What I didn't think about before trying the service was how much time, mental effort, and energy goes into thinking about, planning, shopping for, and preparing every single breakfast, lunch, and dinner for seven days.
Not to mention, it still takes time to cook the meal that arrives at your doorstep! But I've been shocked at the difference it makes. I felt extremely skeptical about this for one, I enjoy cooking. Meal kit-serviceįinally, we tried out a meal-kit service for about $250 per month. She takes three hours to do the same work that takes me around seven. Just like the lawn crew, our housecleaner is much more efficient than I am. We also hired a house cleaner to help maintain the inside of our home, which runs about $300 a month. They do this in a fraction of the time it takes us to complete the same work, and what was a big weekend chore suddenly becomes something we don't even have to think about (let alone spend time on). When it came to purposely increasing our spending - a really weird feeling for someone who'd avoided lifestyle creep like the plague for the last decade! - the first thing my husband and I did was hire a lawn care service to help maintain the land around our house.įor about $175 a month, a crew cuts our grass and does some weed-whacking around our property. When I looked at my own life, I could easily identify places where I was spending a lot of time. I was further convinced to change my spending habits by actual research that suggests people are happier when they use their money to buy back time or to enjoy experiences. My refusal to spend more money - even when I had the discretionary income to spend without actually jeopardizing my financial future - might have meant a little more cash in the bank, but the tradeoff was far less of what made a bigger impact in my life. When I made this mindset shift, I saw that my obsession with spending less often cost me more in terms of time, energy, experiences, and the ability to be present with my family. Using money well required me to think about my priorities and the value I got from the dollars I had, too. I started thinking about my personal finances in a broader context: it wasn't just about dollar amounts on a spreadsheet.
I spent money how to#
I stopped seeing it as a scarce resource, and started considering things like how to better leverage not just my cash flow but my energy and time as well. Money was more like a tool I could use to build what I wanted. Money isn't the only precious resource we haveĪs I moved through my late 20s, I slowly learned that money wasn't an end in itself. The truth is, time is much more valuable - a lesson I wish I'd learned far sooner. I'd spend ridiculous amounts of time and effort looking for savings hacks and DIYing everything to avoid spending money, because I saw my finances as a finite and precious resource. I felt guilty whenever I spent money, and developed a warped sense of what was truly valuable in life. I worked hard, I saved a lot, and I developed a strong financial foundation that allowed me to build up a lot of assets in a short amount of time.īut by 25, I was also feeling burnt out and afraid that no matter how hard I worked, I'd never have enough money to feel truly comfortable and secure. These ideas did give me a huge leg up on my peers through my early 20s.
\And they told me that the only way to make it in life was to be independent, get a practical, stable job, and work as hard as I possibly could for as long as I could.
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