Toys!

One of the painful truths of the current downturn is that many of us, Squirrels included, have been living our lives based on expanding our spending to fit our income..or worse, exceed it. Early on in our career (-verb, to run at full speed, usually downhill) we have to compromise and buy say a small car, or rent a less than ideal flat. Later, if we are lucky, we get more money and we arrive at the wonderful position of having 'enough'..a reliable car, a nice house and can afford two weeks in the sun. This is where the problems start however. If the career is going well, pay rises have (traditionally) followed and usually with them arrive a whole heap more work, more stress and less 'life'. We compensate for this by using the extra money we earn to either buy new toys or shoes or upgrade the toys we already have, like a faster car or new house, new kitchen, new wardrobe, new hairstyle, new sofa and more new shoes (your list may vary!) . The law of diminishing returns is however at work, ensuring that each new toy or upgrade never quite compensates for the extra stress used to pay for it. With each ratchet of the, er, ratchet we are tied into believing that the only way is up (insert song of choice) and so are increasingly handcuffed to working even harder to earn more stress and use it to pay for even more toys that overall add less to the sum of our lives than the previous toys which incidentally still work fine (apart from the wardrobe which we have outgrown due to not having time to go to the gym which we joined with the extra money we got from the last stress-rise). Keep up pls.

The current downturn is a timely reminder that there is another path. If you write down the 10 things you really enjoy doing...the things that make you feel 'you' and then match these up against either the10 things you actually do the most, you may be in for a surprise? Even if your 'toy to enjoyment-activity' ratio is high, you might want to reflect whether the enjoyment comes from the upgraded toys themselves or the activity in which they are being deployed?? Did the car upgrade really make driving more fun? The new clubs make golf more enjoyable or did the new wardrobe make meeting your friends more fun? No, didn't think so. Don't get me wrong, there is nothing intrinsically bad about upgrading your toys, but there is probably nothing particularly beneficial either...and if the price of the upgrade is ever increasing stress then it may be time to think of an alternative. The downturn is forcing many of us to think about what is important and how we derive enjoyment from our money and time.

And that can only be a good thing.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Really, was that 8 years ago??

Image
I spend a lot of time thinking.   This is not necessarily a bad thing as it's both free and does not get you too many strange looks on the tram.   Recently I was thinking about the pursuit of happiness and why it seems to be so difficult to get the age-old balance of money, time and health to balance?    This is not a new thought for me, or indeed anyone else, but life does seem to get in the way of actually actioning anything specific.   During this use of tram time, I remembered I had once started a blog on this subject, or at least I thought I had.   It's odd when you are not entirely sure if you are recalling something you actually got round to doing or if you just thought really hard about the idea but never did anything about it in the end.   So today, a quiet Sunday morning where Dear Wife has gone to the gym, I thought I would see if I had indeed started a blog or whether my memory was just playing tricks on me.   Eventually, after m...
Read more

A kick in the Pensions

Image
Recently a major corporation has kicked it's employees in the pension pot by winding up it's final salary pension scheme. The rights and wrongs of doing this are not the central issue, it is the effect on the people who are on the ground rolling in agony. One of the less publicised issues was that the company is changing the level of pension you get if you retire early - from 3% a year to 6 or 7% a year.  There are two issues that are faced for these particular employees;  1) That their pension pot will be smaller than expected  2) That their ability to retire early has been affected These points may not sound devastating , but the reality is with the pressures on jobs, there is a now a risk gap between when people are likely to have a job until and when they can afford to retire. In may industries finding a job when you are 50 is tough, really tough. Not an issue if you have factored that into your pension planning and worked out you can afford to live wi...
Read more

Pigeons

Image
I have just finished one of the most relaxing vacations I have ever had. The only downside of the well needed break was to highlight to me the gap between it and my 'normal' life. I feel so much better for a week of fresh air and either walking or doing nothing...neither of which are exactly expensive activities. So why don't I do more of this? Simply the lack of time! Working harder and harder to earn money which if I am not careful will simply go to buy a temporary feeling of worth or status. In a car park I use often, the open roof on the top floor has been meshed over to stop the pigeons getting in and doing what they do best. Occasionally one does get in and finds it impossible to get out..they keep flying up but can't get past the mesh. What has always struck me as odd about this is the fact that all they have to do to escape is fly down one level where they would find a huge entry and exit..but they never do. They are, I guess, programmed to fly i...
Read more