Says the normal employed person, which accounts for a lot of us in the world. We toil and toil just to chase the little colored printed papers (greenbacks in the US) in order to live well and survive. It is a question we all ask most days when we want to buy or spend on something:

Why is it easy to spend money and so hard to earn it?

None of my answers are scientific. These are just mere observations, and of course, based on my own personal experience. For the record, I have a full-time desk job that gets paid every 2 weeks with a few side hustles tossed in here and there. I don’t earn a lot (hah I don’t make 6 figures, if that’s what you’re asking), but I try to have multiple streams of income, and not just the full-time job.

It takes effort to make money

Exerting effort is harder than living a leisurely life.

That explains why people drag their butt to the gym before they make a habit of it. It explains why people complain a lot about sweating, and not thinking about the after effects (like losing weight). It explains why people say it is boring because you are running around a treadmill like a hamster would on its cage: around and around you go. It is because of the effort you exert.

Some people are naturally lazy and prefer to live their lives chilling out. Nothing wrong with that, I am one of them! However, when you work for your money: either through a desk job, a side hustle, or looking after a business, you may not exactly enjoy what you are doing and going to work is a chore. It is a hassle.

If you are one of the few who like what you do, then good on you! But don’t you feel like there are some days where you would rather chill out than attend to some pressing matters?

But we all need to work, even a little bit, to earn money, unless you are financially independent then you can choose not to work at all. If you can maintain your lifestyle and all goes well with the market, you’re free and probably don’t have to ask this phrase ever again. But what if the market has a huge downturn and you’ll need to get back to work in order to get your investment balances up? The cycle continues, and we exert more effort and willpower, while some feel like we force ourselves to work.

Willpower is a scarce commodity

From The Power of Moments (one of my favorite books), willpower is a depletable function we have as humans. Just because we can resist the temptations of buying food from the cafeteria now when we are super hungry doesn’t mean that we can resist buying a TV that’s on sale right after, or we can resist that too, but a great video game deal pops up that we just had to buy it.

The more we use willpower to go against our urges, the harder it is to resist temptations, especially the buying kind, or eating out, or grabbing stuff from the grocery, even.

Add that to the effort you are exerting in making money and it is no wonder we feel beat up at the end of the day after working desk jobs we don’t even care for.

That’s just the way it is. We can’t resist everything unless you have a magical superhero power.

Sure, you can buy little things here and there as treats as part of our Happiness Fund manifesto, but sometimes it just isn’t enough.

We are programmed (brainwashed) to consume

Some people go to great lengths to go to the mall during the weekend and browse. These folk end up buying things they may not need, spending more money than what they have earned that week through the use of credit cards.

Even if you go straight home from your desk job or even when you work from home, the temptations are everywhere. You log online, and before you know it, you see an ad that piques your interest on Facebook or websites you follow (because big data always knows your preferences) and you end up going online shopping.

Marketing firms use classic psychology techniques to make you part easily with your hard earned money. They tend to entice you with the word discount (or sale), free shipping, and show you the things that you have been browsing for, whether that was a hotel, a t-shirt, electronics, a book – anything.

They even have abandoned cart techniques that try to entice you to come back to the site after abandoning your cart and closing your browser window in order to make a sale if you have an account with said website.

There’s even articles out there that state that if people stop spending and buying stuff, the entire American system will collapse. Some people take it to an extreme and keep buying stuff as they panic when they read said articles.

But you know what? You can survive without consuming much – aiming to live a more self sustaining lifestyle. But again, we go back full circle to the first point: we can resist buying and consuming over and over again, but our willpower may end up going against us.

We have short attention spans

Unfortunately, we humans have a very short attention span, so we feel that we need to be entertained whenever the slight inkling of boredom comes. What do we do to combat boredom? Chances are, we spend money.

We spend money by walking around the mall, driving somewhere, traveling, visiting attractions, you know, sometimes you can’t just get free entertainment anymore.

Hiking is still free, but some state parks require you to pay an entrance fee, so that’s a small cost. If you drive to said state park, you also incur gas costs, unless you ride a bike from your house to the state park.

Renting stuff from the library may also be free, but driving to the library or paying for electricity to read your book in the evening or watch your DVD may also cost a little bit of money.

Are we doomed to live this cycle?

Not really. Luckily we can choose to live outside the consumption cycle and just have enough. Enough to live on and buy the things we need and things that we want to do, enough that we can retire on the proceeds comfortably, enough that we can choose if we want to go to work, and if we want to build small businesses.

All it takes is a mindset change: of choosing to be more conscious with your money and how you spend and earn it. Being more mindful on the resources you consume and the life you want to live. Being more mindful that we have limited time here on Earth and we want to spend as much time as possible trying to do what we want to do and not what society expects us to do.

In the end, spending money won’t come easy. You’ll end up questioning more and more purchases: “Do I actually need this or do I just want it?”

How long do I have to work in an office in order to afford this? Is there an alternative? Is there a way I could get it at a discount by waiting, or is it something that I really need right now?

Then when your paycheck comes, you don’t have to be woeful that it just goes out of your checking account again in order to pay bills. You’ll be smiling a little bit as it goes into your savings account or other investments and look at it a month after and see that it has grown a little bit than the previous month.

That’s when we won’t have to ask this question to ourselves: because our money is now earning more money for us, instead of us using our own resources to work and earn it and using our willpower to resist the everyday temptations around us.

Do you agree that we’re all just driven by willpower to not spend money? Are you an inherent saver or a spender? Please feel free to share in the comments below.