The Road To Financial Armageddon #6: The Yuppie Years
I finally get to catch up with my online reading from The Simple Dollar. And this new blog has exposed something new to me about this author, his way of spending did not just end where his wedding was. I was surprised to know that people can actually continue spending without acknowledging their habits are costing their money! It's so scary! And I am glad that I knew it when it was time for me to stop.The mistakes that the author made?
1. Bought wholeheartedly into the "yuppie" lifestyle. When Cu and I married, I had this vision to have a beautiful home for ourselves. I wanted a new dining table, a tv stand, a set of couch or sofa, a set of cookware, etc. But my conscious told me that those were just what I "wanted", not what I "needed". Look, we did not need a dining table, we never eat together! We did not need a tv stand, we already have a small table for this small tv, so we did not need a fancy one. We did not need a couch or sofa, we hardly have guests! Although I have friends who kept telling me some good deals in some good furniture stores, especially IKEA (And gosh, how can you say IKEA furnitures are expansive?! They are cheap and affordable!! But do I need them? No.), but I still smiled and told them that I did not need them. I was glad that Cu always let me to make decision on things like that. I am a very self-discplined person, and I never overspend our money since those hard time in my past. And I will never ever let myself to fall into the same financial hole again althought it was really not my choice before.
2. He began to finance this "yuppie" lifestyle using nothing but credit cards. This lifestyle sounds familiar, but it is behind us now. It was not for "yuppie" lifestyle, but school and living. Although for different reason, it did use our credit cards even before we met. And now we realized what went wrong and we had solved 50% of those debts. And now we are on the way to solve another half.
3. They lived in a place that maximized our transportation expense. A lot of people think that living is important, and they would pick the nicest place to live regardless the distance to work. As for Cu and me, we are the type of person who are lazy to get up too early in the morning and stuck in the traffic for hours to just get home. So we choose a place that is very close to our home. I walk to work and it only takes 10-15 minutes for Cu to drive to work. It saves us a lot of gas, and there are a lot of grocery stores and restaurants in our area. And I have to admit, where we live does influence the saving. And I am glad that we are on the same page on this point.
4. Expensive hobbies. Both of us have no expensive hobbies. To be frank, other than on the Internet playing games, checking emails and chatting, I mostly watch tv or reading when I have nothing to do. Are they consider expansive? I hope not. So I think we both fine on this one.
经验
是从错误中累计的
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