To the Overspender

I am confident in the claim that people who overspend have a skill issue. Using money properly to buy and save requires some thinking and experience, and therefore is a skill. The trip to the store or just basically browsing online for stuff means you have to engage in several mental activities with the goal of coming out in a state of parity between you and the merchant.

You should not spend more than you need, nor should you spend less to save, only for you to still come home with shit. It's like mana in magic the gathering, some people tap out only to be left with nothing in crucial post turn actions; or not use their mana at all for a better situation later only for them to miss it all together.

Resource management is a crucial life skill, and money is one of those resources I think people should know using.

Now, I was thinking about this yesterday, but I only really formed the thought today.

So, how do you get better at spending?

Image by Andrew Khoroshavin from Pixabay

Imagine spending as the main skill tree in an RPG, and you have several nodes beneath it to acquire and develop. The first node is Resistance to Advertising.

People are generally drawn to what the ad-men sell them through ads posted everywhere. All competing for your attention, because the longer they stay in your head, the more likely you will spend. Uncontrolled spending leads to a disease called “Poverty”, and although there is a cure, what are the chances you can recover from that? Fucking unlikely. (More on this later)

Now in the phone centric age, 7 out of 10 people who browse online buy what they see. This means that if you see and ad while doom-scrolling, there is a strong likelyhood you will buy it. Just look around you, and what you own, how many are bought after seeing ads?

Being resistant to advertising just means you don't let the ad-men tell you what you buy. The intelligent spender is not drawn to ads, he is skeptical, he makes comparisons and thinks about the purchase from multiple angles.

How do we become resistant to advertising? Simple. Be hostile to all forms of advertising. Treat anything being sold to you as a threat to your well-being. Because ads don't care about you, they care about getting things sold regardless of your needs, because they want you to want.

There are no good ads. The script your favorite youtuber is reading mid-video is designed to disengage your mental defenses and thus make you spend.

The second node is Recognize Advertising.

South Park wasn't kiddin' when they made an episode that showed everything is an ad. This is sadly true. Most content online is meant to sell you something. Just today, as I was watching a video on investments, I was surprised that it was just about the guy selling a new product on a new broker with an affiliate link. As I kept watching, I was being sold how this new product on this new broker is worth buying.

Now it wasn't presented as an ad, it was probably not meant to be an ad, more of a review. But the presentation was marketing, I was being sold something. And my instincts quickly acted up, and I did my due diligence, learned more about the broker and quickly closed the video as I learned more.

I'm a little paranoid now because of how averse I am to advertising, but this has saved me multiple times, and I am glad I could spot ads before they claw in their way into my subconscious.

Ads are designed to make you long for a product or service. They make you feel inferior, or what you currently have as inferior. The feeling of not enough kicks in, and being aware of when these feelings pop up is key to recognizing an ad.

When you are watching anything, you should try to assess the reaction you have to the content. Are you angry? Sad? Lonely? Anxious? Any feeling can be elicited, but when the solution to those feelings come in the form of buying or spending, it's likely an ad.

When this happens, stop what you are watching and go back to the first node: resist. Be hostile to the ad and break it down. Learn what other people are saying, look for good and bad. Think about your needs? Should you spend €5 on a banana slicer when you have a completely functional knife at home?

Now that you can resist ads and recognize them, what do you do now? Do you not just buy anything? No. Now you take stock of your household inventory and decide your spending based on actual problems.

Advertisers create difficulties in the form of inconvenience. Why cook when you can just eat out? Why walk when you can ride? But are these real issues?

My wife and I don't eat out often, because we realized spending €100 on a steak dinner seems stupid when I can buy 2 steaks for €15-20 and cook them at home. They taste the same if not better and we saved €80. The ad-men made me feel like cooking is an inconvenience when, in the big picture, not having €80 to pay for an unexpected emergency is a bigger inconvenience.

And that is what the overspender does. They think life's little problems can be solved by buying their way through them. They don't realize that those problems are likely manufactured, and the antidote sold by those who made them.

Now there are more nodes in the Spending Skill Tree to talk about, but this post is getting too long. Today we talked about building our defenses against ads, next post we talk offense: taking control of your spending so you get the most from your cash and how to use debt.