My motivations to spend less

I consider myself as one who’s pretty careful when it comes to spending. I’ve written previously (quite a long time ago actually) about my two hurdles before spending, which I’ll iterate here and add the rest of my internal motivations to spend less. They are more or less split by two categories which are: personal and ideals.

The first under ‘personal’ is that I value the money that I have earned. I’m sure that most, if not all, of us also share this same sentiment. But just to elaborate a bit to explain what this means personally to me. My current fulltime job at the moment is not bad, but all the same, I found myself wishing I’m doing something else almost all the time. The job gives me financial and intellectual satisfaction, but doesn’t fulfill my social, spiritual and emotional needs. So, every hour, every minute I put in this job, counts. That’s why sometimes I value stuffs that I consider buying in terms of my ‘time’. For example, I might think to myself - this handbag would cost me ‘2 working days’, is it worth it? Nah – I’d rather ‘spend’ that 2 days reading and playing with my kids rather than working. This would cost me one hour, that two hours, half day etc … It’s not an entirely rational or functional way to make spending decisions, I know, and it’s only valid on things on ‘want’ basis and never on ‘need’ basis, but it's still a part of the bigger picture, I suppose.

Secondly, I want to save up to build our dream home with as little mortgage as possible (the mortgage turns out not to be so ‘little’ afterall). Enough said.

Thirdly, I am serious about having a career change. Nothing is clear at the moment, but I’m hoping to do something (or more likely, a few things) that I like that is highly flexible (most likely as a self-employed or freelance). I am quite certain that I will not be able to match my current income, in fact I’m only aiming for less than a quarter (and I’m not even talking about the loss of benefits here). I’m not being pessimistic, I’m just being realistic, having explored and evaluated some options. This ‘ambition’ has two impacts; one is that I need to save up as much as I can now while I’m still earning a decent income, to be used for later days. The second is more important - that I cannot inculcate a spending habit or a certain lifestyle that I shall not be able to sustain once I take the big leap (insyaAllah).

Fourthly, and the last under the category ‘personal’, is that, being one who doesn’t enjoy cleaning chores and is rather disorganized, I want to minimize the amount of stuffs that I (we) own and manage in order to minimize maintenance and storage. Less stuffs, less clutter, less cleaning to do, and so on. I used to exclude books in this rule (just buy), but I’m being more picky about books I buy nowadays. If I think I only want to read it once, I’ll try borrowing it first. In fact, I’m thinking of selling some of my books, but that’s a different topics altogether. Back to less stuffs - so, if you step into my home and find it pretty bare, do excuse me. Despite that, my home will still likely to be messy, do excuse me again. Hahaha…

Oh, this turns out to be long enough as a post, so I’ll publish this first and leave the second part for the ‘ideals’ as Part Two for later. But even now, you must be thinking what a stingy person I am, wouldn't you? Hahaha... I hope I'm still able to find a good balance. Semoga Allah memelihara saya daripada bersikap kikir dan kedekut..