But wait... there's less!

A friend recently asked me why it is that so many people (on good incomes) are struggling to save. Often the big three money areas are housing, transport and food. In one sense these are necessary items. But what we spend on them is often way more than necessary. I crunched some numbers on how much extra my wife and I could spend on these things - if for some reason we wanted to burn our money. 1. Housing Our apartment is fairly nice, but also cost-effective. I've mentioned how choosing it saves us $1,800 per year , compared to a similar one we saw. The high end of 2-bedroom apartments in our suburb is $305 per week more than our apartment. Not $305 per week. $305 per week more than ours is. I cannot get over that. Sure it's new and modern-looking, but that's a lot of money. It's an extra $15,860 per year above what we pay. 2. Transport The Australian Automobile Association lists the costs of owning and running a car. It includes many often-overlooked c

Go Fund Yourself is a basic money guide. Written for younger adults and usable for all, it covers many aspects of money - jobs, businesses, spending and investing. It's British, so some information is UK-specific. But this is far outweighed by helpful information that transcends national borders. Reason for being The Japanese word Ikigai means reason for being. It originates in Okinawa, where they view work not so much as a necessary chore that we retire from, but something that is innate to us as individuals. Ikigai is about fulfilling work by finding a combination of work we love doing something the world needs, while earning money and doing something we're good at. It's about finding the centre of the diagram where all the circles overlap. Ideal income It's easy to think that an ideal income is the highest one possible. Perhaps that's why we don't consider Ikigai as much as we could; why we sometimes just take the job or career with the highest pay.