Knowing yourself better is an essential part of getting good with money. How you identify as a person means you can understand better what is and isn’t worth spending money (or time!) on. Here’s how one woman’s money journey improved after she learned more about her personality type.
Making it work is brought to you by wealth simple which gives everyone access to simple affordable investing on cruise control one evening maybe two years ago i’d been planning to save her a beautifully prepared meal on my patio over a book when my phone pinged the gang was meeting up for drinks right now i wolf down a few bites of my dinner in the kitchen and
Left the half-eaten plate on the counter before driving 20 minutes to meet the group as a non drinking vegan at a sports bar i ordered a perfunctory lemonade and a plate of sad fries to avoid being a total freeloader then i sat through 90 minutes of chitchat and bullshitting that neither energized me nor made me feel any closer to the people i was with i drove
Home regretting the eight dollars i’d spend not to mention the accompanying gut ache and fuzzy teeth feelings and wishing i’d stuck with a now cold plate that was still sitting on my counter it was hardly the first time i gone through this exact scenario at least twice a week i would succumb to fomo and the pressure to keep up with a hyper social tendencies of
My friend network dropping everything to meet different groups for drinks or food it always unfolded the same way i spent money i didn’t want to spend on subpar food i didn’t want to eat and i never felt as socially nourished afterward as i thought i would in fact i felt isolated and lonely i’ve spent most of my life on the peripheries of various social groups i
Floated in and out of a few different friend circles in high school never excluded but it’s never quite feeling like a central member i tried to cobble together a few groups for myself in college but never really succeeded when i moved to northeast ohio i was immediately adopted by a massive network made up of many tight-knit groups of loving wonderful people but i
Still tended to exist as a secondary member words that have been used to describe me to my face tv shows and movies have fetishized the central friend group to such a degree that i saw it as an utter necessity to a fulfilling adult social life and yet i never seemed to fully grasp one they didn’t bring me the joy they were supposed to this is not to say that i’ve
Suffered socially i’ve been described as the type of person who can make friends with a doorknob and have always enjoyed close loving friendships with individuals and small groups but big circles continue to elude me the thing is i’m an extrovert but while pop psychology has devoted endless medium articles and twitter threads to the delicate psyche of the ever so
Misunderstood introvert it continues to cram extroverts into a shrinking box full of nothing but social maniacs with endless appetites for small talk raucous parties and massive music festival level throngs of people / that logic spending time with people in mass should be my dream come true especially since i really do like the individuals in these many groups
And yet these gatherings continue to leave me feeling drained and a little blue was i just a people-pleasing poser a fake extrovert an online myers-briggs assessment finally shed light on my permanent status as a second tier large group member according to my results i’m the type of extrovert who craves a meaningful conversation and deep connection / chitchat and
Shooting the breeze for those interested i go back and forth between enfp and enfj those who share my type have huge appetites for intimate groups and deep conversation and find those things highly energizing but we tend to feel alone in big groups or at parties because these large gatherings lack the actual bonding opportunities afforded by smaller ones it was
Among the most affirming internet paragraphs i’d ever read i wasn’t a poser extrovert or a heartless social pariah there were lots of people like me the next time my phone chart about last-minute drinks i forced myself to ignore it and stay home it was tough to fight the long and grained habit of dropping everything to go but i knew i had to test the theory and see
Whether i’d actually regret skipping an event that i knew i realized wouldn’t really make me happy i went to bed at a blissfully early hour with no regrets of course old habits die hard and it took a while to completely let go of the pressure to keep up and be included in every single outing experience or joke but over time i stopped going to things just because
That’s what everyone else was doing i still showed up to the activities i really loved kayaking running etc but i let go of the pressure i’d placed on myself to be omnipresent at gatherings that didn’t particularly interest me an unexpected benefit of the shift it saved me a lot of money before my social epiphany i was dropping at least six to eight dollars at
Least twice a week on shitty appetizers and sugary drinks plus full meals every few weeks by a conservative estimate that’s $75 plus a month spent on keeping up with the friends an ongoing fool’s errand to become the type of person who feels socially nourished by group gatherings and enjoys eating at greasy spoon diners and sports bars hundreds of dollars a year
That i could have used to pay down the credit card debt and small student loan i was carrying at the time invest via a roth ira or get the broken lock fixed on the driver side door of my car it was an expensive lesson in terms of actual dollars as well as opportunity cost now that i know myself better i know i’d rather join the big gang for a kayak paddle which
Is free since i own my boat and we all live within driving distance of a national park having a few girlfriends over to make holiday cards or set new year’s goals together cost me maybe five dollars in ingredients for a dish to share running errands or going for a walk around the lake with a pal is free my dearest memories in recent months are comprised of these
Sometimes adventurous sometimes intimate always inexpensive gatherings my heart and my wallet are happier for it making your money work for you is an ongoing process no matter how good with money we may be we all make mistakes and that’s okay messing up one time it matters a lot less than the choices we make daily and with wealth simple it’s easy to continue making
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Transcribed from video
The Things I No Longer Spend On Since Embracing My "Fake Extrovert" Identity By The Financial Diet