Have you ever
considered the truth of math and money when viewing your possessions?
Material possessions are everything you own. Clothes, furnishings, draperies,
electronics, and everything you bought that made you feel good or provided
purpose in your life.
What is the unhealthy
truth about the value of our material possessions? What does this have to
do with the way we spend and budget our money? Perhaps, nothing. But what if – this
has everything to do with the way we spend and budget money?
Clothes retain no
monetary value. What? This has to be wrong! Right? We pay higher cost for
name brand labels of used clothing because of the designer name. The persuasive
retail price tags would have us to believe these items do retain monetary
value. However, they do not. Why?
Clothing depreciates
in value - just as vehicles will - or a home purchased in a crime-filled
neighborhood or flood area will. This is the money truth of unhealthiness
spent on expensive clothing. Clothing only becomes an entity of value; when we the
public, make it as one.
So why invest your money into expensive clothing lines to get caught in
an exterior race that only leaves you financially struggling and strapped? Why
burden your income and budget with items you cannot responsibly afford?
Does clothes make you
feel good or increase your self-esteem? Does clothes make you feel externally
secure, while internally you really feel insecure? Does name brands make you
feel superior? Does expensive clothes make you feel handsome? Does expensive clothes
make you feel beautiful?
Clothing is an exterior covering on our bodies. This is all.
To emotionally link
our self-worth and self-value or self-esteem to clothing, is to internally have
no value in self. Why? Because the way we spend our money, does detail who
we are internally. Just as our actions detail who we are, more than our words.
The way we manage our money displays where our priorities are.
How many people did
you know who wear the expensive clothes suffer from issues and have troubles in
their life? How many have a difficult time balancing their professional and personal
lives?
When we scrap off the
exterior of their expensive clothing; we realize how their emotional,
self-esteem, and personal values of their characteristics and personality is a
sad, secret shell that contradicts the proud, vain, and appealing presence they
represent. These people who seek external fulfillment of material possessions
and expensive clothing, usually are not balanced in their life. They place
value in clothing labels and expensive clothing. Most cannot responsibly afford
it but they do it anyways.
Many use expensive clothing to cover and conceal the real issues of
their life.
How many celebrities
and notable social icons succumb to horrible crimes, prison sentences, and repetitive
DUIs that leave the general public to believe that if you have enough money; then
you are above the law? How is this something or someone to look up too? Why
would we seek to spend our money to appeal to a social life that we cannot
afford and one that surely is not in our best interest?
If celebrities and notable social icons cannot handle the pressures of
living beyond reality; than why do most of us seek to buy a lifestyle we cannot
afford?
Emotions will spend
and waste our money - if we continue to allow this to happen! We must make conscience
and rational choices with our money!
Shopping and spending money can make us feel good temporary.
But when we fail to put our money priorities first; then our lows will
immediately follow. The bills are not paid. Bad credit continues to mount. We
end up paying triple for materials that we place on credit cards and credit
accounts. The bills mount and offer no end in sight to relieve our financial
situations we got our self into. Our incomes do not decrease while our wants do
creating depression.
We have to acknowledge the emotional madness of our money.
We must make an effort to stop the bad practices of our money life to turn a
sinking ship around produced by emotional money choices.
The solution is easy to rationalize and hard to put effort
too. But it is worth it. Quit making impulsive choices with money based upon
emotions. Start making mature, logical, and rational decisions with money.
If you buy a $100 pair of shoes on a credit card or credit
account – do you know how much you are really paying to look “cool” for a
brief second? Fashion changes every second and will always come back around.
So how much is these $100 shoes going to cost you? If you
pay cash, $100 plus tax. Done. Put it on credit and it can cost you $120-$240
depending on the monthly payment you make, interest rate, and how it takes you
pay to them off.
Is any shoes worth
2-3 times the cost of their retail price? The answer is NO! Will you be able to
sale these high priced shoes you bought on credit for $240 used? NO! Clothing
has no monetary value! Stop emotionally letting clothes control you as if they
do. Stop allowing your emotions to control your money and budget! Start
controlling your income! Learn how to control income so you can control your
emotional spending too!
When we spend money,
it is not the big things that trap us; but the little things we tend to overlook.
Our emotional wants will try to supersede our priority things of survival. Our
inabilities to focus on a financial plan to pay off our interest bearing debt
accounts causes us more debts than emotional happiness from shopping
impulsively.
We spend money that we do not have to impress people who do
not really like us.
Why get caught up in a social cycle that only produces
stress on our budget and our finances?
Happiness and contentment produce a consistent and stable balance when
priority is placed on valuables in life that have no monetary affiliation!
Money is a tool. To emotionally place value in money is to misplace priority
and lose focus on the real values of life!
Money spent to
produce immediate and fast highs will never produce lifetime happiness and
stable contentment. Why? Because any high produced by invaluable items and
through harmful means produces only harsh consequences when the low happens.
Ask a drug addict, a
gambler, or an alcoholic in recovery, why they do not obsessively act upon their
addictions anymore? They will tell you that the benefits of getting a high
drunk or high buzz is not worth the low, real, and hard crashes that reality
gave them when they came down off their substance abuse highs.
Money produces the same substance abuse high when spending
immaturely, emotionally, and irrationally. Mature money spending, budgeting,
and being wise with a penny is the only way to produce a healthy relationship
with our income, our lifestyles, and in our homes.
Many are not as blunt
and bold about saying, “No,” when it comes to rejecting activities that cannot be
afforded. But we should be. Why? Because everyone deserves an honest
friend. Everyone deserves a responsible, mature, and healthy role model and
friend in their life. Anyone can be an ally or alibi to do the fun, immature,
or impulsive stuff in life. But it takes a real, truthful person to be a loyal,
dependable, and responsible friend or family member.
Anyone can lead or
follow to jump off a bridge because someone said to do it. But the person who reaches their hand out
to pull them back to tell them, “No or Don’t do this!” is more valuable for a
lifetime than the few seconds produced by free falling to an unstable ground.
Money does not represent
the best of who we are, by what we have. Money represents the best of each
person - when we control the money and the money does not control us anymore.
