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Welcome to another edition of #AusFIWeekly. You’ll find great handpicked Financial Independence links from Australia and abroad – brought to you by Michelle, a mid-30s semi-retiree sharing my FI adventures at FrugalityandFreedom.com.
This week, I’ve been pondering the idea of Money Dials, suggested by Ramit Sethi of I Will Teach You To Be Rich (excellent book, despite the clickbaity title). Money Dials are those areas that we naturally love to spend money on; for example, those first answers that come to you instinctively when asked what you’d buy with a hypothetical gift of $10,000.
“Knowing your Money Dial can transform the way you think about your spending, because it lets you understand what you spend money on and why, and it enables you to redirect your spending from other areas to spend extravagantly on your Money Dial. THIS is what true Conscious Spending looks like.”
I’ve recently taken up Latin dance classes and am finding myself pouring money into them without regret – in fact, quite joyfully. It’s a surprise to me as much as anyone, as my wallet doesn’t open very wide for many things! (Except another Money Dial: travel. Miss ya!). It’s been fascinating to observe my reactions to this newfound enjoyable source of expenditure – I’m happily picking up extra work to spend more on them, forgoing other things that don’t light me up, and shedding any guilt around how much this hobby is adding up. Leaning into your Money Dials is “intimidating and liberating at the same time. It allows us to say, Hey, this is important to me — and that’s not.” Read more about Money Dials here.
What are your Money Dials? I’d love to hear from you. Join me on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter.
Australian Links
Thoughts After Four Years of Freedom – Strong Money Australia
“As time goes on, I get a little more in tune with what I like and don’t like. When you control your time, you can tweak your lifestyle to suit the level of busyness you enjoy best. As an introvert, I crave a bunch of quiet activities (often solo) that I can work on at my own pace, free to work through ideas and problems and not be disturbed. That’s what’s so great about freedom. We get to build our lifestyle from scratch. What we do, how long for, when we do it and so on.”
Simple Tips for Spending Less and Saving More – Nazeem Hussain, ABC Everyday
“Understand that we often buy things because buying things feels good. Often the product itself is almost irrelevant. We buy for the dopamine hit. The sugar high. We buy to avoid pain, or boredom, loneliness, or even the feelings of inadequacy.”
Invest Now or Wait? – Aussie Doc Freedom
“I suspect for first-time investors there are always plenty of predictions of impending disaster. There are always lots of reasons to delay. But odds are that you are more likely to regret not investing now. Even if you time your entry into investing really poorly, markets recover over time.”
What You Need to Know About This Millennial Retirement Experiment – MoneyBites
“Participants in the experiment had different visions for their retirement including being retired by 40 or travelling in first-class. Know how much your retirement vision will cost.”
International Links
How to Do Long Term – Morgan Housel, Collaborative Fund (USA)
“The long run is just a collection of short runs you have to put up with… So rather than assuming long-term thinkers don’t have to deal with nonsense, the question becomes how can you endure a neverending parade of nonsense.”
The Purpose of Frugality is to Get Your Stake Money Together – The Escape Artist (UK)
“The way compounding works and the shape of the J curve means that you have to do some penny pinching in the early years to be rich later on. Like The Terminator, this law of the universe can not be bargained with, it can not be reasoned with. It must be accepted and internalised.”
Happiness Dividends: Making your Experiences Pay you Back – Managing FI (USA)
“Our experiences, like investments, have the ability to pay us a dividend long after the original experience is over in the form of happiness. These dividends increase our happiness through the recalling of those happy original experiences. Unlike investments, however, we have the ability to force those happiness dividends to be paid on demand through our actions.”
Why Do We Work So Damn Much? [podcast] – The Ezra Klein Show (USA)
“Historically speaking, we live in an age of extraordinary abundance. We have long since passed the income thresholds when past economists believed our needs would be more than met and we’d be working 15-hour weeks, puzzling over how to spend our free time. And yet, few of us feel able to exult in leisure, and even many of today’s rich toil as if the truest reward for work is more work.”
Missed one? Read the archives here. Or get in touch if you have any FI content recommendations.
Yours in pursuit of FI,
Michelle @ Frugality and Freedom
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