Quality of life now or ETF for financial future

Hi Melanie.

It’s a good question. There’s a few ways you can approach it:

1- Pick a minimum investment amount you can manage and then happily enjoy the rest of your income. You’ll generally find that you will find a way to manage if you automatically remove a portion of your pay before you can spend it. Try to start small and then increase this over time as you get used to it.

2- Do a balance of both. Set aside a strict portion of ‘fun’ money and a portion of investment money from each pay. This ensures you don’t overspend and helps you balance both desires.

3- Prioritise what expenses are really worth it and what aren’t. Which of the things you do bring you the most absolute enjoyment and pleasure? Try to focus on these and optimise the rest of your spending so that you’re able to get the most benefits while still investing.

4- Think about the kind of life you want to have in 5-10 years, not just now. Do you want to be semi retired? Fully retired by a certain age? How much will you need to make that happen?

Generally, the more you can set aside for investing now, it will improve the quality of your life in the future, many times over. Because of investment returns and compounding, one trip away foregone now could mean 3 trips away later. So try to think about the tradeoffs there.

The following podcast might also help, it’s about balancing current desires + future goals: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0AlmswBDpU3l...

Hope that helps.
Dave