We Need to Stop Pretending that Spending Less & Saving Is What Leads to Financial Freedom

I have a glitch in my matrix; my programming is glitching.

I think this glitch started showing on a sunset beach walk in Sri Lanka during one of the Wealthy Money Retreats in April.

I’m questioning the traditional things we are taught:

"Know your priorities, don’t buy luxurites, don’t live beyond your lifestyle...this is how you grow wealth/ how you reach your financial goals."

Is this true?

Or is this just teaching us to settle for less?

To keep cutting back on our desires and be happy by denying our soul's desires?

We are taught to shrink if our income doesn't cover expenses

Shrink. Cut back. Deny your desires. Have less fun.

I celebrate and clap for Black mothers that can take kids to college and university by selling tomatoes on the street.

My paternal granny put almost all of her 10 kids through university and technicon by washing White people's clothes and selling ish on the side.

My dad is the result of her hard work.

My dad then helped educate my aunt.

The 2 of them - dad and Aunt Ray are the pillars of the family and when I'm honest I also go to them when life flames me.

They hold me on my bad days.

So yeah, the strong Black woman can raise warriors but at what cost?

I can no longer stomach the narrative that we need to stretch the little we have and deny ourselves basic necessities or pleasure in order to reach our financial goals.

It feels stifling.

It feels like self deprivation.

Why do we keep insisting on pushing the narrative of saving on a small salary and shrinking ourselves and our desires so we can live on less?

Yes! Saving and investing is important.

It’s the way to creating passive income and with that, financial freedom.

But you know what?

Income growth is also a huge part of financial freedom.

It's the other side of the coin.

These things work in tandem.

Why don’t we teach that it's okay to want more and that if we want more, we'll be required to expand?

We’ll be required to start thinking of ways to make more money and start opening ourselves up to increasing income?

Because R4,000/ US$400 a month is really not a fair living wage.

Minimum wage in almost every country is not a fair living wage!

And yet we demonize people for being unable to live on that.

For daring to want decent clothes and internet and TV.

Because how dare you want all that?

You should shrink yourself to your income!

Poor people are made out to be these awful humans who are wasteful because they can't live on very little money when the cost of living is so high.

In fact we get upset that they want DSTV/ cable TV or small luxuries because why should they want more?

[Because we have taught ourselves to shrink and to be happy with that.]

We insist they keep shrinking and erase all desires.

Yet to be human is to have desires.

To be human is to want. It's to want pleasure and to want to experience things.

Recent graduates are taught how to save and how to cut back on their basic wants and how to live on less and less and then shamed when they fail because the demands from home are so much or because their salaries can't cover everything.

We say its their fault for wanting more from life.

How dare they want more?

The truth is we need to also talk about expansion in the same way that we talk about saving

We’ve normalized shrinking and self denial in tiny ways.

We’ve normalized chucking out our dreams in favor of a practical life.

In fact it feels wrong to want more because we’re going against millennia of programming.

We can't talk about income expansion or even envision it, because we saw our parents make do with less and we’re loyal to this model because we’re loyal to our parents.

We have been taught to shrink and fit our lives into our salaries and our incomes and when our souls rebel, desire more and dream of more, we beat ourselves into submission and make ourselves okay with less.

We call it being practical and we celebrate this practicality.

We set 10 year goals and force ourselves to follow that practical plan.

We have no room for miracles. We don’t ask why it has to take us 10 years to double our income.

Our practicality and our belief in reality is destroying us. We are dying a slow death because of it

We don’t ask how to expand in a way that cuts the 10 year goal into a 2 year goal.

We make our goals bigger than they really are and buy into the idea that it’s normal to work for 40 years so that we can retire at 65.

This is considered being practical.

We believe so deeply in the concept of time and believe that our goals need to take 5 - 20 years to manifest.

Why?

Who taught us this concept of time?

Who gave us this concept of retirement? Of monthly income? Of working 365 days a year, only to be paid 12 times a year?

We never ask: how can I expand and live the life I want now?

What do I truly want and how can I make that happen now?