Are You Getting The Game?
A Question I Answered About Money The First Month I Made More Than My Parents
Sotce, do you spend lots of money? Do you have any tips on saving money? I want to be more frugal. I hardly spend money now except on eating out because my kitchen is always dirty from my roommates.
I do live a frugal life, I eat pretty simply and I hardly buy things for myself. I haven't lived anywhere in a long time. Only strangers travel. I think I've grown quite strange.
To me an item poses a responsibility and a burden. I will unwrap it and dispose of its wrappings and collapse its box and then it sits in my room or in my bathroom and watches me until I use it or I give it away. There are a few things I like and really burn through, things like soap and socks and a gold ring from my mother. But this mindset keeps me frugal, this awareness that I am completely in charge of my belongings, that they must serve their purpose, that they will follow me endlessly unless I murder them. In a cluttered room I feel my perception bouncing off of things that are mostly heavy and uninteresting, bouncing around like a confused bat. In a simple room I am clear minded, my senses rest in basic space, I lie down and look out the window and inhale minimal dust particles.
Take a moment to really think about the accumulation of objects, to consider what arises in you when you picture certain overly material scenes: a bathroom littered with makeup. A load of laundry rotting on the bed.
I owned a lot of clothing before it felt heavy and stale. I shudder now even thinking of the suitcase of shit I left in my mom’s house. Shit is a strong word I'm sure, there are things in that suitcase that I really treasure, but I can’t really think of anything in particular. Most of it is living a wasteful existence. When i was a teenager i would bring home heavy loads of weirdness from the thrift store, I would excite over “#1 grandpa” sweatshirts and baggy jeans. I'm aware that thrift store points to frugal but this was a hobby then, to throw money at clothes and drugs and eat a big burrito and run through things in my free time. And undoubtedly the clothes I'd buy would come to live in a crumply mildew pile, they would sit in fateful silence on tile floors and on chairs and they would spend more time being picked up and shoved somewhere than anything else.
The difference came in stripping everything down, the reckoning that occurs with a sinking feeling that most of your stuff is junk. Breathing cold clean mountain air after spending a long time in the city.
Lately I do receive strange packages, gifts from companies I've never heard of wrapped in paper and sent to my front door, perfumes and candles and shirts that smell like factories.
Another key to not spending money is knowing what you use money for and what you like to do with it. The purpose of the money you have or the money you wish to have. Would you like to live somewhere or travel around or reach a certain piggy bank number or have a nice mattress since you spend half your life lying on it? So often we are in a group of people and they want to do something very ordinary, they want to go bowling or to a warehouse party or go to a restaurant and eat a bacon cheeseburger. It's fine to do these things, and maybe you like these things more than I do, but we have been set up to do things like this since the day we were born. We have been set up to wade through routines that aren’t serving us. So be firm in what you want, it’s much more delicious to save up for a big joy than to spend the summer doing half hearted things with people from your hometown.
I stopped buying clothes and makeup and jewelry and i told my friends i liked to meet at their house or at the park but i would not be going to the club when I don’t even like drinking. My earring holes closed up and my highlights grew out. I spent money solely on food and on flights and on keeping my place toasty in the winter and i felt at ease with this spending because I knew how much other people spent on nothing at all. I was lonely for awhile, I wasn’t getting as many calls and I was missing a certain sparkle. In patience I found it again, in buying one small thing at a time, buying one small thing for someone else or one small thing my life was burdened by not having or one small thing to fit in my bag. The satisfaction of looking at a million combs and picking the hand painted wooden one at the flea market. I started to relax and think about it all a bit less and then I was slowly buying people coffees and birthday presents and picking up tabs.
And then I'd be in a new country planning on getting a hotel room and a distant friend would offer me a room in their flat. I'd spend $20 on groceries when I expected to spend a hundred. I'd buy a ticket and miss the train and forgive myself and hope the person with the ticket next to mine enjoyed the extra room.
I don't look at the bank account numbers very much. Numbers are hard and decisive. When I open Patreon I squint so I don't see those numbers either. I buy someone lunch if they let me and I hardly look into clothing stores and if I spend $30 at a paper store I imagine my plane ride home for Christmas will be $30 cheaper than usual.
Sotce, what do you think about inherited wealth and subsequent guilt that one might feel? I feel as though it is a barrier between my friends and I.
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