I Would Die If I Flew Commercial
Needs, Wants, and Wishes: The Key to Financial Contentment
A wealthy man once told me, “I would die if I flew commercial.” His statement irritated me. I quickly retorted that every day millions of people fly commercial, and nobody dies of the experience.
Today, I empathize with him.
No, I don’t fly private; never have. Still, my wife and I have grown accustomed to purchasing first-class tickets for cross-country flights. Initially sitting up front felt almost magical, so much nicer than coach.
The magic soon faded as flying first class started to feel like a necessity. I recoiled at the thought of being stuck in the back of the plane on a five-hour flight. Our days of sitting crammed into coach seats on long flights seemed to be behind us.
Until they weren’t. This spring, we flew with our daughter’s family to California for a family vacation. We purchased two round-trip coach tickets so we could help our daughter and her husband care for their two young girls on the long flight.
The plane was full. Our seats were far from the front. And the experience was fine. Not as comfortable as flying first class, and totally OK.
Then it hit me! I made the exact same mistake as the man who feared flying commercial. I had forgotten one of my own guiding principles—the difference between a need, a want, and a wish.
Needs are life’s essentials: food, clothing, housing, health care. Wants are the relatively few things in life that really matter, such as time with family and friends, our faith, and opportunities to grow and learn. Wishes are things that we prefer to have, and can live without quite well.
Confusing wishes with needs and wants is a problem. It leaves you with the mistaken belief that you won’t be alright if you need to spend less.
Knowing you can be happy living on less is a big deal. Why? Because knowing you will be just fine if you need to cut expenses someday gives you the ability to spend more today.
Spend on what? On whatever will add fun, peace, joy or meaning to your life.
The challenge is that many of us have an aversion to spending less. We imagine it will feel terrible if we can’t do what we have grown accustomed to doing. Just like what I imagined about flying coach.
This unreasonable fear of having to live on less can have devastating consequences. It can prompt people to stay in jobs they have grown to hate. They may refrain from fulfilling long-held personal desires. Others even stop dreaming about the future at all, to protect themselves from the disappointment of unfulfilled hopes.
All of this unhappiness because they are afraid that someday they might be forced to spend less. How do you overcome the outsized fear of reduced spending? Realistically consider how much money you need to satisfy your needs, fulfill your wants, and enjoy your wishes.
For my wife and I, satisfying our needs requires only a small percentage of our income. Our wants cost more than our needs.
We want to stay in our home. We want to be part of our children’s and grandchildren’s lives. We want to celebrate with friends and family during the good times, and support each other during the hard times. We want to grow—intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. We want to be part of a supportive community that shares our values. We want to spend time in nature connecting to our sense of awe and wonder.
We spend a lot of money on our wishes, money well spent. Our wishes make our lives easier and give us joy. We use a maid service, a lawn service, and a handyman. We take fabulous trips as we build wonderful memories together. We give generously to charities focused on building community and healing a small piece of our broken world.
Most importantly, my wife and I know we would be just fine if we had to put all our wishes on hold, for a while or forever.
No matter how long you live, life is short. When you hold back on living your full life because you are afraid of maybe, one day, having to live more modestly, you deny yourself the chance to embrace all that life has to offer.
Knowing you can be happy living on less empowers you to enjoy life in all its splendor today. Because as we all know, tomorrow is promised to nobody.
Until our next conversation,
David
Small Steps & Worthy Questions
How much money would you save if you had to put your wishes on hold for a year?
If you felt more confident about being OK in the future, what might you do differently now? How would it feel to engage in these activities?
Think of a scale from 1 to 100. One represents minimizing your expenses as much as possible to save for the future. One hundred represents spending for today with no savings or plans for the future. Where do you fall on that scale? Where would you like to be?
Have you had the experience I had, catching yourself mistaking a want for a need? I’d love to hear your reaction if you’d like to post a comment.
Thank you for putting this out there David Geller! Certainly food for thought.
I’ll be testing out Need/Want/Wish for the next month as I review and adjust our budget. I had to cringe as I thought about how much we would save if we removed many of our wishes.