Cars – in the end they all do the same thing - get you from A to B

Sep 292008

The car that you drive says something about who you are.

We use material things to project an image of ourselves out into the world. If we want to portray a successful image we might buy a nice big shiny car. These type of cars generally cost us a lot of money but hey what the heck we’re successful aren’t we? We can take the finance offer and pay the car back in nice manageable monthly instalments.

So what does your car say about you?

What image are you trying to portray?

Who are you trying to impress?

Unfortunately sometimes we can get this wrong. My advice?

Tone down your Life

Or more specifically tone down your car.

Before we go on I want to make clear that I’m not trying to beat up on anyone here. I’m not trying to belittle hopes, dreams or aspirations of any readers. What I am trying to do is to help you build a sound financial foundation upon which you can achieve them.

Why burden yourself with stuff that you don’t necessarily need? I mean a car is a car is a car. The ultimate use of any car is to get you from A to B. Ok I understand that there is a whole image thing tied up with the car but are you that self conscious and lacking in self confidence that you feel the need to compensate for it by driving a big pointless car?

To me the coolest person on the block is the person who can jump into a beat up car and have the confidence to drive it around all the while not caring about what people think about them.

rusted-car.jpg

Easy to do?

No way!

I’m as self conscious as the next person and while my car might be six years old I make sure that it is always looking nice and polished. I made the mistake in the past of thinking that a car could somehow improve my social standing.

When I first started working I made the mistake of buying a nice new car. Girls love guys with nice cars right? Well to be honest I couldn’t really afford the car and as a result I never felt 100% comfortable driving it. Since I didn’t feel comfortable driving the car it always seemed that I was driving someone else’s car. Which is true – I was driving someone else’s car. I was driving the finance company’s car. Not a nice feeling.

The problem I had was that I hated not having any money at the end of the month more than I liked the car. Sure it was a really nice car but it was also a car that I couldn’t afford.

I had the car for eighteen months before I decided to get rid of it. I lost money on the transaction but I wasn’t too worried as I simply wanted out of the expensive repayments. I paid off the loan and I bought a much smaller and cheaper car. Not the coolest car by a long shot but cheap to run and it got me from A to B.

Sure I got some jokes in my direction about downsizing but to be honest they didn’t hurt half as much as the monthly repayments were hurting.

Mind over matter

If you don’t mind it don’t matter. So if you are comfortable with the car that you are driving then it shouldn’t matter what other people say. No I know it’s not easy. I struggled with the thought of changing my nice car for a less nice car for a long time. But I got there in the end. I resigned myself to the fact that if I ever wanted to have some sort of financial future that didn’t involved a debt overload then I needed to start cutting. My car was the biggest and most obvious choice to start with.

How about you?

Could you downsize your car? Could you put up with the jokes from so called friends and colleagues? Better still could you get rid of your car completely?

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Possessions – the weight of the world on your shoulders

Jun 062008

No, before you ask I haven’t joined the local communist party. I’m probably one of the most pro capitalism guys you can meet. All property is not theft. However I do believe in order and organization and in not having too many possessions. As always my reasoning behind these beliefs is practicality. If something in my life has become so bloated and impractical then it needs to go. Period.

I have in the past been accused of hoarding stuff. I had a habit of buying nice new shiny things, using them once or twice and then putting them away. It got to the stage that my apartment was overflowing with clutter and ‘stuff’. It wasn’t that it was a messy apartment but it just didn’t feel comfortable and if I was in it for too long I would start to get a little claustrophobic. Every inch of storage space was used up and the apartment was getting seriously cramped.

I lived like this for a couple of years until it finally dawned on me that the possessions I was clinging on to so desperately were adding no value whatsoever to my life. In fact they were taking value from my life. Every time I went home and looked around at the clutter my life force would drain away. Little by little the energy would sap away from me. It got so bad that I didn’t want to go home. Finally one Saturday morning after stubbing my toe on a crate of books I lost it.

I hadn’t much planned for that Saturday so I just went mad. I decided that if something is no longer adding value to my life, be it a book, a CD, DVD, clothes or whatever then it was gone. By the time I was finished going through my stuff I had a pile about two feet high.

Now I had two choices. I could sell this stuff on ebay (which I highly recommend – click here) or I could give it to charity. I decided to give it all to charity – no it wasn’t because I was looking for some good karma. It was because I was sick to death of having an apartment that I could hardly move around in. I wanted that stuff out and I wanted it out as soon as possible. I loaded it all into my car and headed to the nearest charity shop. The look of amazement on the woman’s face was worth it. I had that much stuff to donate.

What’s the point?

So what has this got to do with me? I hear you ask. Quite a lot actually. When I came back to my apartment after dropping off my stuff to the charity shop the sense of relief was enormous. I mean I can hardly describe it. I felt like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I hadn’t realized it at the time but up to that point subconsciously I think I felt my possessions me holding me back. Not just in my living space but in my life in general.

Look around your home. Is there any stuff that you don’t need that is just sitting there gathering dust? Do you feel that you can’t get rid of it because you might need it someday? Ask yourself “What value is this item adding to my life?” if it is adding little or no value then get rid of it. Now.

Don’t define yourself by your possessions

I know that it feels good to have nice things. A brand new high powered car will make anyone feel good – but at what cost? I’m sure if you were to do a poll of the people you know that are in debt then I imagine that the vast majority of them are in debt because they spent so much money acquiring ‘stuff’. They used this ‘stuff’ to define who they were instead of being authentic they simply bought into the latest trend.

Possessions can blur the lines between who you are and who people think you are. People use possessions to project an image of themselves out into the world. In a quest for self identity they just end up looking the same as everyone else. Possessions are just things that some marketing guru said that you needed. Do you really need all those things that are in the bottom of your closet? Do you use them every day?

If you are uncomfortable with talk of self identity then simply bring it down to a practical point of view. Clearing out the clutter and selling it will help you raise cash to pay off your debt. For this reason alone it is worth doing. Possessions are only things and at the end of the day there are a lot more important things like your health and wealth that you need to be concerned about. You won’t get wealthy by spending your cash on ‘things’ and your health won’t improve if you hardly have room to breathe in your home.

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