Stop It! You Do Have Enough Money
Caution, I am going to rant a bit here.
I have noticed a reoccurring trend with respect to what people say when they are talking about the barriers preventing them from achieving their goals. There are typically two, but I will only address one here…your money.
I don’t have enough money
I don’t have enough time
I humbly submit that both are lies. I can hear what some of you are saying. “Screw you! You don’t know my situation.” That’s fair and true. Before you discard my stance, answer a few questions for me.
Are you subscribed to Netflix, Hulu, Disney +, Amazon Prime, or other TV streaming services? If so, how many?
Have a gym membership?
How often do you eat out from fast food places or restaurants?
Love that $5 a cup coffee everyday?
How often do you make purchases from Amazon?
Do you have an iPhone or Galaxy cell phone with an expensive data plan?
Do you shop at high-priced grocery stores (Trader Joes, Whole Foods, etc.)?
Do you have a new 4k smart TV in your home/apartment?
Do you have the newest designer clothing (shoes, hand bags, outfits)?
Got credit cards!?
I think you get the point here.
One of my homesteading greats is Mr. Joel Salatin. If you have not heard of him, seek him out on the Google machine after you read this post. In one of his many presentations, available on YouTube, he is speaking to the people at Google about the potential future of permaculture farming. During the Q&A section of his talk, someone asks him, about how economically disadvantaged people are supposed to access better food given its increased price.
What he says is brilliant. It’s obvious that Salatin had answered this specific question before. He rebuts that it’s not a lack of money that is the issue, but how we allocate it. In short, we don’t prioritize the purchase of high quality food.
Let’s take a look at the questions I asked before.
Concerning the subscriptions, let’s just say you are paying for two…Netflix and Hulu. For a premium Netflix plan it will cost you only $16 a month, according to DigitalTrends.com. A Hulu subscription, with no ads, will cost you $12 a month (actually it’s $11.99, according to the Hulu website).
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average household spend approximately $3000 on eating out per year. However, those deemed Gen X and people aged 35 to 44, spend $4,249, and those aged 45 to 54 age spend $4,157. For the sake of this exercise, we will go with the conservative number. $3000 / 12 months = $250 per month on eating out.
Working on your Instagram photo body? Gym memberships can vary between pretty cheap to a good chunk of change. For our discussion, let’s say that you have a $40 per month membership…and you actually use it!
A cell phone plan with unlimited talk and text will costs between $70 and $90, according to costhelperelectronics.com. We all know that many people don’t pay for their phones outright and are also paying off the phone with their monthly bill, but we are going to leave that out and go with the lower number here as well. $70.
If you spend around 15 minutes on BestBuy.com, you will see that a smart TV can cost you between $250 to a couple thousand bucks. As before, we will shoot for the low number even though we know that its not really what people are spending on their smart TV. Have cable? According to Cordcutternews.com, American households spend $217.42 per month on cable. Lets keep it simple and call it $215.
Department of Agriculture data shows that a single person in the United States spend between $165 and $345 a month on groceries. Lets drop our pin in the middle somewhere and say the cost is around $225 a month even though we know that number would be significantly higher at a high-priced grocery store.
Need to show other people how awesome you are with that Louis Vuitton handbag? Well, a low-end hand bag on the Louis Vuitton website is over $1,000. What about shoes? Do you love Air Jordan sneakers? At least $100 a pop…and that’s on a discount.
Let’s not talk about those credit cards. No need for salt in the wound.
Now…this is all without accounting for rent/mortgage, car note, and utilities. I’ll leave you to do this math problem that I hope is revealing.
Okay. I’m done now because I think I have made my point. But I am going to be snarky. Tell me how you don’t have enough money again… (In the words of comedian Katt Williams, “I’ll wait.”)
Stop lying to yourself. Stop lying to your friends and family. You have more than enough money. You are not so poor that you can’t pursue your goals.
I would challenge you to take this information, look at your own financial position, and have your own ‘come to Jesus’ moment.
It’s time to wake up, folks. Reallocate those funds and invest in a better you.
Your path to financial independence starts with being honest about the fact that you are terrible with money. After that, it all gets easier.
