spending

1. 6 February 2026

   Money matters. Part 2: Expanding your capacity

   Earning more can be values-aligned behaviour. If living well requires resources, building the capacity to earn what your values actually require is itself a form of service — not greed.

2. 30 January 2026

   Money matters. Part 1: Does your spending reflect what you value?

   Many people with enough money — often more than enough — struggle to actually spend it on the things they say matter to them. They'd say health matters, but won't pay for the physio. They'd say relati…

3. 20 January 2026

   Making the invisible visible

   “There’s a gap between knowing something intellectually and truly believing it. Visualising your spending, your financial projections, or your mood data can close that gap — making abstract knowledge…

4. 12 May 2023

   “Buy things, not experiences”

   Harold Lee wrote a piece arguing you should buy things, not experiences — and I think he's onto something. The popular idea that experiences are inherently more valuable than things is, at its core, a…

5. 18 June 2021

   Are you spending or investing? It’s not always black and white

   It's easy to think you're either spending money or saving it. In reality, financial decisions rarely fall cleanly into one bucket. Businesses "spend" on wages and tools that are really investments in…

6. 14 April 2020

   Capex and Opex for personal finance

   When we look at our expenditure, it's easy to mix up day-to-day costs with capital expenses. It's common to make this distinction in business (Opex versus Capex) but it's valuable when it comes to our…

7. 22 November 2019

   You’ve got to spend money to save money

   Frugality is great — if it's mindful, and aligned with your values. But focus purely on savings rate and you can miss the forest for the trees. My wife and I joke that you've got to spend money to sav…

8. 13 August 2018

   “Living doesn’t cost much, but showing off does”

   Geoffrey Miller's book *Spent* has probably saved me thousands of dollars. Its central point — "the fundamental consumerist delusion" — is that other people care less about the products we display tha…

9. 5 May 2017

   “If money doesn’t make you happy then you probably aren’t spending it right”

   Money can buy happiness — we're just usually bad at spending it in ways that deliver. There's research identifying eight principles for spending in ways that actually make you happier: buy experiences…