How To Enjoy Life AND Build Wealth
If you like to spend, ensure you’re making financial progress
A lot of people claim you can’t enjoy life without sacrificing financially in the process. It depends, though. Within the first year of my career, I paid off my car and a credit cards and traveled to multiple countries.
How was I able to do all of it?
By aggressively saving and investing, living significantly below my means (my rent was $300 at one point), and focusing my spending only on areas that I valued most, which include:
Food
Travel
Investing
There’s not much else I care too much about. Caring less about things (i.e., minimalism) and keeping my spending low in other categories helps offset my overall spending.
What about you? What does enjoying life look like for you? What spending categories do you value most? How can you reach your financial goals while also still prioritizing enjoying life?
Step 1: Set A Strong Financial Foundation
Before you prioritize building wealth and enjoying life, you need to reach a financial disposition that allows you to do both. Otherwise, you will be shooting yourself in the foot by tackling two things at once.
If you don’t have a solid income, manage significant debt, and live above your means, it doesn’t make sense for you to travel liberally, shop your favorite brands, maintain costly recreational habits (e.g., excessive partying, drinking, and drug usage), and buy things you don’t need.
Building a solid financial foundation is the prerequisite to building wealth and enjoying life.
4 Tips to Setting A Strong Financial Foundation
Consistently elevate your income.
Live significantly below your means.
Create multiple income streams to avoid dependency.
Build up your emergency fund (3–12 months of expenses).
Never Quit This: Investing
Whether I’m traveling or rampaging on food tours, there is one thing I never stop doing: Investing.
I never cease investing, and I do this by automating my investments and staying open to other investing opportunities.
If you prioritize investing, you will always have money, you will always build wealth, and you will always create more financial flexibility for your present and future.
How To KEEP Buiding Wealth AND Enjoying Life
I say “no” to many things: furniture, high-end vehicles, top-branded clothes and shoes, yearly phone upgrades, storage, drinking, costly money-oriented recreational activities and habits, excessive giving, imprudent investment opportunities, and things/experiences I don’t really want.
People and businesses are constantly trying to get you to buy things. It’s a consumption-focused world. The less intentionally you consume, the less opportunity you will have to build wealth.
Be more thoughtful, and watch how your flexibility to enjoy life increases with your wealth. And as Ryan Holiday states, “Be ruthless to the things that don’t matter.” x
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This article is for informational purposes only. It should not be considered Financial or Legal Advice. Not all information will be accurate. Consult a financial professional before making any significant financial decisions.