I came up with another reason I'm so stingy with money! I like to have things left over, or room to spare. Nobody likes to be stretched tight with no room to make mistakes, and that's exactly what happens with most Americans who live paycheck to paycheck, without any savings leftover in case of emergency. It's this pressure of not having money that I wanted to relieve, that if something did happen and I needed it, I could have that money. (Like playing video games I always tried to save my special power for when I really needed it, or when playing Monopoly the board game saving some money to get past other people's hotels, etc.)
In my Korean learning software they even have a sample sentence for this! It's called 요즘 경제적으로 여유가 있다. (I have money to spare these days).
I personally think that people in the U.S., actually are too spendthrift in their use of discretionary income. I walk down the streets of New York, for example, and I see a lot of shops people don't need: smoothie shops, jewelry stores, ice cream shops, nail salons (MJ never goes to nail salons, only hair salons to get her hair done. Thanks MJ!) These places are open because there are enough customers spending their money there. I'd like to think that all these customers are well off and have money to spare, but statistics show that's not the case, it's the people at the lower income levels who spend at these places and waste a large portion of their paycheck on these places, never being able to build up any savings and then going into difficult levels of debt that they can't get out from under. (There are even bankruptcy lawyers you have to pay to get OUT of bankruptcy, it's really a sad sight). I feel like there's an idea out there for helping people improve their financial literacy, like right before you make ANY purchase you put the price of the item into the app and it matches what you make, what you've already spend, whether this item is a good deal, your overall profile, etc., and gives you a rating of whether it's a wise purchase or not, a rating between 1 to 5. Not to say I don't overspend on stuff sometimes, I just went to the store the other day and got a gallon of water for FIVE DOLLARS! Just plain water! It was one of the biggest ripoffs I've made, and I'm appalled that store sells that item for so much. It's totally a way to trap unsuspecting customers who make a bunch of other purchases and don't pay attention to all the items, and $5 doesn't seem like a lot in the grand scheme of things, except if you overpay here, and then you overpay for gas, for toothbrushes, for fruit, and THEN you have to get to the necessary expenditures like rent and health insurance, etc. It all adds up. (I'm pretty darn sure I've said that on this blog before).
Anyway, I got a charlie horse last night after doing some uphill runs the day before. Did you know what a charlie horse was before reading this? It's a rarely-used term, and even native English speakers like myself might not know if they haven't heard of it, like there are words out there like "ad hoc" or "Pyrrhic" victory that I'm still just learning nowadays (never stop learning). Anyway, a charlie horse is when a part of the body gets pulled too far and cramps up, and it usually happens at night when sleeping and you're body's trying to recalibrate. For me, it usually wakes up me due to the pain, it feels like I'm dying for about 3 seconds, then it subsides quickly and it's back to normal, and I have a sore calf the rest of the day. MJ has had it too, although probably not from too much exercise like me (MJ always promises she will exercise more but......other tasks get in the way). It's basically the body saying, your muscle has no more room to spare! And it fights back with some pain. Solutions: drink lots of water before going to bed, also stretching before and after exercising helps to give a little extra room.
Conversely with having money to spare, I actually give myself no time to spare for some reason. So many times I've been just in time to make it to work, to a flight, to a meeting, to a party, never thinking to leave early and give myself some time to spare. I guess money and time are different concepts in my head, and I always think there's an infinite amount of time. Especially when setting an alarm clock in the morning, I always give myself a tiny window of time to wake up, put on clothes, get ready for the morning, and it'd have to be perfect to make it on time, and as most people know, mornings don't go perfectly, especially waking up.
Also, trading stocks with the idea of always "having a little money to spare" is a terrible idea. The stock market doesn't care how much profit you preserved or if you're at a loss, but I've invested with some of that in mind because it's my money, like my children. It's called being "scared money," and as a famous rapper once said, "scared money don' make no money."
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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