Pick Your Extravagance!

If you're going to create a Fabulous Life, it's going to take a fair amount of self-discipline. As kids, we would've eaten all the candy we could get our hands on! As adults we're not all that different, it's just that our "candy" is much more expensive. And I'm not at all suggesting you live in absolute self-denial...but if we're going to be "wise not safe", then we need to say YES to fewer things.

But let's keep saying "yes" to a specific category. So pick your extravagance. Is it fancy coffee, jewelry (within reason of course), clothes, travel? Pick the one that gives you the most joy within your budget, and indulge. Set aside money each month for your indulgence. If it's something small like coffee, you can indulge fairly often, if it's travel, well, you get the idea.

It's a bit like healthy eating. Denying yourself everything you love just because it's calorie-laden is a recipe for disaster. You can do it for a while but you wind up hating it because there's too little reward along the way.

Decide what you can afford each month and either put that much money in your "Indulgence Fund" or add to your calendar when you get your reward. The easiest way to do that for big budget items is to have your bank take out a certain amount of money every month. If you never see it, you rarely miss it. Not only that, but you appreciate rewards way more when you have to work and wait for them. So it's really a win/win. You get to indulge yourself wisely, while staying on track in

your Fabulous Life.