Trade Offs

In his book ‘Moolala’ (subtitled - ‘Why smart people do dumb things with their money and what you can do about it’) financial expert, author and speaker Bruce Sellery, emphasizes what he calls ‘trade-offs’. He says that when it comes to personal finances, people often seem to believe that they don’t really have any options because their lives are simply controlled by their circumstances. The bills have to be paid, so it’s just that simple. Sellery says that’s not the way we should be looking at it. Rather we should be thinking about making ‘trade-offs’.

One example he gives from his own life. He chooses to drive an old car. The reason? He likes to travel. So, when he’s around home, he saves money by driving an old car. That’s a ‘trade-off’. But, he says, if the ‘new car smell’ is something that is really important to you, then you need to ask yourself what you are willing to give up in exchange for that.

This is sound financial counsel. It is based on the truth that you can only spend a dollar once, which means that you can’t have it all. The advertising industry works very hard to promote the myth that you really can have it all, but after all, it remains a myth.

Some people would point to the very rich as exceptions but it applies to them as well. If you were the richest person on the planet, you could still only be in one place at a time doing one thing at a time. Think about it. We’re supposed to learn this hard lesson early. Just the other day a little girl had to choose. She could either go with her mom to take her brother to camp or stay home and go swimming. That’s a hard choice. It was a choice she didn’t want to have to make. She cried. But there wasn’t anything that anyone could do, because that’s life.

You’d think that we would learn this well, and yet, it seems that a lot of the time we persist in chasing this false hope that somehow we can have it both ways. And the failure to really come to grips with this reality can prevent us from engaging in one of the most important tasks of life. And what would that be? Stepping back and figuring out what is ultimately important to us, and THEN making a sound decision about what we are prepared to give up (‘trade-off’) in order to make it a reality.

If you have a problem with money, money is not your problem. This isn’t after all about money. It’s about choices. And don’t say you don’t have any because that’s just not true. We can’t choose the consequences of our actions because they are inseparably locked to the actions themselves. But we can choose our actions and we must choose wisely. Money … time … heart … it’s always about choices and when we choose something, we are always saying ‘no’ to something else (or more likely ‘no’ to many other things). Because, no matter what anyone might tell you, truer words have never been spoken – you can’t have it all.