Buy the things you love while escaping the rat race

Let’s say you really love clothes. Specifically, clothes that make you look like this:

At the same time, you’re smart, and realize that spending tons of money every weekend on clothes isn’t going to work out well.

You decide to save more so you can buy the expensive pieces, and make more money.

What if there was a strategy that allowed you to do both?

Turn your “personal spending” into “business spending.”

Instead of constantly buying things to satisfy the shopping urge, why not buy the things you love strategically to make more money?

For instance, because you love clothes you can do the following:

Find networking events to go to where you can wear those clothes.

Those networking events help you get a much better paying job the next year.

Make content with those clothes.

Do “haul” videos or “aesthetic” videos or fashion guide videos.

Share your knowledge. Build an audience.

This allows you to get brand deals, make UGC videos, or sell your audience a product.

Build confidence so you can advance your career.

Ask your boss for a raise, get a promotion, take a leadership position.

There are many different ways that your love for clothes can pay out!

The Conscious Spending Plan

In I Will Teach You to Be Rich, Ramit Sethi shares the Conscious Spending Plan, where you stop tracking your finances, and automate them instead.

You ruthlessly cut costs on the things you do not care about, so you can spend extravagantly on the things you love.

To spend extravagantly without regret, Sethi creates a Guilt-Free Spending envelope.

Money is added here after accounting for fixed costs, savings, and investments.

As an example, let’s say you make $700 per week (= $36,400/year = $3033/month).

Here’s how it breaks down:

Category	Recommended %	Monthly Target	Weekly Target	What it Covers
Fixed Costs	50%	$1,516	$350	Rent, utilities (including internet), insurance, groceries, public transportation, subscriptions, memberships (gym).
Investments	10%	$303	$75	401(k) match, Roth IRA, index funds.
Emergency Savings	10%	$303	$75	Emergency fund, down payment
Other Savings	10%	$303	$75	Vacations, irregular purchases
Guilt-Free Spending	20%	$606	$150	Dining out, entertainment, hobbies, clothes, morning lattes.
TOTAL	100%	$3032	$725

Let’s combine two ideas

Why not also add a “Business Expense” category?

Not in the IRS way, but rather a budgeting mindset way.

Money that goes in this category can potentially gives you 2x, 10x, 100x returns.

Where it goes looks different for everyone. You can use it to:

• Start a business
• Acquire a business
• Angel invest
• Create content
• Network
• Accelerate your career
• Buy business memberships

Since you’re ambitious and don’t have time to spend guilt-free anyway, let’s cut its allocation to half (20% ==> 10%).

Then, let’s add a “Business Expense” category (call it whatever you want: Personal Investment, Career Fund, Angel Fund).

Here’s a more detailed example if you want to be a content creator.

You can spend extravagantly to improve

• your wardrobe
• your home aesthetic (e.g. furniture, lighting, art pieces)
• your camera equipment
• your opportunities to film content (e.g. networking, going out)
• your content-editing software (or hire someone to edit for you)

We’ll put all of that in an entirely different category, so you don’t accidentally spend it, or more importantly, feel bad spending it.

Here’s what it looks like:

Category	Recommended %	Monthly Target	Weekly Target	What it Covers
Fixed Costs	50%	$1517	$350	Rent, utilities (including internet), insurance, groceries, public transportation, subscriptions, memberships (gym).
Long-Term Investments	10%	$303	$75	Long-term low-risk investments. 401(k) match, Roth IRA.
Emergency Savings	10%	$303	$75	Emergency fund
Other Savings	10%	$303	$75	Vacations, irregular purchases
Guilt-Free Spending	10%	$303	$75	Dining out, entertainment, hobbies, clothes, morning lattes.
”Business Expense”	10%	$303	$75	Books, wardrobe, equipment, software, aesthetic, coaching, networking, memberships.
TOTAL	100%	$3032	$750

Note: Anything extra from non-investment categories at the end of the month goes into Emergency Savings.

By doing this, you make your money help you escape the rat-race.

If you invest in yourself guilt-free, you’ll do it, and you won’t go overboard.

With the same income, you potentially get a completely different result.

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Side Note:

I looked up a few good savings accounts to categorize your spending.

Capital One 360 Performance Savings seems good (3% APY). You can make an unlimited number of these accounts to act like “buckets” for different categories.

The YNAB app also seems like a good way to track and get a feel of spending for a month.

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As always, let me know how useful this article was by rating below!

-Armaan