Splurging is an Emotional Topic!
Tuesday, July 8th, 2008The Wall Street Journal Online’s blog on wealth quoted an interesting, if small, study on splurge spending which obviously touched a chord in its readership.
Usually, articles in WSJ Online’s wealth blog generate around 15 comments - maybe over a hundred if you are combining the topics of wealth and politics, which tends to bring out the armchair pundits. But the post “Splurging is Good for Your Health” generated a whopping 477 comments at last count, with most everyone weighing with their own judgements on whether “overpriced indulgences” lead to happiness and less regret.
The “spenders” and the “savers” seem to show up in equal numbers, and with equally valid justifications for their points of view. A few people dissed the study itself, published in the Harvard Business Review, for being too small and from too narrow a demographic.
The wisest comment - at least in the first 100, which was about as far as I got - was this one, from one Mike in the U.K.:
“It’s easy to spend too much and have no future - It’s just as easy to spend too little and have no past - The difficult bit is to get it just right.”
That’s why it’s so important to keep your goals and your values foremost, and know what they are before you start building your “ideal budget”.
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