My guess is that significantly more than 90% of us live hand-to-mouth. What that means depends on the size of the hand and the mouth. Someone can be Financially Independent, and living on just R10,000 a month if they have world-class control over their mouth. Someone else could be on the brink of collapse and spending £1,000,000 a year, if their mouth has world-class control over them.
For the majority of people, gaining control of the reins simply means finding a source of income. How big the income is will determine how much can be put in our mouths. If we get more, we can spend more. The pressures on us are always more. A bigger house. A better school. Another holiday. More freedom to entertain and be entertained. Financial Planning then becomes largely about financing our dreams. Financing our chosen life. Finding the money to spend.
When you snap the connection between consumption and finance, the game changes completely. You don't have to rein anything in. Consumption becomes a rounding error. More than 99% of Warren Buffett's fortune was made after the age of 50. His financial planning has absolutely nothing to do with financing his lifestyle. He sorted that out long ago. For years, it was all about reinvestment. That was Adam Smith's real magic word. Not Profit. Reinvestment. That shifts the Rich from living a life of Conspicuous Consumption because every dollar you consume is a dollar you fire.
We all sleep (if we are sleeping well) for around a third of our lives. You can only have one bed. We all have a limited appetite, and some of the best food is plentiful. It is fancy (read scarce) that costs.
Imagine a world where what you did wasn't driven by financing your life. Where what you did wasn't driven by what you consumed. It was driven by what you wanted to create.
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