ZenTheFrenzy

Here in the frenzy, money goes out the door on a daily basis. The frenzy can be expensive. So we have some experience spending money. However, having experience spending money is different than knowing how to wisely spend money. In an earlier post, I talked about gaps in my understanding of how to acquire money , but I had even more gaps in my understanding of how to spend money. It’s something I am still working on. For the vast majority of us, how you spend money is much more important than how you acquire it. It took me a very long time to learn that lesson. The first part of understanding your spending is to understand what type of spending you are engaging in. This is my personal classification, it may not map perfectly for your purposes but you should go through a similar thought process when you spend money. Expenses that cannot be avoided Some expenses cannot be avoided if you participate in the US economy, and since you're reading a blog on a dusty corner of

Sometimes the frenzy shows us we have misconceptions. It teaches us to not trust common knowledge. I hope that by sharing our story we can push back against some of those expectations. Prior to having a baby, we thought babies loved the car. We heard stories of tired parents driving their children around the block at 1 AM. This sounded miserable, but it sets a certain expectation Expectations about babies and cars We had an expectation that babies love cars, they would go to sleep instantly in the car seat when the engine started. We practically turned around on our way out of hospital to tell them they must’ve forgot some secret procedure because our lovely new baby screamed the entire car ride home. We hoped it was just a fluke a single trip. It turns out it wasn’t . The “common knowledge” about babies and cars was not true for our baby. Your baby is not broken So why share this story? You baby may love the car. But there is likely something else that “all

Early before the coalescence of the frenzy, we had started to form our family values. One of our now well-established family values is that we try to minimize harm caused by what we buy. We don't always succeed but there is one thing we avoided from the very beginning because of the incredible damage it has done around the globe. Buying a diamond ring. This was particularly my hang up perhaps caused by Leonardo DiCaprio's attempt at a South African accent . I would not spend money on a diamond ring. But I also didn't want to seem cheap to my soon to be bride, which was entirely in my head and had nothing to do with what she thought of me. So I started the delicate dance of figuring out if we were in the 100 percent getting married camp while bringing up my ethical dilemma. Luckily, I was not left wanting for clues on this one. It was made very clear that we were indeed in camp and that we should get started on pitching the tent before midnight. I got lucky bec