[Warning: long and rambling post ahead]
For the past three years, I’ve been lucky enough to have jobs which paid enough for me to support myself fully: enough to pay the bills and save a little each month, but that’s about it. However, starting this fall, I’ll see a substantial increase in my income from a University fellowship. This is a good thing, right?
Probably so. But since finding out about this, I’ve been spending way too much time thinking about money, or budgeting, or things in general. Now, I’m not about to go on a spending spree, and in fact I’ve set up a budget where less than half of my income will be spent each month. That’s not my worry. I’m not about to touch my long-term savings. That’s not my worry either. What concerns me is that, for the first time, I have money to budget for short-to-medium-term savings, for larger items. Things like a camera, or a digital piano, or a new computer. Even my perspective on getting a car looks different with a higher income and the prospect of cheaper insurance rates once I turn 25 in another year or so.
I don’t need any of these things. I live perfectly well without any of them, and I’m happy. Yet since hearing about this fellowship a few months ago, my stray thoughts keep drifting to these. If I save X dollars per month, how long will it be until I can afford [insert item here]? And then for the future: If I have a job that pays Y dollars per year, then it will take me Z years of saving W dollars per month to afford [insert item here]. And I hate it. I hate it I hate it I hate it. I see the seeds of consumerism and materialism and want to nip them in the bud because I am afraid that I can’t resist them.
This may sound silly because I’ve always been a thrifty person. My worry is that this is due more to a lack of material wants than a result of self-discipline. And with more money, my desires grow, and I worry that I can’t resist them. I feel like I should pick something that I really want and can afford, and deliberately deny it to myself for no other reason than to prove that I can. I try to stifle the temptation by forming rigid budgets, but I worry that this will be no more effective than an OCD sufferer trying to ritualize away any disturbing thoughts.
I’ve talked to a few friends about this, and some have told me to lighten up, to treat myself to something nice and go on being thrifty afterwards. Maybe they’re right. But at the same time, it’s the “treating myself” bit that worries me. The last thing I want to do is associate spending with happiness. I’m perfectly happy right now. I don’t need to spend to enjoy myself, and I don’t want to go down the road of craving another raise so I can get another “treat.”
So that’s where I’m at. That’s why I have mixed feelings about this fellowship, and why I really don’t want a high-paying job once I’m done with school. But at the same time, I know that this is a temptation I need to learn to face at some point in my life or another. It’s better to learn as a single graduate student than as someone with a family to support. And I know that as long as I’m as worried as I am now, I’m not in any immediate danger of falling prey to materialism, especially not on what is essentially a first-year schoolteacher’s salary. My worry is longer term, that little by little I’ll get seduced until years from now I don’t think anything of it, and by then it may be too late. So here’s where accountability comes in. I want my friends to remind me of this post from time to time. When I graduate from school. When I’m thinking about switching jobs or locations. When I have children. Whenever I need to hear it. I want to resist but I don’t think I can do it alone.
