I can’t help but draw a comparison between good financial decisions and good eating habits. I’m not sure which is more important. I’d have to lean towards good eating habits simply because money isn’t too valuable if you are dead. (I suppose your heirs might beg to differ with you, but you get the point) Anyway, last weekend was brutal for my goal of eating well. I think I probably shaved a few years off my life. I won’t go in to the details, but needless to say, I added a couple pounds. This would be really bad, except for the fact that I’ve been sort of following the Weight watchers plan. I say sort of because I’m not actually enrolled in it, but I am using their tips and tricks to manage my food intake. Anyway, because I’ve been following this for a few weeks, it won’t be too dificult to recover from this binging.
So, how does this have anything to do with good money management? Well, just like eating habits tend to include the word moderation, so does good financial management. While I was busy eating until I couldn’t move, we also spent a little money this weekend. Nothing too drastic. We bought new silverware from Costco. Did we need it? Well, not really. We got about 8 years out of our last set. I think of it as renting. We also bought that set at Costco and I believe they had an average cost of about $6 per year ($50/8 years). If I can average my cost down that low on everything we buy, I think we’ll be in good shape. How could we have been extreme on this purchase? Well, we could have bought the really expensive brand from a major department store and spent 5 times as much. Would that silverware have made my food taste five times better as it went in to my mouth? Nope. Would my friends and family have been 5 times as impressed with my silverware? Nope. Would I have felt better about myself using really expensive silverware? Nope.
I think that the silverware we bought is the good stuff because it says “China” on the back of every piece.