Live On Less Money

• Money is Freedom

• Living Beyond Our Means

• Less Is More

• Where Does the Money Go?

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Money is Freedom

We've all heard the old saying that "time is money", and many of us translate that to mean that if you put in more time, you get more money. And while that may be true, the inverse is also true. Every time you spend money, you're spending all of the time and energy that went in to earning that money.

The truth is that it's not about how much money you make, it's about how much money you keep. The person who earns a six figure income and spends every last drop, is actually in worse shape than the person who earns a modest salary and puts a good chunk of it away in the bank. 

Think of it this way, if you lost your job tomorrow, how long would you be able to survive without additional income coming in the door. Three weeks? Three months? How different would your life be if the answer to that question were three years, or thirteen years, or thirty years! What choices would be open to you that simply aren't possibilities now?

Are You a Slave to Money?

So many of us live spend our lives slaving away to earn more money, and trying to "get ahead". But if you're not saving the money that you're making, you're really just getting further behind. The more financial commitments you rack up (big mortgages, car payments, monthly bills) the more you are going to be a slave to money. It's pretty hard to feel free when you have to bring in huge amounts of money just to make ends meet.

There are two ways to turn this equation around... make more money, or spend less of the money that you do make. We all tend to focus on the first option, because it's what we are taught. But the second one is actually much easier to achieve, and leaves you with benefits that go far beyond the financial ones.

When you take the "money is freedom" approach, you focus on finding ways to decrease your monthly expenses, and put the surplus money in the bank or into a treasury bill, where it can be working for you. So every time you're tempted to take on a new expense, think about how much time it took you to earn that money in the first place, and how much time it will take to earn the money each month to maintain that expense.