Anyway, I wanted to capture this thought I caught while washing dishes in the kitchen sink. After a 2 hour long conversation with Mum that I developed my own philosophy of spending. (My mum can have that effect on me sometimes...) This will probably change my life, or at least, change how I see things. Then again, maybe not, maybe it's nothing different from how I saw things before.
I have now 3 defined rules for money well-spent against which I will assess all my purchases:
- Money is well spent when it saves me time. Either immediately, or on products that are the outcome of significant time spent, time that I cannot spend myself. Examples are: medical expertise, a locksmith, house cleaning services, pseudo-instant food when I am hungry (up to a certain taste threshold).
- Money is well spent when significant effort and heart is obviously placed into an object or service, effort or attention that I am either unable or unwilling to place. Examples are: A dinner at Heston Blumenthal's The Fat Duck, tickets to a play with actors that I really like, one-of-a-kind crafted bags at Greenwich market or Etsy.com, a book written by a favourite author, a concert with Tori Amos, organically farmed eggs and meat.
- Money is not well spent when an object or service fits into a particular lifestyle, however sought after, that isn't mine. Examples are: Jamie Oliver's Flavour Shaker (what are jars for?), Le Creuset pots (I can't lift them, I can't use them), Louis Vuitton bags and wallets (mass-produced, expensive efforts to look like Japanese housewives)
I made the striking realization that actually, 95% of my purchases comply with the newly realized (not discovered) philosophy. My purchases rank pretty high, I suppose, on the purity scale.
What is value, after all? I find myself asking myself that a lot recently, especially after my job keeps telling me that we're all on the corporate hunt to create "value", as if "value" is another object to quantify and multiply. Is value that mysterious meme that once sown like a seed, sprouts its produce at the end of the fiscal cycle?
No, I think to find what "value" is, we first have to ask the Adam Smith of all economic questions, which is "Why do we trade?" Why do we buy, instead of do it ourselves? And textbook though that might be, we trade because it's either incredibly difficult or impossible for us to do or make what we're buying, or simply that it saves us time to buy rather than to DIY. So thinking in terms of units - units of my own blood, sweat and tears - do I work to gain back Time that I can spend on enjoying the little bit that I have left after work? Do I work to touch and reach an ephemeral craftmanship that I cannot in my little life aspire towards? Or do I work to fit into a lifestyle in which I do not currently live?
Many people fall for #3 I think. Which is, in thinking about it, wanting to spend wealth on the appearance of being wealthy. An effort to make a statement about having arrived whilst still travelling to the destination.
And I suspect, though I am not there yet, having spoken to everyone who are (apparently) already there - that the fun really is in the journey.
[Ed: I do have to add one more rule, because this falls somewhere between the cracks, and yet is important - Money is also well-spent when it enables another to either save time, or frees up heart/effort into a cause that resonates with you. Examples are: charities that we care for, gifts to friends and family and other gestures of altruism.
Sometimes, the "value" that we are apparently all in search of (says the corporate world) does not stop with the value we generate for ourselves. As I read in an obscure article in one of the back-pages of a back-issue of The Economist - we live in an interdependent world, where through a network of interactions, a positive energy can ripple back to benefit ourselves. Not, of course, that it is why we do what we do.
