I was reading about how there are a lot of people that say you have to live below your means if you ever hope to live a financially stable lifestyle and on the flip side there are a lot who say otherwise as you need to live and think big in order to achieve greatness. I always found this to be an interesting topic as I think it is more about balance as oppose to extremely favoring one way over the other.
When people say that you should live below your means, basically you shouldn’t be trying to say spend more than you actually earn. If you cant afford that fancy car, then don’t buy it and use something within your budget. In many ways, that is absolutely true as for most people they just have a bad habit of buying things that they can’t afford or how they try to live a lifestyle of trying to impress others with expensive materialistic things. From a financial point of view and saving money that absolutely makes sense. Completely abiding to that though can also cause you to lose money as well as you are kind of trapping yourself into a playing it safe mentality I think which makes you afraid of exploring options on how you can say generate more income.
The same thing can go in regards to living above your means. If you believe you deserve the best and so fourth and to help inspire yourself you purchase some high end things, that can be a healthy way to give you a taste on what it is like to be at that level which may motivate you to do better than what you are currently getting. Again though, if you have that belief to the extreme you can end up burying yourself in a pile of debt that will be too large to deal with. It’s like saying, if you want to lift something heavy from time to time to push yourself in becoming stronger physically that is okay. But doing it to the extreme where you do not let your body recover first can really cause you harm.
When it comes to living below or above your means, I think the important thing is to live a lifestyle that is true to yourself. Speaking for myself as an example, I don’t buy things or spend a lot of money on items to impress people which helps me to save money. At the same time, I always have aspirations to help others on a larger scale which means that I have to do things that are beyond a “normal lifestyle” in terms of generating an income or experiencing certain things. With a good vision for what I want for myself in an overall sense that kind of gives me the balance to enjoy and appreciate life. So in my opinion, living above or below your means shouldn’t be an exclusive one over the other type of deal as you need to adapt according to your goals.