious? Find out below.
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Earn it First
The first thing you need to do is earn it. If you’re looking to treat yourself, there needs to be a reason for doing so. If you want to spend money on something nice, you could set yourself some goals for you to hit. And then you’ve fit them or if you hit, you could give yourself a treat. It’s a good way to ensure that little extra spending is earnt and doesn’t become too much.
Limit Yourself
It’s also a good idea to set some limits on your treats. After all, a treat isn’t really a treat if you’re giving yourself one every day or even every week. If you take that approach, those treats will end up simply becoming the norm and they’ll lose their true meaning. You won’t appreciate them as much and you won’t be as financially cautious as you would like to be.
Find the Cheap Alternative to Your Ideal Treat
If you want to treat yourself without breaking the bank, you could look for some cheaper way to do it. That could mean buying the cheaper chocolate cake at the shop or it might mean looking at Used Jaguars rather than new ones when it comes to buying a new car. It all depends on the context and how much money you have to spend, but the concept is the same regardless.
Enjoy the Simple and Free Things in Life
There are so many simple things in life for us to enjoy and many of these are free. For example, having a long, luxurious soak might not seem like much, but it’s a nice free treat if you’re someone who usually has a quick shower before work rather than a long soak. Or go and watch the sunset or any other free and simple joy that life has to offer.
It’s Always Possible if You Try
No matter how much money you have available to you, it’s always possible to treat yourself on a budget if you try hard enough. You don’t have to throw cash at a situation in order to make it better or to enjoy yourself. A little extra effort and some thought can go a very long way, so keep that in mind next time you want to treat yourself.
Each of the tips above show us that you can treat yourself and remain financially cautious at the same time. So, don’t feel like you need to deprive yourself in order to remain financially stable because that’s usually not the case.
The aims of financial management are never ‘completed’. Just like fashion, it is a perrenial and important part of the means in which we plan our lives. Things move on. Just as you wouldn’t likely wear bell-bottoms outside of a period disco event, you needn’t factor in inflation statistics from the 70s in order to manage your households – things change and the means in which we deal with those changes will also change over time.
Financial management is an active, dynamic art, because money is an active, dynamic energy – or it can be thought of as such. This means that when assessing ‘financial stability’ it’s very easy to get confused if not coming at things from a certain mindset. You may earn less one year than the previous, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re doing worse off financially.
So, for those just starting to grapple with their financial management, how can ‘financial stability’ be defined, and is it even something we should aim for? Moreover, how can we use this knowledge to avoid falling into difficult financial traps we would rather not have been part of? We think we have some answers to this end:
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Living Within Your Means
Living within your means should be considered sacred wisdom when it comes to managing your financial stability in the best sense. We all know that if we’re struggling for cash, heading out and purchasing a new car on our credit with payments we cannot hope to afford is a silly idea, no matter how many irresponsible salesmen out there may be willing to grant us that opportunity.
That being said, living within your means can become too tight, to the point where you refuse yourself the ability to pay for reliably speedy internet despite working from home all day every day. Living within your means signifies tailoring your daily living situation to you, and from that vantage point saving money as appropriate.
If you’re a bachelor living alone? Perhaps you can easily do without the most luxurious accessories such as silk-lined toilet tissue, or whatever we can exaggerate to seem silly in context. If you’re running a family household, however, purchasing high-quality school uniforms may be worth the investment, as well as a sewing machine for the inevitable repairs you will have to make. This last example shows how worthwhile, intelligent investment in the things that matter and frugality exercised through repairs both have an important place in the daily financial lifestyle of a household.
Overarching Financial Priorities
It’s worth keeping your overarching financial priorities in mind. When we measure stability, we often measure it in response to the environment around us. For example, a boat is not ‘stable’ if it’s docked on land, or at least that’s not the environment we would measure its use within. We would consider it stable if it holds stability within the ocean, in conditions we expect the design to meet. As such, financial stability can be best measured when it’s set against the overarching intent of our financial priorities.
Perhaps the most obvious and fundamental part of this would be considering your survival needs. Are you able to eat three square meals each day, and provide those to your family? Can you pay your rent? Can you purchase new shoes when you need them, or fill your vehicle up with fuel when empty? This might be considered your first financial priority.
Then we have those higher up the pyramid. Are you managing to put away some money in case of emergencies each month? How about saving to build your credit? What about potentially earning enough to settle down and be viable for a mortgage in five years time? It’s these questions that are worth asking, and can help you measure the relativity of your financial situation among many different criteria. This way you can make your budgeting decisions effectively. It could even help you use your financial stability to give grounding to someone else, such as when using a guarantor loans comparison site to help a financially needful (yet earning) relative with a cash injection.
Defending Your Finances
Defending your finances is also a part of financial stability. It can be easy to be a victim of financial fraud if you care little for where you store your documents or how you store them, and the same goes for ignoring suspicious transactions in your bank account. Learning how to shake the card reader section of an ATM can help you also find scanning devices placed by those without scruples.
There are many ways to defend your finances. From ensuring you apply adequate fingerprint protections in your mobile banking app to avoiding taking on loans with predatory pricing terms, it’s important that you have your financial health in mind at all times. This can sometimes be through defensive action, or aggressive action such as disputing an outstanding charge that has since appeared on your credit file.
Overcoming Worries
We all have our financial worries from time to time. It’s not exactly something that is inevitable, but many can find themselves somewhat lacking in their financial allowances or potential and may suffer as a result.
Overcoming those worries can often be found by direct, worthwhile action. Sometimes, you may have to work overtime or take on an extra shift depending on where you work. It can be that through using debt charities you are able to get a handle on your debt and get back to normal, contacting and consolidating creditors to the best degree.
Financial stability is not always supposed to mean having the best and strongest financial sitting, with thousands in the bank and the ability to purchase anything you want without any recourse for the consequences. Instead, it’s about doing what you can to become stronger and more stable in your financial efforts, no matter how humble a starting point you may be beginning from.
With this advice, we hope you can accurately and adequately define financial stability in the best sense possible.
