The Frugal Man’s Dilemma: I Really Like Buying Things

As a freelance writer I’ve long advised and counseled others to keep their overhead low, to live frugally, and to play the Spend Nothing Game.

I suck at playing the Spend Nothing Game. And I’m the one who invented it.

As I’ve gotten older I’ve been saved from my desire to acquire by one basic fact: I’ve run out of space to put stuff. And I’ve had to adopt a more mature attitude and try to balance my desires to buy things against my desire to maximize my freedom, my ability to work as I like, when I like, and NOT be bound to a job somewhere.

It’s not easy. When you live online, when you do marketing work for a living, you see lots of really cool stuff that might be nice to have. There was a time just over a year ago when all of my tech was current generation. My phone, my tablet, my computer, everything was the latest and greatest. They are no longer the latest, but they’re still pretty great. I don’t feel any pressure to buy new ones. But that will change, and soon. I’ll need to remind myself how much I enjoy my freedom over purchasing a shiny new tech toy.

And hobbies! I’ve recently gotten very interested in the “Wet Shaving” movement, which means an endless list of new things to shop for. And oh! There’s great fun in scouring antique shops looking for old safety razors and straight razors.

I’ve restrained myself, but it’s oh so hard.

And don’t get me started on ukuleles. I just got my second one and I’m secretly planning a trip to Hawaii, not to lie on the sandy beaches, but to seek out the uke shops. I have a bad case of Ukulele Acquisition Syndrome (UAS).

But then I remember. I’d rather be free. I’d rather work from home. I’d rather explore how to spend the next 50 years of my life.

The old computer, razor, and uke all look pretty good now.

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Randy Murray

The Frugal Man’s Dilemma: I Really Like Buying Things by Randy Murray, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Tagged as: freelance, Hawaii, shaving, ukulele, Ukulele Acquisition Syndrome, wet shaving