Reader Question: Don’t You Ever Splurge?
As a writer of a public blog about money and investing, I get plenty of feedback from the internet. Not all of it is positive. There are definitely trolls. Sometimes though, people ask really insightful questions that are worth sharing. Sometimes even the trolls ask really good questions.
Today’s post is about one such question. A reader recently wrote to me and asked:
“Don’t you ever just splurge on fun stuff? Your “Other” spending is practically non-existent. Don’t you ever have any fun?”
The reader was probably just trolling, but I found this line of questioning (or is it lifestyle commentary?) really interesting on a whole bunch of levels. How we think about fun can create large differences in how we spend…
Fun Is Not Spending, And Spending Is Not Fun
First and foremost the questioner here implies that because we don’t spend much on non-essential items, we don’t have any fun.
I beg to differ. That couldn’t be more wrong. Fun is not about how much money you can spend. There’s plenty of fun to be had that’s free or a really good value.
For example, the Tako family has a ton of fun:
- We go on summer camping trips with the kids.
- We take a annual vacation when the kids aren’t in school. Sometimes this is international, and sometimes domestic.
- The whole family enjoys board game nights!
- We enjoy watching movies, often borrowed from the library.
- I read a TON of books to the kids, all borrowed from our local library.
- We host and enjoy dinner parties with our friends quite often.
- We enjoy walking/riding bikes/visiting our local parks, and hiking on our local trails.
- We have other “fun” hobbies (like writing this blog) that don’t cost much.
So yes, I think we have A LOT of fun! Honestly, I don’t know how I could even find the time to have more fun!
Does all this fun cost a lot? Nope! Most of these activities are not so expensive that they’ll put a dent in our monthly expenses. Many are completely free. Traveling internationally can certainly get a little expensive, but we try to travel-hack our trips whenever possible. This makes flying considerably cheaper.
We don’t just spend money to create expensive fun. Instead, we find fun things we enjoy that also happen to be really good value for the money that we do spend.
Do We Ever Splurge?
To answer the question “Does our lifestyle includes any splurging?”, I think we first have to discuss how to define splurging.
Splurging, is spending money far beyond usual (every day) levels and doing so without constraints. Basically, uncontrolled spending in the pursuit of “pleasure”. The key here is spending without fiscal constraints.
So does the Tako family splurge?
I would say, “No, we don’t”. We never “ignore the prices” and just party. That’s not to say we don’t have any frivolous spending — we do! Mrs. Tako and I both have play money accounts for our frivolous spending (covered in this post), but our frivolous spending is carefully controlled. This control keeps the frivolous spending to a very small percentage of our annual income.
You’ll never see us randomly laying out thousands of dollars on expensive handbags, at 5-star restaurants, or late night pub-crawls. Even when we go on family vacations there’s always constraints.
We try to get good value for our money. On family vacations our spending is freer than it normally would be, but we still look for good value and carefully control that spending. No crazy shopping sprees here!
This is the difference between trying to be a frugal person and actually being a frugal person.
The tape measure of frugality just becomes part of who you are. You can’t turn it off like a light switch. It’s always on. So spending with wild abandon? Just. Isn’t. Going. To. Happen.
I am not going apologize for being who I am either. I’m frugal and OK with it. I’ve been careful with money for so long, measuring value and being careful with money just happens automatically.
Sure, Mrs. Tako and I will occasionally go out for dinner, but we don’t go to high-end places. We don’t order a bottle of wine or the most expensive thing on the menu either. We keep things pretty “low rent”, and we do this so rarely it feels really special.
This is part of the mind-hack that happens once you get yourself off the hedonic treadmill. Suddenly even a pretty pedestrian meal out feels like a fantastic 5-star luxury experience.
Not A Special Snowflake
If there’s one thing I reiterate over and over again on this blog — that I’m not a special snowflake.
Nobody is ever going to dump a pile of money in my lap. I’m just a regular person. I wasn’t born into money. I didn’t inherit a large sum, or get rich from stock options. I don’t have special skills that are going to earn me hundreds of thousands of dollars a year either.
I simply earned my money the hard way — By going to work day-by-day and making a few dollars at a time. Then, saving and investing whatever I could.
Frankly I worked hard for that money, and I learned to be extremely careful in how I spend it. I’m not ashamed of that. To suggest that I should spend it freely or loosely without controls in place sounds like absolute lunacy to me.
I traded my life away for those dollars! Shouldn’t I be absolutely certain I’m getting good value for those dollars? I think so.
How about you? Do you ever spend extravagantly on shopping sprees, meals out, or on vacations? Be honest and tell me about it in the comments!
[Image Credit: Flickr]
I have to admit there was one point in my life that I thought splurging = fun. Bought a bunch of designer purses, ate out a lot, went to a bunch of broadway shows. Did it increase my happiness? Only temporarily. The purses got boring real fast. Maybe it’s because I like a challenge and hate taking the easy route to getting dopamine hits by pulling out my credit card.
Splurging is fun one in a while, but it does get old fast. Funnily enough, I actually found the FREE activity of going to an outdoor hot river in Iceland WAY more fun than the overpriced Blue Lagoon (over $100 each!). Proof that sometimes the best things in life are free 🙂
Kudos for sticking to your guns and not falling for the FOMO of “splurging” = “fun”
Thanks FireCracker! As a person who once equated fun to spending money, it’s amazing to me how you were able to turn things around and retire so young!
I totally agree that one not need to spend money to have fun. However, we do splurge. We are foodies and like really good food and wine that sometimes comes from a very nice restaurant or a winery. I love those things. In the FI community I am bit of an anathema, but that is why this is personal finance and we only do it once in a while.Personally, sounds like you all have lots of fun!
There’s nothing wrong with going to a nice restaurant or winery… especially when you only do it once in awhile! Just don’t let it be an uncontrolled expense. Budget for it, plan, and restrain your spending to fit within that budget.
Love it dude, don’t let them tell you what fun is. To me, running is fun. Once I buy a pair of running shoes for $45, it’s all gravy for the next 500 miles. No more money needed. Lots of fun, and the fitness and appetite that come along with it.
You’re truly an inspiration Dave! Thanks for the wonderful comment as always! 🙂
We aren’t splurgers, as you say it is part of our DNA now even though we are retired and past the accumulation phase with excess funding. We have considered giving money to our kids now, we gave them 10k each a couple of years ago. They’ll inherit a lot some day but maybe it makes sense to give them some of it now when they could use it? That might be considered a splurge, plus we give quite a bit to faith based causes and regular charitable ones. I’m not sure if it counts as splurging if the money is not being spent on us? We did upgrade two of our toys, our fishing boat and off road vehicle with new ones before retiring because we were getting by with unsafe and unreliable junk, but it was a tiny amount of our net worth, those could have been splurges but even then what we bought was less than half price of top of the line models, because we never go with top of the line, too expensive. One splurge I have been considering is flying first class or business class on a vacation. We’ve never flown higher than premium economy, ever, unless I was bumped by the airline because they had overbooked or the jet broke down and I did not have to pay for it. I get a little claustrophobic, especially if I’m wedged into a center seat with big people on both sides of me and those first class seats seem so nice and spread out! I’ve told myself, next flight I’m going to pay for first class but I’m not sure I can actually make myself cough up the extra money. It is meaningless money at this point, we could not outspend our means if we tried, but still, DNA is hard to ignore.
Sounds like a “good problem” to have Steveark! I hope one day I end up in your situation — with more money than I’ll ever need!
Based on the definition of splurging you provided, I have never splurged.
I have both expensive and inexpensive experiences and costs. Our expensive spends/experiences (when probably compared to a middle class family) include eating out once a week at a nice restaurant (usually 1 Michelin Star or above); taking nice vacations 4 or 5 times a year (routinely 4 or 5 star hotel stays); buying a luxury item or two per year such as a nice watch, and paying to live in a good area of town.
Inexpensive experiences include taking strolls at the park, taking the kids to the local playground or library, hitting up museums and zoos, attending the occasional movie night and organizing play dates for the kids.
My family has an annual budget for our spending. The budget includes both the expensive and inexpensive items. Therefore, there is no spending “far beyond usual (every day) levels and doing so without constraints”.
Y think if you plan and budget carefully, any expense can avoid being a splurge. That seems to be what you’re doing here. You spend a lot, but your budget can also handle it so it’s really not a problem for you guys.
It’s the people who spend without thinking, planning and creating a budget that run into trouble!
I “mini splurge”…and i must say I love the feeling… for example, I’m obsessed with books and read over 100 a year. I will never ever stop myself from buying a book. Whats the worst case scenario? I’ll buy a 1000 bucks worth of books? Sounds like heaven 🙂 libraries just don’t cut it because it doesnt feel as exciting – the thrill is just ruined with waiting lists, time limits, blah blah, not having the EXACT title at the time I want it. Just gimme All The Books. I dreamt of being “rich enough” to afford this when i was just a little kid and now I can, I’m not anout to limit myself.
Obviously this doesnt work if your hobby is fancy cars or gadgets etc bc the worst case scenario there looks a tad worse 😉
Anyway, I guess splurges are awesome when they’re somewhat contained to one thing (or very few) or something that happens very rarely. Its when you do things to try and make up for boredom or just out of habit that they become useless in the “maximizing joy” department!
Very interesting Suzie — You say you buy books instead of going to the library because it’s not as exciting?
That’s probably the first time I’ve ever heard someone describe buying books as “exciting”! 🙂
I feel the same as Susie! I want to read what I want to read when I want to read it. That’s splurging to me. If the library doesn’t have it then by the time I get the book I don’t feel like reading it anymore. And if I do feel like reading it then I feel like I have to read it, like it’s an obligation because some else is waiting for it. There’s an added sense of pressure just when I want to relax and let go. So yes, there is an excitement of downloading the book right when I want to read it. I feel happy that, yay!, I get to enter this new and wonderful world!
I’m glad it’s not just me that feels this way!
I totally agree! I LOVE books. Books are so exciting. I get most of my books from a used bookstore in town; each book is less than $10. And I love having bookshelves full of books! There are books everywhere in my apartment. But at some point, I will probably start getting rid of books so that I can replace them with more books. Most of them can be sold back to the used bookstore for a credit, so there’s that at least. I also buy e-books sometimes if I can’t find the ones I want. I don’t go to the library as often as I should, and when I do get a book from there, I usually don’t read it… It’s like if I have a deadline, I don’t want to read it? Funny how that works. I don’t even know how many books I’ve already read this year, but it’s a lot!
I would say that your lifestyle is excellent and healthy for your family. Time is our most precious commodity not money. You are spending your time reading books and playing board games with your kids. They will remember it forever. We did the same with our kids. Our holidays were to disney , or other places where the whole family could enjoy each other. We always looked for the bargins in where we could stay at reasonable costs. We drove and I packed sandwiches and snacks to eat along the way.
We lived in a small town outside Hamilton Ontario with our 5 kids. I shopped at Dominion grocery store and saved the points from groceries to cash in for Blue Jays tickets. The boys (3) as they grew where good eaters and we often when to 2 games a week and the kids could invite their friends along. We had a 8 passenger van and parked for free in an alley off from a street where we could walk up to the Skydome. We always splurged and had a great bratwirst and pop for everyone on the way in to a great game. The kids never forgot the fun they had. They are all with families of their own now.
You do not have to go on a spending spree to have a wonderful time together.
I am with you on your principles of handling money.
I am older so am thinking more about leaving a legacy for them. We have discussed this together and both believe that you can leave your kids too much money. So we are organizing our will to leave a great amount to our favourite charities. We have always given to things that we know are good investments and will do so in our final disposition of our wealth. Do you think that you can leave your family too much money?
Oh absolutely, having too much money can spoil kids.
You and I both learned sound money management principles the hard way… If kids inherit a couple million dollars without learning those principals it can absolutely ruin them. They won’t know how to budget properly, invest properly, or even learn who to trust with their money. They’re bound to lose most of it.
There’s nothing wrong with leaving a little money of course, but instant multi-million dollar wealth without learning the value of a dollar (or how to invest) is just asking for trouble.
Solid post Tako
A really great read. Its crazy to see how much the average person just spends and then thinks its weird if you dont.
Im probably in the middle. We definately do splurge when we go out. I like nice vacations and they arent cheap.
Now obviously once we are there and its not all inclusive my dutch does come out. You do need to be mindful of what you are spending.
If we go to a zoo or waterpark etc I enjoy getting food there vs bringing our own food. I feel its part of the experience and our “splurge”.
Day to day we watch what we spend and make saving a priority.
Like you said some of the best activitys are free. I love hiking, its great for the kids and also gets the dog involved.
It may sound weird but the 2 things that always make me feel like a million bucks are getting a haircut and new shoes. (I dont buy new shoes often)
Anyways keep doing you, Your a inspiration to alot of people.
All the best, cheers!
Thanks PassiveCanadianIncome! 🙂
We splurge a lot. I was raised that way. But we’ve gotten a lot better over the years. I agree with your point about making experiences special. We are working on making eating out only a very special occasion, not eating take out or grabbing something because we’re too tired to cook. I’m happy to splurge on travel or special meals, but I want to make sure we are making those splurge decisions very purposefully.
If you make those “splurge” decisions purposefully and budget for them, they really cease to be splurges, don’ they?
Suddenly you know exactly how much of your annual income you spend on travel or special meals, and you know when you’re spending the right amount.
People say “that’s not fun”, but I disagree! Wild uncontrolled spending should not be fun.
Early in my career after paying my 10k student loan off in 6 months I thought I deserved Starbucks mocha (short size), but was into your money or your life and Tightwod Gazette pretty early. At the moment I am spending on supplements based on recommendations from a certified traditional Chinese Medicine practitioner to regain some health and energy with taking care of two year old, full time job and two parents with dementia. Husband and I argue about how costly the supplements are, but I’m feeling so much better. Also, we decided to meet at a resort with other family once a year to escape the cold winter and spend time together, leaving next week
Have fun on your trip Tigermom! 🙂
great post. I have to admit, its hard to do what you are able to accomplished. I think I am late to the game (being able to think and act frugal) and thus I still working to get to FIRE…your blogs is helping me get closer..thanks
Your welcome Hiep!
No, I don’t splurge. I am pretty thrifty: I don’t eat out and I go to the cheapest grocery store and I’m just as happy as a clam. My hobbies are reading and making digital fantasy maps, and I don’t need to spend money on that (there are plenty of free books available for the Kindle). I also go to a climbing club but even then my expenses are carefully budgeted.
Maybe it’s in our genes, as Steveark says. I have a friend who collects fantasy figurines and has a room almost entirely filled to the brim with them. He’s clearly got a strong passion for the subject and he has fun with it, but I just couldn’t see myself doing the same.
Keep rocking the frugal fun 🙂
Thanks Clarence! I don’t even think of it as frugal anymore… just fun! 😉
The less I spend the more simple things become quite special, also a little splurge feels extra special. I once paid for 2 broadway shows in one day for my daughter’s b-day. It felt unbelievably decadent, and I didn’t regret it for one minute. Do I want a life filled with splurges like that, no thanks. Hedonistic adaptation is for reals!
You said it Karen! Imagine a parent that gives their teenager a Porsche for their 16th birthday. That kid is pretty much ruined for life because *everything* is probably downhill from there due to hedonistic adaptation!
Me, I’d rather keep my expectations really low, and let small quality of life improvements slip in very slowly.
We’re very similar. The other day, I read a post about the fun money account. I don’t have one. It’s because most of the stuff we do for fun doesn’t cost much. We haven’t had a big splurge for a long time.
Yes, we go out to eat once in a while. But I think that’s okay. It keeps life interesting and doesn’t cost that much. Maybe when the weather improves, we’ll splurge more.
I hear you Joe — it’s hard to go out and spend money when the weather is so miserable. This week is forecast to be really nice though!
Usually no but we’re making a one time exception. We’ll be spending extravagantly on a vacation this year by renting a house to share with our co-vacationers which we can’t travel hack. We’ll be paying for our lodgings in cash (well, credit card), rather than our usual modes of bunking free with friends (and cooking for them in return) or redeeming hotel points. It’s still less than the average cost of a hotel room but that’s a huge splurge for us to make this particular reunion happen. We’re balancing that by planning a big Costco run and cooking for ourselves a lot instead of tacking on a lot of expensive restaurants to fill the days. We’ll also do free hiking and hanging out to enjoy the free beauty of our destination.
Sounds like you’re going to Hawaii….
Our family fun sounds a lot like yours – enjoying camping, games, movies, bike riding. etc.
We probably vacation a little more than most, but we’re very particular with making sure we find a good deal. Then we don’t usually spend a lot on the actual vacation. Cruises are our big splurge, but it’s usually all-inclusive and we don’t spend very much at all other than the actual booking (other than the flight).
It’s too hard to have fun without spending a ton of money to justify the need to consistently spend every penny on alternatives.
— Jim
I’ve never been on a cruise before Jim, but they sounds like a lot of eating on a boat, with the occasional day-trip to a tourist market in another country. Is my assessment on cruises wrong? Why do people enjoy them so much?
No doubt that the food is delicious on the ship, but we enjoy more than that. Our big splurge is that we always get a room with a balcony (but remember we only book if we can get it with an incredible deal). This might sound boring, but we love every minute of the balcony – being in the middle of the ocean with no obstacles around makes for the most beautiful sunrises and sunsets. At night, there’s no light pollution to see an open sky filled with so many stars, it’s amazing. And then the sound of the ocean is just mesmerizing.
The shows on the ship are fantastic to see (and included in the price). We see a different one every night and love ’em. Most are family-oriented so our daughter loves them as well.
As far as the tourist traps, yup, they’re out there. But we don’t care about that because we leave those behind. We do usually leave the ship (though I’d be happy staying onboard as well), but we go on our own. Depending on the location, we usually self-tour and know the places beforehand we want to check out. It’s awesome to go to sleep and wake-up at a different country to explore every day or every other day.
I could go on and on about this all day, but it would be longer than your whole post! 😉 Some people love ’em and some don’t care for them, but I’d definitely put one on the list for your family at least once… with a good deal first, of course!
— Jim
Each person’s definition of fun can differ significantly. Ours is pretty simple, and while some purchases/purchased experiences can bring joy, it’s not everything. There are sometimes anomalies month to month in our budget, but it isn’t beyond our means, and we can plan around it.
It’s that planning that’s important Tinna! If you spend a bunch without controls or monitoring, that’s when I really call it splurging.
I love post that make me think and this was one of them, so thank you for writing it Mr. Tako. For me (as I can’t speak for Mrs. Nomad Number since she is not around), I spend money on two main categories of items: “stuff” or experiences.
– When it come to “stuff” I only go for items that add value to my life. How do I definite value? Well it’s pretty simple. It is a function of frequency of use. If I use an item less than once a month it doesn’t have enough value for me. Items that bring me value are the one I keep using over and over. This means at least once a week. Daily use is the sweet spot (like my step tracker, smartphone and sometime laptop). Anything that doesn’t pass this test is very likely to end up pretty quickly either donated or recycled. I actually use this process to reduce/refresh the packing list that we had to fit in my carry-ons as they are the only piece of luggage that I travel around the world with (For more details: https://www.nomadnumbers.com/carry-on-packing-list-for-nomadic-long-term-travels/).
– When it come to experience the flow is different but still it still boil down to how much value I will be getting by such experience so I won’t get into details here as I think you get the point. If there is not value, I just move on.
As you said it well Mr. Tako, fun isn’t directly correlated to how much money your through at stuff or experience. Actually it sometime can have the exact opposite as we tend to build high expectations towards expensive things/experiences.
Thanks for the comment Mr. Nomad Numbers. Seems like you’ve got that “value” evaluation under control!
I like the daily use comment. I bought a Pixel 2 XL because I am a heavy smartphone user. I basically use it all day every day – at work for music and entertainment, photo taking, and at home for games and casting and stuff. I also play Pokémon GO which is a huge battery suck. I had cheaper phones, but the batteries were constantly running out, which was a huge pain in my butt. I have barely any issues since buying my P2XL (and the $80 Otterbox… served me well when I absentmindedly put my phone down on a hot stove!). Totally worth it, would do again 10/10.
Well said Mr Tako.
Too often we equate fun with money and it doesn’t have to be.
Some of my best times were just hanging with friends for free.
Now that I am where I am at financially I do tend to splurge when it comes to experiences. In my mind I haven’t taken as many vacations as I should have by now (some self inflicted choices) and now that I do I feel like I can loosen up the purse strings and try and make each one the best tailored it can be for me (for me I love food so I tend to drop a lot of money on it when I do travel).
But I agree on your point that if you work hard for your money it is really only up to you what to do with it (whether splurge or being frugal)
I totally agree Xrayvsn! Some of the best experiences I’ve had in my life cost absolutely nothing.
For example: A simple walk to school with my son in the morning. We walk and we talk. I wouldn’t give that up for an extra $100k a year.
You remind me a little of my parents. They were frugal…very frugal. The saved up a considerable amount. Enough to send me to school and get a well paying job. After they retired, I urged them to spend down some of their money. I wanted them to enjoy themselves more; not without constraint but reduce the constraints a little. They couldn’t change their mindset. Their net worth actually continued increasing during retirement.
Towards the ends of their life, it was hard to identify what they enjoyed. My dad liked going to the gym and watching TV. My mom liked gardening & tending to her backyard rock garden. That adds up to a monthly gym membership fee, a cable tv charge, some gardening supplies and tools. My mom would walk in an undeveloped area near their house to pick rocks off the ground. Very modest expenses.
Then they died and left their estate (7 digit net worth) to me. Although I am grateful for the inheritance, I really didn’t need it. I would have preferred they spend that money on themselves. I realized it comes down to their attitude towards money. They viewed money as an obsession. No amount was “too much.” Spending it was painful for them. They spent as little as possible. I viewed their behavior as unhealthy. At some point, I crossed a line. My attitude went from saving to spending or at least not saving as much. Money is there to provide a sense of security but once that sense of security is fulfilled, increasing your net worth really doesn’t make sense.
You know, if you parents lived a happy life without spending all that money, then I think they lived a great life.
For me, increasing spending isn’t my goal in life. Increasing my financial independence, happiness, and the well-being of my family is my real goal.
I don’t even know what I’d spend more money on! A bigger house just means more to clean and repair (more headaches). A fancier car would just mean I’d worry about scratching it more and keeping it clean. More travel wouldn’t be terrible, but it also means more of my life sitting around in airplanes and airports (not really my idea of fun).
Eating out more? Maybe… but I can cook better meals than 90% of the restaurants out there.
What exactly would I spend it on? 😉
I think of splurging differently. Less as spending with wild abandon and more as indulging in something I really want but might not normally get myself. For example, a massage is a splurge. But to me so is going and getting a $9 meal from a nearby restaurant. It’s within my budget, but it’s not something I’d normally get. Hence, a splurge.
In that sense, I think just about everyone splurges on something — even if it’s just upgrading from the most basic model of something you need to something with a few more bells and whistles that you want. But spending with wild abandon? Not in my DNA. Even when I’m out drinking with friends, I’m adding up the cumulative cost of drinks in my head and keeping an eye on the total.
We splurge here and there but we focus on spending the money on quality items and things that’d create memories. So we are very similar in that way. 🙂
Very thoughtful article! A couple of things that ran through my head reading it were:
1. “You’ll never see us randomly laying out thousands of dollars on expensive handbags”
Brought to mind a recent article from gocurrycracker, the way we think about money is so profound.
2. The splurging concept brings to mind the fungibility of money. A dollar is a dollar is a dollar.
3. “I traded my life for those dollars!”
So true. It’s funny how our life is so intwined with the money we make/have. We can’t let it have mastery over us though. Jesus also spoke about money almost more than any other topic. The rich young ruler turned and walked away in the end because Jesus told him to sell all he had and then come and follow him. He didn’t, most can’t…
If somebody is happier with driving a 30000 Euros car….his business, but why is he seen as fulfilled, happy and as having all the success?
Why people who are careful with their spending are seen as cheapskates, unhappy and judged all the time?
Just because I don’d spend everything I earn or I don’t need to modernize my house/my car every couple of years doesn’t mean I’m not happy. My peace of mind comes from knowing we don’t have debt, we can sustain our family from our income even if reduced in half.
I splurge…with my economies.I like to see how I can increase my savings…that is fun for me.
I’m a frugality loser. I spend about as much as a single man living alone as the entire Tako family does on core expenses. People still call me cheap.
Hi Mr. Tako,
Great post.
Based on your definition above, I don’t think I ever splurge but I used to when I was (much) younger:) And I still manage to have fun.
But like you , while I don’t control my spending as much while on travel, I always try to get the best value for my money.
Last month, I spend $156 for Malaysian take out for my 3 kids (+ 2 boyfriends!) and I. It was totally out of the ordinary for me but totally worth it and well within my budget. Splurge or not?
Cheers
Hi Mr. Tako,
I use to have my moments of extravagant expenses (eating out, gadgets, travels…even a wine house (what a waste of money!!!)) in the past, mainly due to lack of maturity and opportunity of having the chance to experience many things for the first time. I grew up in a small town in the countryside of a developing country. When I moved to a big city, started to work and making my money, I somehow wanted to see/do/try all those things that I had no chance in the past.
With the years I just realized that to have happy and meaning moments was not necessary to expend money. It is more related to the state of mind and who you are surrounded by.
All the best.
Cheers!