Never Retire - Ways To View And Organize Spending

When you can't spend freely...

When you can’t spend freely, life sucks.

Odd that you don’t hear this reality discussed at all in personal finance articles.

To advocate spending as a money guru would render you irresponsible in the face of record high consumer debt and near record low personal savings.

Most people associated with personal finance chide spending and rebuke spenders.

It’s akin to the failed campaign of telling kids to say no to drugs.

Just as people will always get into trouble with drugs—or, at least, use them excessively—large swaths of the population will create their money problems with credit cards.

While we will never avoid some—maybe even most—of these problems, some people will be able to earn, save, and spend without significant issues. All they need is a plan.

A plan isn’t the standard, don’t spend money on things you don’t need. Or even don’t buy it unless you can pay for it in cash. And definitely not, run and move some numbers around to see if it can fit in your budget.

While these old adages work for some, they have become personal financial platitudes for others, myself and maybe you included.

An actual viable and realistic plan is to consider spending inevitable and to strategize and act accordingly.

To illustrate one possible plan, let’s dig into my October.

I’ll literally tell you how much I made—and spent, on everything—last month.