Before You Buy Anything, Ask Yourself This

Hey, Mike.

Hey, Gino.

How are we doing? We're doing great.

And this is a topic that really brings a lot of pain to me, Mike, because there really is no right answer, is there?

If there was, we would all be a lot richer.

Yeah.

I think I would like to open it up by saying how I formulated my ideas or my thoughts around the topic over the past 30 years.

And to me, I've come to the conclusion that I think it really has to align with your values, with what the values are.

And I think if we can talk a little bit more about the family itself and how the family, how we make decisions on this as a family.

And I think that's

good, too, because values is very specific in how we think about it, right? So values of family, that means that we're going to be buying and selling things that have to do within the realm of how can this benefit my family, right? The number one thing I see or one of the number one things I see is peace.

is this especially in a purchase is this going to give our family more peace or is it going to take away from it and so a lot of times people will buy really nice things thinking that it will bring peace in the sense of you know obviously you know a nice toy for the family or whatever that looks like but then they go into debt to do it so it could not only be the thing itself but the way they do it because that becomes a headache down the road of how are we going to pay for this thing now

Do you think that we should always be coming at it from the angle of, let's understand, is it a want versus a need? I mean, I think that's important.

Like, do you need this item or do you want this item? And I think luxury, in my mind, falls into the want category.

But also needing something, like you need a car.

Do you need a $100,000 car or can you get around with a $5,000 car?

And that's interesting too, because that is the question, right? With the $100,000 car, I don't really ever think you can justify that on that kind of level.

But the $5,000 car, this is kind of where values comes into play.

Because what happens to that five grand car down the road? Now you got to think about, okay, buying a car for five grand, it's going to have a few hundred thousand miles on it.

I got to think, am I going to be repairing this anytime soon? What is the miles per gallon? Is it going to get to a point where that kind of falls off a cliff? And so thinking about those kinds of things going into larger purchases, what does down the road look like? Because I know many people and I'm sure every listener out there knows someone who's bought a cheap car and they've suffered the consequences.