Here’s A Life-Changing Mindset for Your Buying Habits

23 Jan Here’s A Life-Changing Mindset for Your Buying Habits

We use money to buy the things we want and need. But what if, there’s another “currency” we can use to shift our mindset about our purchases?

Here’s a life-changing mindset for your buying habits

“We don’t buy things with money, we buy them with hours from our life.” This is a quote from minimalist blogger Joshua Becker from Becoming Minimalist. When we begin to think of the things we buy in exchange of our time rather than our money, we start to realise the weight of our purchases and understand the true cost of the things we think we want and need.

Our ‘time’ as currency

According to the ABS average weekly earnings report, the average weekly ordinary time earnings for full-time adults in Australia in May 2019 was $1634. For discussion purposes, let’s round it off to $1600 for a 40-hour workweek. Following the said life-changing mindset, a coffee ($4.00) would cost you 10 minutes of your work. A summer dress would cost you 2 hours of your work and a Louis Vuitton handbag would cost you 2-weeks worth of your work.

Of course it will always be up to you how ever you wish to spend your hard-earned money but it can be a helpful guide in being mindful how much of the hours in our lives go into the stuff we buy.

Calculating the ‘opportunity cost’

Opportunity cost refers to what you could have done with the money had you not spent it to buy new stuff. If you have the cash, perhaps you can consider making extra repayments for your mortgage. You can also opt to save up for a property you can invest on.

The takeaway

Once we start to apply this mindset, we realise how we can maximise our money—hours we spent working—and spend it into something more meaningful such as building your dream business, enrolling for a course, or even saving for your home deposit.

I hope you find this principle interesting and let me know how it resonated with you!

References:

https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/6302.0main+features1May%202019

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