The 5 Questions Before I Spend My Life Force

This is a continuation of my previous post — Your Life Force Has a Price Tag. That one was philosophy. This one is practice.

Before I buy something, I ask myself five questions. It’s a small habit, but it’s saved me from a lot of impulsive buying, especially on anything expensive.

1. Will I Use This Often?

I don’t need to use something every day. But if I’m spending a significant amount on it, I want it to have a meaningful place in my life, not just sit there because I liked the idea of owning it, or because the excitement wore off by the second day.

Say you buy a motorbike for daily commuting. It costs $2,000, and you use it every day for 5 years: that’s 365 days × 5 years = 1,825 days. $2,000 divided by 1,825 days is about $1.10 per day. That’s very cheap once you break it down. It’s a simplification. There’s gas, tax, and maintenance on top, but you get the idea.

2. Will This Save Me Time or Energy?

Time is the one thing I can never earn back. If money can save me hours of frustration, repetitive work, or unnecessary inconvenience, it’s probably worth spending.

Say you earn $200/hour and cleaning your house takes 2 hours, that’s $400 of your time. Hiring a cleaning service at $30/hour for those same 2 hours costs $60. You save $340, and you get those 2 hours back to spend on something else. Remember the previous post’s philosophy, buying back your time?

If two hours of cleaning cost you $60 to outsource, and you value those two hours of your time at more than $60, then outsourcing makes sense.

That said, some people, myself included, genuinely enjoy cleaning their own house. It’s soothing, almost therapeutic, and there’s nothing wrong with that either.

3. Will This Give Me a New Perspective?

Some purchases are valuable because they change how you see the world: a book, a trip, a course, a new hobby. Not everything valuable needs to be practical. Experiences let you keep reinventing yourself, and that’s worth something on its own.

A trip to Japan, tasting fresh sushi or curry (I love their curry) shows you what an authentic version of a dish tastes like, compared to the version sold back home. It’s an experience that can’t be replicated any other way, and it’s worth doing at least once.

4. Will This Create More Value Than It Costs?

Value isn’t always measurable in numbers, and it’s not universal. What’s worth it for one person is junk to another. A MacBook Pro might seem pointless to a gamer who’d rather build a PC with the same budget. But for a professional graphic designer whose eyes are sensitive to pixels and color, that same purchase is justified, it helps them: do their best creative work.

Sometimes something’s worth it because it gives you years of enjoyment, meaningful memories, better health, or the ability to create something you couldn’t before.

5. Would I Still Want This If Nobody Knew?

One of the hardest questions, or maybe the easiest. Sometimes you don’t want the thing itself, you want the feeling of owning it, or you want other people to know you own it. This is the most dangerous trap of the social media era, where comparison is constant.

Not everyone thinks about it consciously, but I believe there’s some part of most of us that wants to show something to others. Status, pride, ego. It’s worth keeping in check.

Real World

Enough theory. Here’s how I actually applied this in the real world.

I was shopping for a bed and found one pricier than I expected. The old, frugal version of me would’ve said no immediately. But this time I ran it through the questions first.

It checked 4 out of 5 boxes, so the purchase was reasonable. But it doesn’t need to check all five.

These questions aren’t a strict scoring system. A purchase doesn’t need to be useful, save time, expand my perspective, create measurable value, and pass the ego test all at once. That would be an impossible standard.

A good book might not save me time. A vacation might not make me more productive. A comfortable bed might not give me a new perspective. That’s fine.

The point isn’t to achieve a perfect score. The point is to understand why I am spending the money, and to make sure the reason is good enough for me.

Diminishing Returns

One more thing worth mentioning: diminishing returns. Sometimes a pricier option doesn’t actually give you more value. A phone with 2GB RAM and a decent screen is enough for someone who only watches YouTube, a higher-spec phone with gimmicky features won’t add much. That’s diminishing returns in action. Only you know where that line sits for you.

Five questions won’t make every decision easy. But they’ll make sure it’s actually yours.

Back to home