How much is your living worth?

Good morning Dinks.  Let me ask you a question, are you overpaying for your lifestyle?  I don’t mean if you’re living beyond your means or if you are racking up thousands of dollars in debt.  I’m asking if your currently living situation could be done on less.

What does someone with money look like?

Why am I bringing this up?  Because sometimes I feel I have to justify my success (and my bank account) because I don’t look like the typical financial planner.  I don’t wear Jimmy Choo shoes and I don’t dress up in jeans and a blazer to go to the grocery store on the weekends.  I like being comfortable in flip flops and hoodies from American Eagle.  Yes I’m 34 years old (as of last week) and I dress like I’m 19 – so what?  Can you tell this is bugging me?!

As you know last month I went to New Orleans for FinCon.  My flight left at 9 am so I had to call a cab at 7 am.  I’m not sure who looks their best at 7 am, but it’s not me.  I got into the cab and the driver said “To the bus station?”  Now before we go on I have to tell you that I was so offended (and exhausted) that I snapped.  I know it wasn’t the right thing to do and if I ever see that taxi driver again I will definitely apologize.  I hastily responded “I’m not sure what it is about me that makes you think I don’t have money but I’m going to the airport.  Thank you.”

Living on less without changing your lifestyle

Ok so back to my question.  Could you live your life on less?  Think about it for a minute.  Could you live exactly how you are but for less money?  I’m sure the answer for most of us is YES.  Sometimes we become accustom to living for convenience that we forget about what really matters.  The basics.

Location.  Nick and I just moved into our new apartment and it’s $400 a month more than we were paying.  Of course we could have shopped around a little more, moved outside of downtown and found an apartment within our price range.  But we didn’t.  We lived in an awful apartment for six years so we decided that paying a bit more for more than double the space was worth it.  We did have to make cuts in our other monthly expenses such as our cable bill to accommodate our new rent payment – but for us it’s worth it.

Home esthetics.  Yes of course it’s convenient to have a gorgeous home that is well decorated but you know what? Decorating is expensive!

Be conscience of your consumption.  As of October 1st Nick and I now pay electric every month.  This is new for us and we don’t really know what to expect.  Of course I would love to have all the lights on in our apartment at the same time for security and convenience, but that’s just not financially smart.  We  really don’t know what to expect so we invested in bedside lamps for the bedroom and table lamps for the living room with energy efficient light bulbs to help save on our hydro bill.

But is it all worth it?

Photo from Flickr

Kristina Tahnyak

Tahnya is a Certified Financial Planner and former Investment Advisor turned marketing and communications professional She holds a degree from Concordia University, is debt free and currently works in the field of digital marketing.