Living Within Your Means, and Why It's Not for Me

Living a financially responsible lifestyle has long been praised as being mature, prudent, and respectable. By securing a stable job, employing judicious use of credit, making bill payments on time, and saving in investment and retirement funds, even a man or woman with a relatively modest income can ensure a reasonably comfortable living well into their later years. Intelligent decision making, such as delaying the gratification of major purchases, (say, a fishing boat or a new car) may often assure better living down the road. My question is, where the hell is the fun in that?

It all sounds so boring, doesn't it? "Financial responsibility." "Prudent and respectable." "Delayed gratification." "Judicious this," and "reasonable that." It makes me sick to my stomach, if you really want to know. How could this pillar of good old American values, of "penny-saved, penny-earned" economics not appeal to me? Sorry, Mr. Franklin, it's just not my thing. Never has been, never will be.

Now, it's not that I don't see the validity of the tightfisted argument. I fully understand the logic behind hedging your bets, making the safe plays and assuring that a comfortable future is within reach. This being said, I also know that there are many people for whom this strategy has worked out splendidly. I completely acknowledge that this is a valid approach to personal finance, and I would assert that many people would be best off following this path.

For all I understand of the "frugal" approach to personal finance, however, and the reasons I know it may be beneficial in the long run, I have never considered it a viable option. The reasons for this are numerous and sometimes complicated. At the simplest level, I am a hedonist. I do not exploit or harm others, for the most part, in my attempts at maximizing my happiness, but I do generally believe that the best course of action is that which results in the greatest pleasure for me and those around me. Rarely, if ever, have I found that there is more to be gained by taking the most responsible course of action.

"Patience is its own reward"

We all remember a time that a great-aunt, a grandparent, a strange cousin-of-a-cousin, or some other relation wasted a perfectly good birthday, graduation, or Christmas-present-giving opportunity by giving us a savings bond. The scourge of every child/teenager's special day, the savings bond sucks all the fun out of a gift. Why in the hell would they think I want to wait 5 years to get $50? I'll take a Hamilton today and be happier. In about 2 years, when I can cash it in for $30, I'm going to do that, anyway, if I still have it. So why not just send me some cash? And please don't feed me the line about patience, and trying to teach me the value of it. If I wanted to wait, I'd buy my own savings bonds, which I don't do because I LIKE SPENDING MONEY.

"Think about the future"

No. I don't want to. I'm having a good time today, and if I wake up tomorrow with $7 in my bank account I'm getting a Chipotle burrito for breakfast. While we are at it, who is to say that I am going to wake up tomorrow? If I don't, and provided I am afforded some moment of consciousness to recollect my 22 years on this planet, how am I going to forgive myself for going to bed early to save that $200 I might have lost at the casino? Answer: I couldn't. A lot of people say a lot of things about seizing their destiny, living in the now, and doing what they love. What stops them? Simply put, it's a fear of the future and the unknown. Nobody wants to take their shot and miss, leaving themselves an uncertain financial future. I say that liberation from oppressive economic expectations is the first step toward saying to yourself, "Fuck all that other bullshit, I am going to be happy right now."

"Please think about the future"

Ok, if you are going to insist. I'll start with 120 years from today. Everyone I know, and everyone you know today, is dead. A few of the youngest babies today may be decrepit shells of former human beings at this point. My credit score will be a long-forgotten, purposeless unit of data in a few outdated computers around the world. I will, for all intents and purposes, have been forgotten. If not, it still will not mean anything to me because I'll be dead. Pride, last time I checked, does very little for the deceased. Now let's fast-forward to 1000 years from today. In a world drastically different than the one we live in, should it still exist, there are no living beings that recollect my existence. One million years from today, there are no human beings at all. Earth may not exist. Nothing you or anyone has accomplished means anything in the absence of an intelligent being to appreciate it.

I don't say these things to depress anyone, and these facts certainly do not depress me. What thoughts like this do is help to put in perspective the small, daily considerations with which we concern ourselves. I say look to this future and say, "What the hell, man? Why not?"

"What about your family? Your children?"

First, I don't have any children. If I did, I wouldn't gamble with their direct well-being. This goes along with my general "not hurting others" policy. Second, if I had children I'd feel obliged to provide them with as much happiness as I could. I would probably opt for family trips over college savings, should I have to choose. Rather than leaving them with a significant inheritance, should I have the opportunity, I'm going to try to spend every last dollar on them and myself before I die. They will, hopefully, appreciate those memories more than they would a sum of money left to them after my death. If not, they probably didn't deserve it anyway.

"Don't you eventually have to grow up?"

Absolutely not. First of all, standards for what is considered acceptable behavior at certain ages are often extremely overplayed. After all, who is to say that my views are any less "mature" than those held by a majority of Americans. I suggest mine is a more highly developed view of the realities of these questions, and who is "the man" to argue that?

Second of all, fuck that. I didn't "grow up" to the age of 18 or 21 to gain more rights, just to have another supposed authority impose on me its ideas of acceptable behavior. I am an adult. I am an independent decision-maker, and I believe that "growing up" means taking control of the possibilities of my life. So, you ask, am I going to "wise up" at some point and start saving my money, looking to the future, and preparing for my retirement? Not likely. I believe I'll grow stronger in my desire to keep having a good time, to keep living for the absolute right now, and to not give a shit if there's a cent in my savings account when it's all said and done.

So I say, buy that TV you've been looking at on the Best Buy page. Get that second, or third credit card just so that you can use it to get tickets to Lambeau. Have you been saving up for grad school, but you really want to use the money to spend a year in Europe? Do it. Next time you are out at the bar, and you aren't sure if your friends are having a good time, buy everybody a shot. Forget what you've learned about how to handle money, and start thinking about the now. It's what I'll be doing.