Declutter: My View on Approaching Personal Spending

I've always been someone that's pretty prudent when it comes to money, in fact I like saving money. Sometimes I can get too carried away.

As I make bigger spending decisions (more on that next time) and do a monthly cycle on my expenditure, I've been forced me to think deeper on the current take on my personal finances. I don't really like using the word "finance" because I'm definitely not an expert and people tend to associate the word with something that is seemingly complicated.

Questions I ask myself a lot are: When is the right time to spend and enjoy? Are we really going to save only for retirement? To what extent do we strike a balance?


Like with all things, while there is no cookie cutter solution (such a consulting comment :-P), there are inevitably general rules you follow. From there, you make tweaks to ensure that the rules works for you.

Here are some personal rules I've made for myself in order for me to enjoy my hard earn money in a more guilt-free manner:

1. Money is meant to make your life better, not to make you suffer: I used to be someone who save every dime and penny, worrying about never having enough to spend for my future. But sometimes reasons you pay that extra cost is because you want to remove that extra burden to save you the hassle/ time  (i.e. administrative costs or eg. taking a cab vs a public transport). Time to money: time to rest and work on your mental well-being, time to invest in up-skilling yourself.


2. I don't complicate my personal finance when it comes to expenditure  investing and insurance.
• Spending: I tend to just set a budget every month and just spend within that budget - that's it. 
• Investing: When it comes to investing, while going into funds/equity (whatever you call it) and high yield accounts are important, the  biggest asset is your salary. Think about it, your experience in the workplace is value and it is the most certain that yields the highest y-o-y % increment that you can ever obtain. If you are spending another 8 hours a day at home trying to see what's the next big investment - there is so much opportunity cost where u could have used the thing to time to perhaps learn a hobby, spend time with people whom you care about and enjoy life in general. Why worry about your investment all the time - unless that brings you joy of course. In essence, take some time to research on investing but not all of your time.
• Insurance: I view insurance as a warranty on my life to pay off my liabilities: it is a 100% cost and I don't mix assets and insurance together.


3. I don't spend on things I don't really care about but I spend on ton on things that I see value in: I'm not a fan of shopping in general, but when I do get my moment of retail therapy, I don't worry about feeling guilting about how much I spend at one go. The items I buy are usually not impulsive purchases and items that I tend to have a lot of use out of (sometimes too long)