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Poverty, Plenty, and MORE!
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Don't believe everything you thinkThe liminal space Veteran
This is a short video from a conservative channel I find tolerable enough to follow. I don't know if the tone is too off putting for this forum, but I thought the message was spot on for how we as lay Buddhists should think about our relation to money.
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He does make sense, but I hope he reaches the right audience and doesn’t just end up preaching to the choir. It’s a built-in risk, people search on YouTube for things they like.
I guess then it's up to the choir to sing to new audiences... sing the song, pas it on....
Yes, the fractured and abundant media landscape generally just allows people to find their niche and hunker down. The social media algorithms make it even worse, they want to keep you on their platform so they only give you more of what you want hoping you'll keep clicking.
I'm quite a bit like he is in the video, with the poverty mindset. I wear things to the nub, then glue on a used nub to get it to last longer. And it seems like I tend to not value my economic worth at a high enough level. I've often had clients tell me I'm not charging enough for the quality of my work, I've worked to overcome that and am hopefully valuing myself more reasonably now.
I come from a frugal family and growing up I would have friends who when they would get paid from their teenage jobs would immediately go out and spend it all. I would occasionally buy a few things I wanted, but just held on to the rest and they were always wondering how I always seemed to have money for things that would come up, like I was super rich or something. It's much the same way today, I don't make a big salary, but I also don't have big expenses or new things or the latest gadgets, so I have money sitting in the bank for those unexpected expenses or occasional splurges on important things. I have plenty, my old garage sale furniture is enough and the tech in my low end phone I bought this summer cheaply was high end and expensive 5 years ago, its nice, its good.
I read Hard Times, about the Great Depression, by Studs Terkel some 30+ years ago and I have never forgotten what one of the people he interviewed said. She said, "Success is in knowing what you don't need". It's stuck with me ever since.
Great video, I will be passing it around.
I’ve up until recently had a slightly different mindset in that I would buy ‘nice but durable’ things and then use them until they break. So I buy a mid-range iPhone but I then use it for five or seven years, and so end up not paying more than a low-end android phone which you replace every few years. I’m a great believer in spending a bit more to get durability.
Also I’ve always lived more or less the same lifestyle during my life, being fairly frugal, and so when harder times came a few years ago I had some money in the bank to live off.
It’s interesting how people’s strategies vary.
Yeah, nice but durable is good. Many years ago I bought some quality hiking boots, I wound up wearing them often as everyday footwear during the snowy winters and they lasted me 15 years. After that I bought a pair of cheap boots that cost about %20 of the price, but they started breaking down after 2 years and I had to get rid of them after 3. So I wound up paying about the same price per year for a good pair of boots, that also felt and performed better, as I did for a cheap pair of boots. This time I bought another pair of quality boots.
I also think there are some things that are worth spending more money on. I spent more on a good mattress because good sleep has broad impacts on the rest of your quality of life.
Tee Hee, insatiable aquisition is 'the hungry ghost realm'.
Futile and unsatisfying.
However here is another view from an alternative inner wealth tradition ...
https://www.timesheadline.com/economy/money-matter-sufi-view-wealth-6228.html
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