Prepare for the future or live for the moment?

Kandy-Sugar

Kandy-Sugar

ღWhite Roséღ ♀
Veteran
Joined
Nov 15, 2008
Messages
9,096
Age
37
Location
ღAustraliaღ ღQueenslandღღGold Coastღ
Gil
0
I was having a discussion with Steve today at how I didn't know what to do with my life.

'Prepare for the future' or 'Live for the moment'.

Do you prepare for the future by hardly doing anything with your life. Staying home all the time, because you don't want to waste petrol by driving to your mates and then you save money by not having to buy drinks.

Not going to the movies because you want to save every penny you can etc.

Or do you live for the moment and make every day as if it's your last.

Instead of having a boring lunch, do you go all out and make sure you're truly satisfied? Do you make every weekend count by doing something amazing such as sky-diving etc.? All of which costs a lot of money and therefore leaves you not a lot left over for your savings account?

----

How do you know if you're going to die tomorrow and miss out on all those awesome experiences that you were waiting to experience at a later date when you'd 'saved enough money.'?

I want to live for the moment and just make myself happy, but then there's the other part of me that says, "How do you know you won't live to 100? You'll have nothing because you didn't help yourself now by saving etc."

So what do you do?

Do you try to juggle both?

At the moment I am honestly trying to juggle and I feel guilty whenever I buy something even very small for myself.

I have been saving a fair amount of money lately, but then when we go shopping I will make myself buy only the best in order to at least satisfy my tastebuds.

So what way of life are you living at the moment?
 
Last edited:
Id say a bit of both. Living each day as if its your last would just be 2 much for me, i believe in living as you want. If u wanna take it easy, then relax, or if you wanna do something at a precise moment then do it. I see no harm in planning for the future, having a bit of money put aside so that things are better later is a good thing in my oppinion. I just take each day as it comes really but im not one for cramming as much excitement into it as i can.
 
The only things I really plan for is education or money wise and 5 a side on a Sunday which is something I enjoy anyway, or home games when the football season starts again which I have a season ticket for. Other than that I just live for the moment, life becomes shit and boring when you start planning everything, it's just good to wake up not knowing what you're going to do :monster:
 
I have enough trouble with organising the present, so planning for the future is out of question. I know roughly where I want to be and how to get there.
I'm fairly impulsive so I can only really live how I do. If I end up mad and lonely living on the street it'll be because that's who I am. Every action has consequences, but I just don't care until after I've made my decision.
 
I guess I live in the moment. I only plan ahead when I actually need to, I don't have any 10 year plans or anything like that. I try not to let money hold me back from having a good time, as a result I'm pretty impulsive when it comes to spending money (even though I am currently unemployed). But with that said, I am pretty good at stumbling across things which are both fun AND cheap.

I'm not so impulsive that I live like each day is my last, but I still like to have fun.
 
Hmm good question, ask me about 2 months ago I would say pretty impulsive. Although I really don't have any plans, I do have a routine sort of these days, but if I break this new cycle I established I would be a bit lost so to speak.

Every day I try to eat a small breakfast, whether it be just a breakfast bar or yogurt. I try to grab a few snacks throughout the day, but never want to have that full feeling, so I try to never indulge. I feed 2 people and 6 animals, so it is very hard to "buy" stuff for myself. Of course I also hate shopping so the only thing I ever really buy when I'm out is maybe a new pair of gym shorts or something along those lines(which is like once every 2 years). I tend to spend most of my money on the little lady. If she wants jeans, I buy em, if she wants a new bra or panties from Victoria secrets, I buy em, if she wants some new nail polish from OPI, I buy it. I don't mind spending on her impulsively. She gets pretty much everything she wants, with a smile of course. I also help out my friends in need every now and again, and can I say one thing.. Western Union are crooks. 15 bucks to send 50 dollars? I just send it by mail or paypal these days and hope it gets to them.

Planning per se, well I want to look forward to marriage since I have moved into full time status here at work. I have been putting it off for far to long, and I'm still a young pup. So I need to start putting back money and actually going out of my way to make it known.
 
Well Kandy, this is a great question indeed. I think that if we speak in general terms, pretty much everybody juggles both, but I'll go into some details about my answer.

For the most part, I'm a prepare for the future person. Now, this doesn't necessarily mean that I try to save every penny I earn, but in general I do try to be conservative with my money. Seeing as how I'm single and not involved, marriage isn't a near future plan, but I do want the assurance of knowing that when it does happen that I'll be prepared. I currently live in an apartment, so another plan is to save money to buy a house some day. The house though comes after marriage, or as I plan it to be. I've built money in my account for years, and it's not getting spent on this stuff now, but it's there for a rainy day so to speak, in case I were to loose my job or have to ditch out a lot of money for something. I had prepared for my education as well, and I have no bills to pay for that, so I can focus on other bills.

Now I'll say that I am also impulsive as well. When I bought my Mustang almost 5 years ago, I wanted to wait longer to get one, so that the price could go down on it, but I found a deal I couldn't let down and bought it. With other interests I have, mainly music, I won't hesitate to spend money. There are quite a few bands that I have entire discographies for, some of them were almost entirely unknown before I bought them. Even though at times I've spent close to $200 at a time on a load of CD's, I don't see it as being a lot of money in the big picture. The car is the only big investment I made that wasn't cheap.

Off the top of my head, I can't think of a lot of things, but there are non-money related things that I tend to be more impulsive on as well. Relationships is one of those things, I tend to follow my heart and not think long-run about. I met the only girl I ever really loved this way, but the impulse got me in trouble with that too, so it was sort of a double-edged sword. But I'll say that my future preparation took over for the last relationship issue I had because I could sense that it didn't have a long-run feel to it, but there were reasons for that.

So the tl;dr version, I'm more of a prepare for the future person, though somethings I do tend to be impulsive about.
 
Some good answers in here people but I was kind of shocked at this Shu: :gasp:

Shu said:
I tend to spend most of my money on the little lady. If she wants jeans, I buy em, if she wants a new bra or panties from Victoria secrets, I buy em, if she wants some new nail polish from OPI, I buy it. I don't mind spending on her impulsively. She gets pretty much everything she wants, with a smile of course.
Click to expand...

Does she not have a job in order to buy them herself?

I can count the number of gifts I've received from Steve and can point out the date on the calender as to when I got them.

I dunno. I just find that people get too used to getting spoiled and then get shitty when you can't afford it one day. =/

Or that they don't appreciate gifts when they receive them. More along the lines of them expecting them.
 
Definitely live for the moment. Of course, I am saving for a car at the moment, and all that kind of jazz, but I couldn't stand it if I wasn't going out every weekend, or going out for lunch with my mates a few times a week. I am not planning to live very long, and to be honest I would rather enjoy my life now with my body the way it is then get to retire at 65 or whatever and then being able to do stuff. I let future Dissonant flare worry about that.
 
Kandy-Sugar said:
Some good answers in here people but I was kind of shocked at this Shu: :gasp:



Does she not have a job in order to buy them herself?

I can count the number of gifts I've received from Steve and can point out the date on the calender as to when I got them.

I dunno. I just find that people get too used to getting spoiled and then get shitty when you can't afford it one day. =/

Or that they don't appreciate gifts when they receive them. More along the lines of them expecting them.
Click to expand...

Well to answer, I'll say this. We only shop every 3 months to be honest. We live in a small town here in the States called Oxford,MS where everything is way overpriced. So we generally only spend money on our pets in this town.

When we do get to go to say.... Tupelo,MS or maybe.. Memphis,TN or Birmingham, AL - I don't mind buying whatever then.

Her money goes to her car bills, her insurance, her cell phone bills and that's about it. So pretty much if she wants anything it is usually through me.

I am by far not an impulsive buyer for her though. I don't buy her flowers unless of course she has had a terrible week. (I don't use it as a crutch to get out of tough situations with her, like some guys I know) So maybe 2 times in a year? I do get her a b-day present, a valentines present, a Christmas present and a anniversary present.

Let's just say I'm giving her a break because she's been working since she was 13 and had an abusive upbringing and blah blah stuff I'm not going to go into. It doesn't hurt to give her a little love.. through materials.. but like I said before she knows my limit. She also knows my budget. So since I pay for the mortgage, gas for the cars, utilities on the house, my cell phone bill, home owners fees, medical bills, and property tax - I can only buy so much.

My ideal of 10% charity our my friends that need help. I would never give to a church, or a sponsored charity (think what you will of me) but I would rather know that my friends are being taken care of without using me as a crutch. This economy effin sucks to say the least.

I don't generally spend money on myself, unless it is a xbox360 game (own 6 to my name). I have no need for material possessions to be honest. I mean granted I do have an ipod and a computer at the house, but I really am proud of my family I'm building.
 
Last edited:
I pretty much live for teh moment, the only things I plan in advance are piss ups...

I don't see the point in planning my entire life out, I prefer to just float along and take whatever life throws at me. I might be dead tomorrow, so I'l just do what I feel like doing today, even if that means not a lot. I'm to ridiculously laid back tbh, I'l worry about shit in the future, I'm not going to waste my time worrying now, Im already worrying about now stuff, without adding furture worries on top of that :gasp:
 
Auron said:
I pretty much live for teh moment, the only things I plan in advance are piss ups...

I don't see the point in planning my entire life out, I prefer to just float along and take whatever life throws at me. I might be dead tomorrow, so I'l just do what I feel like doing today, even if that means not a lot. I'm to ridiculously laid back tbh, I'l worry about shit in the future, I'm not going to waste my time worrying now, Im already worrying about now stuff, without adding furture worries on top of that :gasp:
Click to expand...
That pretty much sums me up too. I'm too laid back to plan for the future; I'll take what comes when it comes, whether it's good or bad. I prefer not knowing what'll happen next, I find planning everything in advance really dull because it takes the enjoyment out of things.
 
To be honest I'm not really doing either right now. I would LIKE to be living spontaneously and doing as I feel each day, whether it be something out of the ordinary or just relaxing at home, but I feel restricted where I live as there is NOTHING to do, and until I move out it's just going to be pretty boring.

I don't so much 'plan for the future', but I have ideas of things that I would like to do one day when it's possible or when I have the money.
 
I'm a little bit of both. While I don't really see anything wrong with planning for your future, I am not one who will stay at home all day and not have fun for the sake of saving up money. Tim and I are very outgoing despite the stress that we have to deal with financially, but we're not absolutely broke to the point that we can't afford our car payments, utility bills, cell phone bills, etc. Heck, we even go to school and it's coming out of our own pockets (we have a shared financial status - his money is my money, my money is his money sorta thing) and of course, financial aids and loans. Actually we both got approved for 5 grand each through our current college a few days ago for financial aid to last us for the next school year, so that's a big relief for us.

But for planning the future, see that's something that we can't just shrug off because we have a daughter to look out for. So while we maintain that outgoing lifestyle (especially on the weekends, but that is about to end in July when he takes Microbiology and will need 5 weeks to do that), we also tend to be very careful with how much we spend in general. I mean we'll buy a few electronics stuff (DVD, video games, etc) once every 1-2 months, and it's not like we're buying in bulk. An item extra item here and there when we happen to stop by at Target every once in awhile doesn't hurt us. But in the back of our minds, I suppose there is that tiny bit of worry lurking somewhere, but we try not to let it bother us.

So while we still like to go out for lunch or dinner once about every 2 weeks, if we can stay home and cook meals ourselves, we'll do so. We try to live for the moment because yes, it's fun and entertaining that way. Who wouldn't want to be as carefree as much as possible with no worries nagging at you everyday? But again, while we aim for that lifestyle, we also try to plan for the future. He and I are both going for nursing and after Microbiology, Tim will finally be in the nursing program. I still have to do my general education, and that might take me a year and a half to complete before I can enter the nursing program, but at least I've finally gotten my foot out there. I've gotten a few classes out of the way so far, but there's still much to do. So education is very important to us and the key to our future, as cliche as that may sound. But there ya' have it. We definitely plan, but not to the point where we're both OCD about every single thing that should be going on in our lifestyle.
 
I just go with the flow really, I don't have any fixed plan or anything, I'm just gonna wait and see what happens.

I pretty much wait until I have to think about the future, and make firm choices, before really looking into things and planning, otherwise I'll panic myself and get stressed out, when really, I should just be looking at what's happening now, instead of worrying about the future.

Sure, might plan like, going to the movies and stuff every now and then, but that's only because planning ahead makes sense there, so everyone's clued in, but generally, I just like to go with the flow and see what happens. I find things get very boring if you have everything planned out exactly, as then you can't account for surprises and stuff.
 
I used to plan every little thing out, when I was younger. I mean, EVERY little thing. It was absolutely anal, how I had a plan for pretty much everything.

Then, one day, I stopped and thought, "Wow, I've pretty much never been happy for the entirety of my life." While I was busy planning for something that wouldn't work out anyways, I was getting owned by things life would throw at me that I hadn't planned for anyways. Now, I'm much more content with finding a balance. It's nice to have a few ideas as to where I want to end up, and try to get there, but I'm not going to lose sleep over it, and completely ignore the moment I'm in.
 
I deff am more of an laidback chick and whatever happens, happens. One thing that bugs me is paranoid people as far as money go.(save some just in case but take that stick out of your damn arse already:mokken: ) For instance, my aunt. Yeah money does get tight-- but that shouldnt be the reason why your not having enough fun ya'know? Like everytime I visited her, she wouldnt want to do anything at all but sit on her arse all damn day -__-. Much rather live for the moment and be happy then be a fricking worry wort >_< But, a good balance of the two is even better :)
 
I've noticed that I've started to loosen up a bit when it comes to my savings.

I used to always want to have a certain amount saved and if I went under it I would freak out and not want to go out or anything because I didn't want to spend the money.

But today I had the chance to hang out with my best friend and go shopping. I had to pay a bill that day and still have plenty more on the way, but I didn't want to jeopardise having a relaxing day out with my mate because I didn't want to fall under the cut off point for my savings.

It's not every day I get to hang out with her and we had a blast today. So it was so worth it.

And on the way home I was thinking, 'What if something happened to me. I could have been saving all that money for nothing when I could have been having fun with it. >.<'

But at the same time I try to keep a decent amount in there for emergencys and such.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top