When you are in a business transaction you ask yourself, "Am I earning money or am I simply getting paid?” Most of the transactions in marketplaces are business transactions. Let me give you a simple example; you want to drink something you got at a local convenience store. There is a water bottle worth $4 and a water bottle worth $2. One brand name claims to have an extra something, the other one is just simply purified or filtered water. Currently your body is mostly in need of h2o to hydrate itself. You can do it for $4 or for $2. Let us suppose you have a $20 bill in your pocket, you are feeling rich and say to yourself you deserve the $4 water bottle.

Before we go on further, in this example, let us familiarize ourselves with how the marketing or sales pitch works. Purchasing or experience of buying is mostly an emotional decision. This is why when products are marketed to you, they are contextualized by images, videos, and symbolism. Remember in our example you were feeling rich. You have $20 to your name and you can do anything with those $20 and you think you deserve to be treated with a $4 water bottle not $2 water.

If you spend those $4 instead of two it would be more of an emotional decision rather than a rational one. The rich feeling will pass as soon as you get your $16 change and realize it could’ve been $18.

Let us take this example one step further. Let us suppose you have a job where you are getting paid $20 an hour. If you spend $4 you exchange 12 minutes' worth of your work life paying for that bottle. But if you spend $2 you only spend 6 minutes. Hence making you richer in time and in funds.

So, the point here is that the old saying that money saved is money earned is absolutely true. Beware no one is stopping you from feeling richer or requiring nice things for your utility. It is you who is in charge of your life. The question is how would you spend the life moments that you are working so hard to make them easier for you. There is nothing wrong with treating yourself once in a while here and there with something nice, however keep yourself mindful of whether you’re earning or spending.


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