If your expenses exceed your income and you realize that you need to do something and start earning more, you usually have two choices. The first is to look for additional earning opportunities as quickly as possible. And the second, most popular, you focus on spending less and wait for the situation to change on its own.
In order to improve your financial situation, your focus should not be on how to cut back on spending. Rather, you must start investing in yourself and the environment around you. We’ve put together a few reasons why, in order to increase your money, you must learn to spend.
1. You need to get rid of unnecessary stress and worries
When you set a goal to save as much money as possible, you additionally bring even more stress and worry into your life. Your mind will constantly be haunted by thoughts of where you spent more than you needed to; you’ll berate yourself for impulsive purchases, and feel bad when something falls into disrepair, gets lost or is spent too quickly. Instead of working, resting, or just minding your own business, you’ll go over and over the same things in your head.
2. You have to watch your health
If you’re fixated on saving as much money as possible and making it the number one goal in your life, expect negative consequences. Your reluctance to spend can translate into health problems. You may avoid preventive visits to the doctor, you may look for cheap alternatives to prescribed therapy, or you may even choose to self-medicate. All of these can be very dangerous for your condition.
Health is the most important resource in everyone’s life. It is easy to damage your health, but it is almost impossible to restore it, at least up to the level you had at the beginning. Yes, some problems can be solved – for example, diseases can be cured, and your well-being can be improved. But diseases, medicines and various interventions will still affect your health one way or another.
Try to earn more, so you can always afford to go to a qualified specialist, expensive procedures or the best medicines.
3. You need to please yourself and your loved ones
When you shift your focus from making money to saving it, there’s no money left to live and enjoy life. The first item of expenditure severely restricted to you is entertainment and pleasure. Anything you think you can easily do without.
Yes, going to the movies, going on vacation, buying necessary goods for a hobby, or just small but enjoyable purchases are not as important as food, water, clothes and other expenses. But the longer you limit yourself to pleasures, the less sense you find in your work. You spend a lot of time and effort, and you end up being unable to please yourself with the things you want. This is a common reason why your productivity may be declining.
4. You have to invest in yourself and your development
In order to start earning more money, you have to grow and develop constantly. You will have to expand your field of knowledge, learn new skills, pump your professionalism by participating in various contests, and improve yourself. This requires you to make certain investments: investments of effort, time and, of course, money.
To increase your income, you have to start investing at least part of what you earn into yourself. The minimum you should start with is to provide yourself with comfortable working and studying conditions. For example, buy modern and high-quality equipment which will work properly. Imagine how much easier life would be if you did not have to constantly waste time and nerves on having to reboot your computer or phone at the most inopportune moment.
Training, business trips, and contest participation also require you to make a financial investment. Of course, you can learn the skills you need and acquire valuable knowledge from books, videos or free courses, but you can rarely get the most necessary, useful and in-demand things without paying for them.
5. You should not save money, but try to increase your income
To avoid getting into debt, you can focus not on finding opportunities to increase your income but on trying to save money. Afraid of spending too much, you will refuse to buy the goods and services you are used to; you will sacrifice their quality, choosing the cheaper offerings in the market. But this strategy is fundamentally wrong.
Of course, it is useful to manage your money wisely, for example, not to spend it on things that cost too much or not to buy something you will not use. A healthy urge to save money when it doesn’t negatively affect your quality of life is always commendable. But when you start getting greedy, even when it might be detrimental to you, your condition, or your life, it’s time to stop trying to save the extra penny.
Shift your focus to finding new ideas for making money. If you realize that your paycheck isn’t enough to maintain a comfortable standard of living, consider changing jobs. If this option is unavailable to you for some reason, look for additional opportunities – take a part-time job, get a second job, or start to monetize what you are good at. You may not be able to increase your income much, but the extra money will help you feel more comfortable and confident.
6. You have to improve the quality of your life
You can convince yourself that you’re perfectly comfortable without your apartment, without your car, and a good smartphone and quality clothes. You can call people who allow themselves to take a cab or dine at a cafe when they are too lazy to cook at home, spenders. But it doesn’t change the fact that they can afford more than you can. They live for their pleasure; they respect themselves and their time, and they invest in their own comfort. As a consequence, they spend money to save other resources and invest them in more important areas of life. For example, by managing their time wisely, they rest more, get less tired, and work more productively.
You, too, must gradually improve your quality of life. At first, you may feel like you’re wasting money, but over time you’ll realize that a cab ride isn’t always a whim. It can be a great opportunity to save a huge amount of time and nerves.
But be careful: it only works in your favour if you do something to increase your income. If you mindlessly start spending more while deciding not to make any effort to change your life, the only thing you’ll end up with is poverty and debt.
