How to Save Money in One Simple Step

I read something today that made me stop for a good few moments and think. I'd just finished reading an excellent blog post over at Minimal Student. She asks two good question, which I repeat with my answers below:

What would you do if you had a million dollars?

I would get up and go. I would stick £50k in the bank as a panic fund, and then I would go. I would go like I used to go - I would get a sniff of something, a hunch, and I would follow it to wherever in the world it led. 

As I went, I would spend my time working with marginalized people. I would spend my time campaigning for a more sex positive world. I would learn how to pole dance. I would study language intensively. And I would regularly drink an obscene amount of beer and stay up talking all night.

Is there a way I could do it for less?

Maybe...

Here's where I got stuck. Well, sure, I could do some of these things for less. But that would mean letting go of some security. It would mean taking risks. It would mean making decisions. It would mean saving up a bit. Not a million dollars, but something.

Then, out of the depths of the internet, a wild quote appeared. It showed me a way to save money in one simple step, and that was to remember:

The price of something is how much life you trade for it.

So much of what we hang on to and conflate with security is simply an illusion. Chasing after cash in order to chase after possessions to pack out our homes brings with it a comfort of sorts. We think we have plenty of things that we might need some day. We think, well, if it ever gets really bad there's stuff to sell.

We look around our stuff fiefdoms and think, look at all I have.

The problem with approaching life this way is that stuff is just stuff. It is not what matters. When I look back on the last years of my life, on the time leading up to Operation Greenrock, I wonder what I've gained. What did I trade all of those years of life for?

I have gained in many respects. I had to trade all of that life to wind up where I am now. I had to trade all of that life to learn skills. I had to trade that life in order to have some moments of total bliss.

At the same time, though, I am questioning deeply if I am prepared to keep trading life now for the mysterious prospect of gains in the future. If divorce teaches you one thing, it teaches you that nothing in life is certain.

You, too, can save money in one simple step by asking yourself, the next time you are thinking to acquire something, how much of my life am I trading for this? Is it really worth it?