Making Ends Meet, From Saving to Reclaiming

Ever feel like each article you read on cutting expenses says the same thing? What if you don't: drink a daily latte, eat lunch out a few times a week, go to the movies every weekend or pay full price for anything yet still can't make ends meet? It's time to reconsider saving money and reorient yourself from desiring to realizing.

Recently a grassroots movement has sprung up asking people to evaluate just why we spend so much money on essential items. Today's essentials, after all, were yesterday's luxuries. On the other hand, having nice environs, tasty food and spiffy clothing just makes us feel happy and helps us be more productive in our daily lives. Must we then compromise between starvation and feasting just because our salary doesn't stretch or wiggle, but lies rigidly on life support? No! By making small, but central changes you can move towards a place where you are content with what you have and less likely to shop for pleasure (and therefore be tempted to buy).

So you ask what are these central changes? It involves the simple idea of reusing and refashioning. Instead of throwing out that blouse because it's thread-worn in the elbows, or you've just seen it too much cut it down and attach it to the turtleneck that's become too short. Rather than despising the five different shades of wood in your living room, choose a color scheme and paint the furniture a cheerful and consonant color.

While these tasks seem too simple to really affect your living expenses, they both point towards a larger issue: that of consumption versus conservation. By becoming aware of the life-cycle and rebirth-potential of what you already have, you start to question the need to buy more when you have lots of (re)usable stuffs. You also realize that junk shops hold unclaimed potential for fractions of prices. This switch of emphasis will save you in the end more money than that daily latte and allow you the extra cash to network with your colleagues over a sandwich. The reason is you've refocused your priorities not from spending to saving, but from spending to transforming.