After about 13 years of diligently saving 50% – 75% of my income, I started to lose steam. No longer was I obsessed with growing my wealth as large as possible. Instead, I wanted to find ways to start spending money for a better life. I was 35 years old in 2013 and tired of living so frugally.

It’s hard to spend money when you’re so used to saving and investing aggressively for so many years. In a big way, growing your money pot gets addicting, especially since the estate tax exclusion amount is now $11.58 million per person for 2020. But it’s important to consumption smooth, otherwise, you’ll likely die with way too much.

The main way I’ve forced myself to increase my spending is to review my investment gains for the year and take some profits on positions I think have limited upside potential. I then use these profits to pay for a better life.

One idea is to follow my 10X Investment Consumption Rule, which states that if you want the latest $1,000 iPhone, then you best make at least a $10,000 return on an investment to pay for that unnecessary item.

Another way to go about spending your money is to take 10% of your annual investment returns and blow it on whatever you want. This way, you’ve still got 90% of your investments hopefully working for you, you’re not paying a lot of taxes, you’re rebalancing your portfolio, and you’re actively using your money for a better life.

If you tether consumption to investment returns you will never go broke. You will also likely eradicate any money guilt you have for spending money. Finally, if you want to spend more money, you will be motivated to invest more money for hopefully greater returns.

The following is a post by Sydney, aka Mrs. Samurai. She’s one of the most frugal people I know, which is one of the reasons why we get along so great. She’d rather go to Target than Prada. That’s the secret to financial independence right there. Whoo hoo!

Did you just receive a black tie wedding invitation and are in a bit of a panic over the dress code? I was in the same boat!

Here’s my own story about how I figured out how to dress to the 9s for a black tie wedding for cheap. After doing research, it look like we had to spend over $1,000 for the two of us to attend. But it’s totally possible to look the part without spending a fortune.

Let me tell you a sad story.

In order to comfortably raise a family in an expensive coastal city like San Francisco or New York, you’ve got to make at least $300,000 a year. You can certainly raise a family earning less as many do, but it won’t be easy if your goal is to save for retirement, save for your child’s education, own your own home instead of rent, and actually retire by a reasonable age.

Although $300,000 is a lot compared to the median household income in the United States of ~$62,000, it’s not an outrageous sum of money once you look at the realistic income statement I’ve put together for this article.

All expenses in my example use current prices. I’ve also cross checked the expenses with my family’s monthly expenses now that we have a son to make sure they are within reason.

I use $300,000 in this post because I also believe it is close to the ideal income for up to a family of four to experience maximum happiness.

At $300,000, you aren’t paying an egregious amount in taxes, you probably aren’t killing yourself at work if both parents are working, but you’re still earning enough to live a comfortable lifestyle anywhere in the world.

Half the US population lives on the coasts, therefore, this post is directly targeted at folks who need to live on the coasts because of their jobs, schools, or families.

Finally, this post should also provide insights to non-coastal city residents on how good you’ve got it if you enjoy living where you are. $100,000 – $150,000 is a rough non-coastal city household income equivalent.