I hate big purchases

By big, I mean purchases that require a significant percentage of my income or net worth.

I always aim to buy things that I could easily buy several times over. And almost every time I do the opposite, I end up regretting it.

Why? Because as Joshua Becker said, you’re not buying things with money, you’re buying them with hours of your life.

Given that realization, it’s hard (at least for me) not to feel committed to something that costs months, or in some cases, a year of my life.

There was a time when I bought an apartment with pretty much all savings that I had at the time. And funny enough, by the time the apartment was finished, I didn’t want to live in that city anymore.

But because I invested so much money and energy into an apartment in that city, I took waay more will than it should’ve to pick up my things and move.

Thankfully, I didn’t repeat this mistake with my car. I did buy a car that is comfortable and I enjoy driving. But it’s cheap enough so that I don’t worry too much about things like depreciation, expensive insurance and things like that.

This is also why I’m a big fan of black H&M T-shirts and don’t want to own any designer pieces. Whenever I spill something on my shirt, it doesn’t matter, because it’s easily replaceable.

It’s not about frugality though

It’s about the freedom that you get when all your stuff costs only a small amount of your life energy. And therefore you’re free to change it, sell it at a loss, or simply forget somewhere and not give a second thought.

The goal is not to live like a monk.

The goal is to only buy cheap stuff, but make enough money so that everything you truly want to buy is cheap.