Name: 9 Things I Stopped Buying to Make More Money
Uploaded: 2023-01-01T08:00:15.000Z
Duration: 7 min 16 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

In this video, I'm going to go through the 10 things which I've stopped buying.

As we've already spoken about, I'm not a big believer in saving, but I am a believer in spending below your means.

And saving will only get you so far, but spending less so that you can use that money to invest and work and grow for you will make all the difference.

Cutting out these things has left me with so much more money every month without having to sacrifice on my quality of life.

I read a lot and I think reading is super important and it's a great financial investment to increase your human capital and your knowledge.

And that is something that no one can take away from you.

Material items can go out of fashion, they can be stolen, looks fade, but knowledge, once you've acquired it, that's yours to keep.

So, now, what I do is I keep my all-time favorite books in a hard copy and on my bookshelf,

and then the ones that I know that I won't be reading again and again and again

I either buy on my Kindle or I rent it for free through my local library on an app called Libby.

if you don't have money for it, just don't buy it.

The second you put your key in the ignition and drive that car out of the showroom, it loses 10% of its value.

An average brand new car will lose a further 60% by its third year.

I know some people like the feeling of  having a brand new car, but is it really worth that additional amount of money at this point in your life?

Or can you hold off to invest that money into an asset that will generate the cash flow to buy that new car later on in your life, if that's what you want?

Flights, hotels, making memories, these are all things that I'll be buying more of.

But what I've stopped buying is souvenirs from every trip.

More than a waste of money, it also massively cutters up my living space.

I live in a two-bedroom apartment with a kitchen that's the size of a shoe box anyway,

so the last thing I want is shot glasses from every city I've been to overflowing from my cupboards.

If you really want  to kind of remember a trip, then write in a journal.

I've made an online journal/Vlog, and I've been writing in it after every holiday that I've been on since 2016.

And I just read through it before recording this video, and it brought back so many more memories than any souvenir there ever could.

The rate in which new technology comes out way exceeds our actual need to replace them,

but regardless of this, we still do keep buying it.

I've actually  found that the more I have of a particular thing the less additional happiness it gives me.

So, when I first got the Apple watch there was a big jump in my happiness and going from no Apple watch to having an Apple Watch.

I felt healthier, I felt happier with all the workout prompts.

And then, a year later, a new version came out and I spent a few hundred quid more to get the upgrade.

And that maybe five percent increase in happiness that I got from getting a slightly better version just didn't correlate to  the amount of money I spent on it.

So now, whenever I think of upgrading something, I always ask myself, is it really worth spending that a hundred thousand quid more to upgrade the specific thing,

or should I rather spend that money on a new experience or a new item that will correlate more to the amount of happiness I get from it?

There's a difference between buying something  on sale and buying something because it's on sale.

Sales can seem like a great way to save money at first

because when stores do these 20% off, 30% off, 40% off sales

they're just actually using a psychological trick to make you justify that spending in your head.

If there's a jacket that you were going to buy anyway and now it's on sale from 200 dollars down to 140 dollars,

But if you're buying it because it's on sale,

then you've got to look at it like you're 140 dollars out of pocket.

Sales are just a way of buying things that you wouldn't have otherwise bought.

And remember it's you against these multi-billion dollar organizations with huge marketing budgets behind them.

Number six, investing in things that I don't understand.

This isn't one that I stopped buying, but it is one that I've stopped putting my money in, and it's things I don't understand .

A lot of people put their money into Investments without really understanding what they're investing in.

And even if you do have a financial advisor,

you should have a basic level of understanding in where your money is going,

whether it's ethical, whether you actually want to invest in that thing

because no one would care about your money and where it's going as much as you will.

I mentioned in one of my other videos how I haven't bought an item of clothing  in the last six months.

I didn't think this was anything surprising, but it seems to be.

Long story short, I used to shop at all the fast-fashion shops you can think of, Forever 21 Missguided, Boohoo, whatever.

But when I look at my closet today, none of those fast-fashion items that I bought are still in there.

I used to spend a lot of money on stuff that I'd wear a few times, and then I'd get rid of them because it started frailing or went out of fashion.

Now, I've learned my lesson, and when it comes to clothing, I'm so much more about quality over quantity.

If something feels really good and it's really comfortable,

then I'd buy it even if I'm spending a bit more money than I would  have if that was a fast-fashion item at Forever  21 or something.

Also, I find that having fewer clothes just frees up my mental space.

I don't have to spend much time deciding what I'm going to wear.

And I have like three different tops that I choose between when I'm recording my YouTube videos,

and it's just one last thing that I have to worry about.

So, that's getting my nails done, getting my eyelashes done, getting my hair dyed,

it's all too high-maintenance and it just doesn't happen anymore. 

And a big part of why I don't get this done is also because of the time it takes to get those things done.

When I'm getting my nails done I can't do anything else at the same time, I can't get my work done at the same time.

So, it's... for me, it's not  only the price I pay for getting these things done  

but I also think about it as a time value of me sacrificing an hour that I could've spent on doing something else that would get me a greater return.

Just FYI, I don't think of this time dollar value with everything in my life,

like seeing my friends, family, going on date night,

but it is with things that I think are just a waste of time.

This Christmas I'll be signing up to a prenup, which is a no unnecessary present pact.

Usually, during Christmas, we give presents to an extended list of  people, but right now we're going through a cost of living crisis

and expecting to see the longest recession in the UK to date.

And honestly, I feel like holiday gifts are things that we just do out of habit, and very often, I get things that I don't even want or need,

but then I feel obliged to give it back to that person and vice versa.

According to findit.com, the average British adult would fork out 548 pounds of Christmas gifts, and the average American will spend 990 dollars.

And I'm no Grinch, but I think there are free ways to give back which will still be very much appreciated.

And that way, maybe other people won't feel like they need to spend on you just for the sake of it, either.

My overall mindset for spending is that I have absolutely no problem in spending things that really bring me joy and value,

but I don't want to spend on things just because it's out of habit

or because it's based on my ego and feeling like I need to impress people.

I think if you cut out on those two things, then you'll be in a pretty good place financially.

With all of these things, I like to kind of look at my financial decisions in terms of trade-offs.

So, if I'm buying a liability or something that is going to decrease in value over time over time,

"Is that extra amount of money that I'm going to pay for this thing worth the trade-off of potentially sacrificing my financial freedom?"