You may have heard these acronyms floating around recently: YOLO and FOMO.
YOLO = You Only Live Once
FOMO = Fear Of Missing Out
YOLO is used by people who want to do what they believe are fairly irresponsible things.
In terms of money management, people use this when they want to:
- Go on a big splashy vacation they can’t afford
- Buy a house they can’t afford because they “NEED” it
- Go on some shopping spree for electronics, clothes or just plain ol’ binge drinking
FOMO is used by people who want to go to everything and do everything because they’re scared they’ll miss out on something.
Please don’t mix this up with FML, which is means something completely different. 😛
FML basically means “my life sucks and I wish I didn’t do that stupid thing”.
Perhaps this particular acronym comes immediately after you YOLO a little too much.
I’d probably categorize these people extroverts because just hearing “go to everything”, makes me freeze and want to crawl back into bed with a Curb your Enthusiasm video playlist.
In terms of money management, people use this when they want to:
- Go out to 3 clubs in a night, knowing they’ll spend about an hour and $100 in each club
- Accept every single invitation to any outing they hear of
- Never say ‘No’ to any kind of vacation (weekend, one week, a month) that someone else is doing
NEITHER OF THESE ATTITUDES ARE BAD…. IN MODERATION
Of course, these acronyms themselves scream of a lack of moderation (YOLO! FOMO! YOLO!), but even I am inclined to feel similar emotions once in a while.
The whole point of life is to live in the Now, for Today, but not to take it to the extremes where it is a detriment to your future, as in your nest egg and savings for avoiding the ever-fearful situation of having to fight your cat for her tin of food when you’re 65.
BEFORE YOU YOLO OR FOMO, THINK ABOUT THE SITUATION
Think: Quality over Quantity.
It is all right to think about going on vacation because really, when will you get the chance to go around France with your best friend again!? ….but it’s as long as you’ve saved enough for the vacation so you aren’t going into debt, and you have also saved enough so that you aren’t hamstringing your future.
Choose carefully, or else it’ll all seem like a normal thing to spend yet another $500 on going out to the bars, and then you’ll need to increase that by another $100 to make it even more amazing.
YOLO AND FOMO TEND TO TAG ALONG WHEN I AM NEAR A CLOTHING STORE
My weakness has always been in clothes and spending on my wardrobe.
I always have a whisper of FOMO on a great item before I make a decision whether or not to even step foot into a tempting store, and then when I (inevitably) find something I REALLY WANT, that’s when my emotions start screaming YOLO!, and before you know it, I have what I want in my greedy little paws.
HOW TO AVOID THE URGE AND TEMPTATION TO SHOP
The ways I’m currently combating the urge to spend on clothes is:
- Reminding myself just how much I have in general
- Waiting at least a week to see if I forget about it
- Reminding myself that I live in a uniform sort of style, and I don’t need another white shirt
- Avoiding going to stores completely so I don’t even see something to be tempted by
- Reminding myself just how great the sales were on Boxing Day 2012
- Telling myself to shop my closet and make outfits out of what I already have
- Keeping track of my stellar clothes-shopping avoidance progress using: Don’t Break The Chain!
If none of this austerity interests you in the slightest, you can walk on over to one of my favourite YOLO and FOMO bloggers. 😉
