Winning on the margins
May 6th, 2006
Olympic athletes finish races within seconds or milliseconds of each other, but they would be minutes or hours ahead of me. To win an Olympic event, it’s not enough to be “pretty” fast. Victory is in the margins. To win you have to perform at least as well as the other Olympic athletes and then do that extra little bit that pushes you to the top.
If you’re trying to live a frugal lifestyle, live within your means, save money, etc., don’t settle for less than an Olympic performance. It’s not enough to be frugal or financially disciplined MOST of the time. If you’re frugal 6 days a week and then splurge on the 7th (to congratulate yourself for your frugality!) then you haven’t been frugal. Frugality, like other character traits, is a matter of consistency. You can pat yourself on the back only after have learned to be consistent.
5 Comments Add your own
1. Blueprint for Financial P&hellip | May 7th, 2006 at 9:29 pm
Carnival of Personal Finance #47…
The Carnival has returned after a twenty six week whirlwind tour (that’s six and a half months) of the personal finance blogosphere and has finally made it back to Blueprint. This week I have a little surprise that I think you’ll enjoy, a…
2. Carnival of Investing #21&hellip | May 8th, 2006 at 3:37 am
[...] Richard K Miller presents Winning on the margins posted at Firevalt Blog - Personal finance and entrepreneurship. [...]
3. Alex Meyer | May 9th, 2006 at 2:45 am
You still have to balance it with living a nice life though. Winning for the sake of winning, or being frugal for the sake of being frugal will probably not lead to a better life. Living a life where you express yourself and achieve your goals through reaching your highest potential probably will, but it is not necessarily the same thing.
4. everySecondPaycheck.com &&hellip | May 10th, 2006 at 5:40 pm
[...] Having blow a wad of cash on booking a holiday last week and having paid off the balance on Monday I’ve had a very frugal couple of days and cut my expenditure back dramatically (< €10 per day). I’ve been feeling pretty good about that but reading the latest post on firevault.com/blog has brought me back to earth with a bang: “It’s not enough to be frugal or financially disciplined MOST of the time. If you’re frugal 6 days a week and then splurge on the 7th (to congratulate yourself for your frugality!) then you haven’t been frugal. Frugality, like other character traits, is a matter of consistency. You can pat yourself on the back only after have learned to be consistent.” [...]
5. Firevalt Blog - Personal &hellip | May 17th, 2006 at 1:08 pm
[...] A comment on our last post, Winning on the margins, brought up a very interesting topic. “You still have to balance [frugality] with living a nice life though. Winning for the sake of winning, or being frugal for the sake of being frugal will probably not lead to a better life. Living a life where you express yourself and achieve your goals through reaching your highest potential probably will, but it is not necessarily the same thing.” [...]
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