I was reading an article today that talked about a person who has saved up so much money in his life as everything was planned out so that he can enjoy his retirement. The bad thing was that recently he experienced some sort of health problem which means he won’t be able to do all the things he wanted to do as planned.

I guess this is an example on how while it is definitely great to be financially sound with a long-term plan, you can’t ever predict exactly what is going to happen and so you shouldn’t treat your money that way too. That is where the balance comes in where it’s not wise to spend everything until you have nothing as you want to “live the moment” or like in this case prepare so much as if there are going to be no roadblocks of sort.

For me when I save money my mentality has always been that I am saving up so that I can purchase things as please or needed should the situation arise based on my lifestyle habits. Example, I don’t like the lifestyle where people that want to say buy a new suit can’t because they didn’t save. I would rather be able to just go into my savings account and purchase it without a fuss.

Aside from that I use the rest of my funds accordingly to the present time and trying to take advantage of the current opportunities that I see. Of course, you really have to be disciplined and understand your own buying habits to accomplish this. That sounds kind of weird when you think about it as we should all know very well where our money goes to right? With this you are always planning far ahead enough where you are thinking about your future and at the same time enjoying life too.

It’s kind of amazing to see the lengths that some people are going to in an effort to save some money as a result of a new tax that will be introduced here called the HST. The biggest impact it will have I think is on certain grocery items as everything that was normally only subjected to a 5% tax will now be 12%. Some people are actually stocking up in extreme ways because of this.

For example, buying hundreds of dollars in items as if you are buying half a year’s worth of goods. In my opinion that is a little bit of an emotional reaction and doesn’t help in the long term I’d say. Like with this I would think if you truly want to save money then maybe it’s time to invest in some tools and resources that would allow you to make your own items.

It’s too easy to waste more money than intended if you allow yourself to purchase things emotionally in this case just because it sounds right initially. Expect to see a ton of stores too saying how you need to shop from them now before the tax increase comes. Housing will probably be a real tricky one as apparently new houses over about $400,000 or so will be subjected to this new tax. I’m sure not everyone can just whip out an extra six figure in their bank to buy a home too.

Like most things it’s all about adapting to the situation. While it may be a bad situation for many having to pay more it can also be an opportunity for you to rethink your finances and the type of things you buy that aren’t really necessary I’d say.

Over the past month I have heard from a couple of people on how they wanted to get professional services for free as they currently could not afford the cost of hiring someone to do the job. The thing that bugged me a little was how they say they had no money yet you see them doing things such as spending hundreds of dollars on cigarettes or having no reserve in spending a ton of money dining out.

Whenever people ask me to do things for free with the reason being that they have no money I usually automatically assume that they do actually have money. It’s just that they chose to spend it a certain way and don’t value your efforts as much, so to speak, so they assume that they can save money by buttering you up instead.

In my opinion, it can actually be good to not do things for free if you are specifically trying to help someone become better with money. This way it forces them to have to actually stop doing irresponsible things with their finances as you won’t be their easy way out. Not only that, too many times people say things like how they are poor to intentionally get you to drop your prices as they want a deal. I heard so many times where people claim that they are poor and yet the next day you see them driving an expensive car.

It’s usually only the people who immediately approach you for a say a bartering trade of sort that are more genuine I’d say. People usually say nothing is truly free. Unless they are specifically a charity of sort, for professional services it’s only fair that you get something out of it too.

Today a person was telling me an advice he told a lady who had over ten thousand dollars of debt involving a cell phone bill. Apparently this has been accumulating since the 90’s and the company has yet to recover it from her. Instead of trying to run away from it he advised her to simply try and negotiate it with them. The key point he mentioned was that you have to emphasize how it will cost them more money to try to hunt her down as opposed to just cutting say 60% of the bill where she can realistically pay off at once. To her surprise that actually worked and she was able to wipe out her debt.

I often hear that advice a lot. I guess the most common examples are two businesses in dispute and if they ever had to use say legal action the lawyers would get extremely rich while costing them thousands of dollars. So therefore the point of a costly legal battle is usually brought up to encourage the two parties to just settle it. This does work with debts many times too from what I have seen.

Of course that doesn’t mean you should just run out and get say a ten thousand dollar credit card debt and then try this technique. But for people who have genuinely made mistakes and want to clear their debt this can be a great way to do it.

The other day I saw a person carrying what looked like three replaceable batteries for his cell phone. I guess evidently he is on it all the time. Therefore, he wants to make sure that he can use it without the fear that he will run out of power. As strange as this may sound, in some ways I am inclined to say if you need like three batteries for the day you are using the product too much which ultimately means spending more money.

It’s almost like over indulging where I feel this habit will just lead to careless spending and dependence on something. Therefore, I usually think about it with things like a cellphone and my usage. If I know the battery will last for 5 hours straight of phone talking for the day and it seems like I need more batteries then my thought is that I am using it way too much to begin with. Therefore, this makes me think of what I can do to not have to use it so much while avoiding to buy and carry more products just to satisfy that habit.

It’s usually about moderation right? With this example in particular I would be inclined to find other means of communication such as actually meeting people face to face if I intend to speak with a person for a great length of time. It’s not even so much about self control I’d say too as opposed to thinking of different ways to accomplish the same goal without having to spend more simply because you can.