Posted by Canadian Dream on November 25, 2009
Well this blog already deals with one common taboo: money. We discuss a lot about money: spending it, saving it, investing it, how it makes you feel, why we spend it on some things rather than others. So today let’s branch out a bit and double up on the taboo: how much money do you spend on sex in a month?
Now depending on your mind set you might consider that I just ask you if you use a prostitute and how often, which I suppose you could answer, but that really isn’t what I’m getting at. I’m instead wondering how much money do people put towards getting sex since most people would agree that sex helps on the whole being happy in life. Now obviously your costs will vary depending on your relationship status.
- Single. This category likely takes the most money on average to get sex. Dating isn’t cheap. There is the nights out with dinner, perhaps a show or the bar. Depending on how serious you are there can be the little gifts that show you are thoughtful. Not to mention birth control like the pill or condoms. All of that costs money and is related to how much much you spend on sex (either directly or indirectly).
- Serious. I’m including engaged folks and those that move in together (but are under their first year living together) in this category. Your spending on sex now may actually reduce a bit at this point, after all if you share a place you can now share costs which should hopefully offset on your date nights. Not to mention that having sex is just easier since there is less logistics involved in the whole: your place or mine debate. If you go the marriage route let’s face the fact buying a engagement ring is rather like buying a long term bond: you hoping for some long term payout of sex and affection for a large lump sum of cash.
- Early Marriage or Common Law: In your early years of the steady portion of your relationship your costs will dramatically differ depending on if you get married or stay common law. Marriage is an expensive thing to do for trying to secure sex. The wedding itself is expensive, but it is offset by some gifts and the honeymoon is likely the most expensive thing you will spend on sex in your entire life. Then given the divorce rate and the costs associated with not getting sex you have to consider marriage a speculative investment on sex at best. Meanwhile if you go the common law route life can be much easier and less costly on sex. Yet of course our decision to get married or not has nothing to do with logic, but rather emotion so people will keep getting married despite the poor investment it is for a lot of people.
- Longer Term Marriage or Common Law: Now let’s put in those people that have been together for seven years or longer here (where you chance of splitting up drops off). At this point your spending on sex might be almost non existent especially if you have small children. Just the logistics of having sex is hard to do with working around kid’s bedtimes, your libido and the rest of your life can be hard. If you don’t have kids then things could be easier having sex, but likely your direct seduction costs are low compared to when you were single. So on a purely financial front getting to a long term relationship and staying in one can be potentially be a good cost saving strategy on sex. So if your dating a personal finance geek that might be an interesting way to proposing getting more serious: “Honey, let’s reduce our costs on sex and move in together?”
How much do I spend on sex each month? To be honest I don’t have a clue. I’ve never figured it out and I likely won’t in the future. Yet I’m firmly in category four with nine years of marriage. Yet I can say I think I should be spending more on sex than I do now. Dates are an important thing to do (from a sex and relationship point of view) and I’ve been guilty of not doing enough of them lately. So perhaps I do need a new line item on my budget: “date night” or perhaps just “sex.” At least I know I’ll be having an interesting discussion with my wife after this post.
**Just to be absolutely clear this post was written with a strong humour element, so don’t take everything I wrote literally**
Posted by Dave on November 24, 2009
Have you noticed that the discipline needed to structure a personal finance plan is similar to a fitness plan?
I kind of went the other way from most people, my fitness plan influenced the way I look at personal finance. When I left University in 2003, I had gained an astonishing 60lbs in the 5 years I had been in school! (4 year degree and 1 year of co-operative education). In much the same way someone can gradually gets themselves into significant amounts of debt. Then all of a sudden they find out the money coming in isn’t enough to match the money owed at the end of the month. In my case I had my own eye-opening experience on the fitness side, surprisingly, on an ice rink.
I played competitive hockey for much of my life until going away to school, amounting to four to six days per week from September until April, forcing me to be in pretty good shape during that time. I had fooled myself into believing that I hadn’t lost a step while in school, until my final year when I played in a hockey tournament. The tournament included 3 short games of 30 minutes. At the end of the tournament my body was essentially in shock, I got physically ill that evening. All because I had thought I could do more than I could. It was at this moment, as I was shaking with a fever that I decided I needed to do something to fix this.
I joined a gym, the local YMCA, and went there not really knowing what I should be doing but figured something was better then nothing at all. I then started reading articles on the internet and picked up techniques, workout plans and eventually started losing weight. Six years later and I’m in better shape now then I was in high school.
So how does this apply to personal finance, specifically a plan to retire early?
- Discipline – I can decide to go to Cuba and eat fried cheese and hotdogs and drink too much for a week (like I did on my honeymoon this spring) but the next Monday, I also know I’m going to be back lifting heavy weights and drinking green smoothies. In the same way, a personal finance plan requires discipline – if you don’t stick to your plan, you might as well not have one. Some spending decisions need to be examined in much the same way as fried cheese – the cost of the spending decision (for example a night on the town) has to be addressed somewhere else in my budget if I still plan to be financially free as early as possible.
- Intensity – Last week I did the 300 workout. This is a pretty intense workout, which challenged me to the point that I was physically unable to lift more weight at the end of the workout. This is a benchmark workout that is timed and that I’ll do probably once a month so I can see how I compared to prior months. Intensity in personal finance can be tested in the same manner, whether it’s specific dollars to be saved per month, or debt payments per month. For myself, right now, my goals center on paying off my mortgage as quickly as possible. The goal is specific and will probably test me month to month (especially around Christmas), but at the end of the month I feel a similar level of satisfaction as from being able to do that crazy workout.
- End Goal – My end goal of my fitness plan is to live longer and be in better shape to enjoy life. The end goal of my financial plan is to be financially independent as quickly as possible. These two goals go together as I really don’t want to be reliant on either the health-care system or a job, and both plans are getting me towards achieving my goals.
Right now, I’m in the type of physical shape that I want to be in, I’m hoping that this will transfer over to my financial goals. As Jacob notes in his “Who is extreme” article there is a link between personal finance and fitness. I’m wondering if anyone else has noticed that link or have you noticed other links between your other long-term goals and your retirement goal that you trying to achieve?
Posted by Canadian Dream on November 23, 2009
Have you ever had those moments when you are trying to decide something and your brain doesn’t seem to be working? You are trying to think straight, but it really isn’t happening. So perhaps you sleep on it and try again in the morning. Suddenly everything is so much clearer in your head and the answer becomes obvious. So ‘sleeping on something’ does work to help you think straight, but why? Well that’s an interesting answer. I was reading a book that referenced some neuropsychology about this very issue.
It turns out our grey matter is a hell of a lot more complex than we give it credit for. For example, when facing a decision where you are stressed, fatigued or highly emotional you will literally stop using the logical parts of your brain. Instead you will almost purely be using your emotional and instinct parts of your brain, so this is why you should always sleep on big decisions. Your ability to decide with any kind of logic is usually shot to hell late at night or when you are highly emotional.
This little fact brings forth some interesting implications about online trading. Basically you should avoid doing anything when you are highly emotional and stressed. If, for example, the market drops by 10% in a day, the last thing you should do is log into your trading account because you are likely going to do something stupid. You literally won’t be thinking straight, instead you will have a chemical soup in your brain driving you to stop the pain. Which will usually mean selling something and completely forgetting your long term buy and hold plan. Not a great idea.
The same idea applies when you are tired, so hence why after being up for an hour straight last night with my youngest I was really not any good at doing any mathematical modeling at work this morning. I was fatigued and so my logical parts of my brain were not fully in gear. This is why what took me two hours to do something that would normally take about half an hour. (It is also why I published this post at night since I was not in any condition to write a post this morning).
Now the sleeping on it idea seems to work well for this issue, but what else works? Well in my case I’m a big fan of stop thinking about the problem for a while and come back to it. By that point I’ve calmed down and can think logical again. How about you? What do you do when you are not thinking straight?
