So, as my net worth grew I stopped buying a lot of things and while i’m not mega rich at all I am doing pretty well and in this video. I’m gonna share with you the most important things that I stopped buying as a multi-millionaire. Hopefully, this is gonna help you tone down your spending in some of these areas.
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Let’s get started. So, the first thing I stopped buying was expensive and luxury clothes. I actually went through a phase earlier when I wanted to look really rich, but I actually wasn’t. And the easiest way to do that is by buying designer clothes with big flashy logos. More than 60 of luxury clothes are bought by middle to low-income Americans. And if you think about that, it just doesn’t make any sense. I think way too many people are consumed on this whole “I want to look rich. I want to be flashy and have all these nice things” when in reality they can’t technically afford it. So, for me I have a main wardrobe of quality T-shirts and then the rest is thrift fast fashion and just clothes that I’ve accumulated over the past decade. I actually really don’t like buying clothes. I think it’s a big waste of time. As a result, I’m not buying a lot of new clothes.
If you look at the data the average American family spends 1700 on clothes annually, and the average American also throws away about 81 pounds of clothes each year. The average piece of clothing is worth 36 percent fewer times now than it was 15 years ago. For me, I just really emphasize comfort and that’s why I love wearing joggers, I love wearing T-shirts, I love wearing hoodies, T-shirt hoodie joggers – that’s all you need. That’s what I call the comfort Trifecta. I think it’s really important to sort of shift our mindset about why we have the desire to have expensive clothes? It definitely is a status thing, it makes a lot of sense. That’s why I really liked luxury clothes back in the day, but I want you to ask yourselves: why am I wearing something? Is it more internal or is it more external? I think as you make more money, you care less and less about the external. We sort of start to value. Internal desires drive our purchasing decisions, so for me luxury clothes that’s something I don’t view as important and hence. That’s why I don’t spend my money buying luxury clothes the main point here is you don’t need expensive and luxury clothes all you need is comfortable clothing that at least looks somewhat good next up is really bad or super expensive food similar to luxury clothing.
I used to view expensive food as sort of a luxury and status symbol now not so much. On the other side of the spectrum, I also know the importance of not eating really bad food, so really there’s a whole scale in the types of food you can eat on a day-to-day basis. On the left are crappy foods like McDonald’s and processed foods and on the right. We have things like the French laundry where a single meal can be you know close to a thousand dollars per person zooming in on the very left all this really cheap stuff. These types of foods are all processed in efficient factories, for example, your average one-dollar box of mac and cheese. It just contains wheat artificial cheese and chemical flavors slightly to the right. We have places like McDonald’s and other fast food now. I will say that every day more than one in three US adults eat some type of restaurant fast food. It’s a really big reason why health is starting to deteriorate in this country. Then you have things like fruit, meats, and fish which are between. Let’s say a dollar and ten dollars a pound. The process to get these natural foods processed and then to the store is just much more expensive and that’s why they cost a lot more, especially, if you look at it per calorie now. If you take a look at some of the data on how much millionaires spend on groceries, you can actually see that they don’t spend that much money. About one-third of millionaires surveyed spend less than 300 each month on groceries, about 64 spend less than 450, and then less than 1 in 5 millionaires spend more than 600 per month. At the end of the day, net worth doesn’t influence your nutritional needs. We’re all human, rich people don’t, for example, need more nutrients than people that are poorer. But, for me, I love spending money in this whole section as well as the next section which is more affordable restaurants, for example, chipotle boiling crab panera going out and getting sushi salads stuff like that.
These all give me a lot of nutrition plus a lot of happiness per dollar spent something that I really personally don’t enjoy too much is the very right of the skill. These really expensive restaurants that just cost a lot of money I get the appeal of these dining experiences that are extremely fun and memorable. But for me, most of the time I don’t really care about that stuff as much I care more about enjoying the food. For me, good food does not have to be expensive that’s one reason why I’m just obsessed with street food, especially in countries like Asia. For me, I’d rather spend that money on different types of experiences like traveling. I do take comfort in knowing that I can have a really amazing meal not spend that much money and not go broke spending money on food that I can’t afford the next thing I stopped buying was clutter sucks.
It doesn’t just affect your wallet. It also affects your mental space and your ability to have location freedom. So, I just started making it a priority to buy less useless stuff and the keyword here is useless over the course of a lifetime. We will spend 3680 hours or 153 days searching for misplaced items think about how much wasted time that is. Also, there are about 300 000 items in the average American home which just saying out loud is crazy. So, I found out that as I make more and more money, I actually get less enjoyment from accumulating things. The more you make, the more valuable time is. When the things that you buy actually reduce the amount of time, you can spend on yourself or on things that you love then that can be a big turn-off. So, buy you stuff, buy less frequently and when you do that things won’t live rent-free in your head, you’ll be thinking about all these different things that you have. I promise you, it’s gonna make you a lot less stressed. If you’re reliant on things then you just don’t have complete freedom and I think this is a priority that I started really taking seriously the ability to be free and do what I want. When things hold you down then obviously it makes sense to not spend your money buying those things, accumulating those things because if you discard that first blip of wow. I bought something actually having the item and having it be in your house is super off-putting. So, that’s why I stopped buying clutter the main point here is being controlled by material possessions can hold you back significantly. In my opinion, it’s more about the freedom you have versus the number of things you own. So, another thing I don’t spend money on is gaming consoles. I actually grew up really liking some certain games like Guitar Hero, but I was always worried about how much time I was spending on these things. I’m just super glad that I didn’t get addicted to them because I know they can be very addictive.
As I grew more and more wealthy, I started to realize just how important it was for me to stay away from gaming. It’s actually such a big killer of productivity. So, as a result, I have this sort of thing with it where I just can’t really do it. I get that people use gaming to sort of de-stress and that makes a lot of sense. But in that case, it should be a hobby and should not eat up a big significant portion of your day. I think that with gaming a lot of people get really sucked into it. They’ll spend two four six hours a day playing games and that to me. You are just very dangerous and I view it as sort of like staying in your comfort zone. It’s comfortable to play games, it’s comfortable to have fun at home and just watch TV. But the more of that you’re doing, the less opportunity you have to get out of your comfort zone. That is where the real gains in your life are made. Even if you look at the data, it shows that video gamers spent about eight hours and 27 minutes each week playing games in 2021. This also relates to mobile phone games which can be extremely addicting as well. On average Americans spend two hours and 54 minutes on their phones each day and a good portion of that can be on social media. But also playing those games, so gaming consoles, phone games – these are a big no-no for me. I know that it’s not the same for everyone, but rather I came outside by working out and doing something that actually involves my body because then you can have fun while also improving your health.
So, the next thing that I don’t spend money on is an expensive primary residence. The current apartment I live in is about 3 600 per month. Now you it’s a very small portion of my income. It’s a lot less than I could technically afford to spend on rent. I think the point here is to say that you don’t need to live in a house that is really expensive because that’s going to stress you out. I choose to live in a small apartment because it’s just so much easier than living in a big mansion. For me, I’m only responsible for everything within these walls and there’s nothing outside that I need to take care of any maintenance or any issues that are all left up to the apartment complex. That saves me a lot of time and stress the average home costs. One dollar per year for every square foot in maintenance, so a pretty big three thousand square foot home should cost you about three thousand dollars a year just in maintenance living in an apartment. I have none of those costs and that saves me a lot. You just don’t need to stretch your wallet to live somewhere super expensive. I think the rule is generally you can spend about a third to 40 percent of your income on your rent or your house. As you make more and more money you don’t need to follow those rules because if you spend that much of your income then you’re probably living in a house that’s way bigger than you’d actually need 10.9 million renters spent more than 50 percent of your income.
This article is a transcription of a video made by Charlie Chang
Original video: https://youtu.be/fw-qUooWejA
