I was talking to some people today that were talking about the thought of how much they would pay for a subscription service of some sort where someone else will do things such as cooking dinner and washing the dishes for them as sometimes you just don’t want to have to deal with things like that.

One person said $30/month plus the cost of food and I thought that was kind of a little too low. That sounded more like a fee for a diet program of some sort. I actually know one guy that just absolutely hates cooking and pays a lady to come in and cook dinner for about $20 each time to do it for him. Kind of high expense when you think about it too.

What I always think about when it comes to convenience is that while I’ll probably definitely save a lot of time in situations like these, I always debate whether or not it would benefit me skill wise in the long run. For example, would it enable me to do things faster afterwards? Is it a skill I could use to make money afterwards? There are always things like that which make me consider how much I would be really losing in the overall picture.

Of course, you can’t know everything so many times it makes sense to just pay for convenience.

A person yesterday was telling me how he knows this guy who is in his 30’s and when it comes to money the only thing he wants to do is save it. He would refuse to spend it on anything that is not a necessity such as traveling for a vacation.

The gentleman was basically ridiculing him and how he doesn’t understand why a person like that would even bother making money if they don’t intend to use it. I can definitely understand not wanting to waste money on just anything, but just saving for the sake of saving money seems kind of counter productive both from a time and investment point of view.

To a certain extent being able to save a lot of money is a way to prove to yourself that you can manage money and follow through with goals. At the same time, I guess like most things you can’t keep conquering the same goals that you know you are good at or be afraid to lose a little. It’s like saying, you can’t grow much taller by standing on the same block. Stepping off that block might make you shorter for awhile, but once you find a taller block to stand on you’ll wonder why you did not do it sooner.

Another way to think about it is why should you do all the work while that lazy money sits in the bank account? You earned it, so find a way to make it work for you now.

I was at a supermarket today and in the store they were advertising these coupons where if you spent over $250 you could save $30. Those little things sure do have an influence on people as it seemed like so many people were trying to stuff their carts to reach the appropriate amount.

I’m always a little more cautious about these types of promotions as it is easy to just buy anything without thinking if what you are purchasing is truly a great deal. Since I was with some family members we actually did end up using it as we simply combined our purchases. For myself, I have a general knowledge on what is a very low margin item in these types of businesses and so I knew that using the savings on these items would definitely make it a good deal.

For example, in supermarkets milk is usually a low margin item or if they have an electronics department then video games don’t often make a company a lot of money as well. With that, you know using coupon savings on those types of items would be a good deal. Although, I wouldn’t recommend buying like say $100 worth of milk just to reach the qualification mark unless anyone truly drinks that much.

So if you really need to spend more, I’d say try to educate yourself a little more about the products you buy. While some people may be too old for it now if they already have their careers set, even getting a simple job at various stores can really enlighten you to be more aware of the things that you purchase. There’s always good old fashion networking with people in the know too.

A person was telling me the other day that he has a pretty structured financial management plan as he always divides his funds appropriately. On top of that, he mentioned that for certain funds such as ones set aside for entertainment purposes he would force himself to spend it one way or another even if he didn’t feel like it.

He mentioned that this way he is making sure that he is constantly being active in life as oppose to always being tied down to work and money issues. I’ve seen quite a few people adopt this type of approach as well. I personally prefer to spend based in a non structured yet disciplined fashion. Would feel too much like a chore the other way for me I think.

Recently I was debating if there was anything new for the year that I wanted to learn/do. While I am exploring my options and seeing the best ways to incorporate it into my lifestyle, in the midst of this I saw so many offerings ranging from small workshops that cost a few hundred dollars to intensive weekly program offerings that cost thousands as options to learn new things.

What this made me think of immediately was how it’s not enough to just want to learn/do something but rather you have to be prepared to make it a part of your life for it to really stick and be worthwhile. Unfortunately I don’t have a statistical source for this, but it’s almost like one of those wealth seminars or learning about finance in general. Basically, people say they want to learn something new for the better and spend hundreds of dollars learning from experts and yet more than half of the people will do nothing with it or simply forget it all in a short amount of time.

So before I invest time or money in learning new things I always question myself first whether or not I would truly be using my new found skill/knowledge throughout my daily adventures to grow as a person as oppose it being say some kind of resume item stuffer. Otherwise in most cases it just ends up as a time and money drainer I think personally and so I would avoid it. Of course this is referring to more time committing items and not smaller items.

If you invest in something for yourself then I guess it is only appropriate to expect something in return from yourself too.