252 | Stay Squishy

The secret skill of spending is keeping it squishy.

Around here, spending is the red bar, and the size of that bar is only a sliver of the story.

The real story is its squishiness – how easily it expands and contracts and how easily it moves across time.

Squishy spending isn’t tied to the next paycheck, and it doesn’t require investments to hit another all-time high tomorrow – those are hallmarks of calcified spending.

Instead, it holds the tension of two opposing truths – 1) life costs money, and 2) every dollar spent builds an expectation of the future.

The trick isn’t avoiding spending but retaining the ability to pause it for a season or push it to another one.

A good litmus test for squishiness…

Is it likely (by obligation or preference!) that I’ll spend dollars this same way next year? In 5 years? In 10 years?

Multiple “no’s” is as squishy as it gets, and often, a permission slip to say “yes” today.

If your goal is a feeling of freedom, stay squishy.