How often have you heard that or even said it yourself? I know I used to say it ALL THE TIME.

I have always worked in the Operations field. Operations is often a fast paced environment with a lot of preventing, or putting out of fires. It can be stressful at times, and one thing for sure is, it is always busy.

At the end of each working day I would feel like I had worked extremely hard. There was rarely any down time, and I would think to myself “I deserve a treat.” We can’t let all that hard work go to waste can we?

This would often involve eating dinner out of the house, going out with friends for rounds of drinks, buying some nice clothes, or maybe the latest CD’s (this was the 2000’s when CD’s were still a thing!)

Then, as I got older the purchases became bigger. Nicer rentals, nicer cars, nicer travel, and nicer houses.

I deserved it right?

There is no denying that a lot of us work extremely hard for our money. So we should get to treat ourselves.

The problem is, the more we treat ourselves with nice things, the more damage we are doing to our future selves. By spending all our money, we are forcing ourselves to have to work thousands of more hours than we would if we could have saved some for later.

New Zealand’s household savings rate was minus 1.4% last year. Looks like too many of us are treating ourselves.

Redefining a treat

My definition of treating myself has changed though. I used to believe the best treats were drinking alcohol, expensive holidays, living in flash houses, and eating out.

Now I believe I was not treating myself at all. I was punishing myself. All those things only brought very short term pleasure, until I needed another hit! Otherwise known as the hedonic treadmill.

By buying the biggest house I could afford I was only happy for a short time. Then I returned to my baseline levels of happiness, except now I was burdened with a huge mortgage, and huge housing costs.

I was confining myself to the bank and to my employer. They had me by the short and curly’s where I was answerable to them for many decades. My time was in essence, owned by them.

Since I have realised the impact of financial freedom, I have realised the best thing we can treat ourselves to is time. Time to live our lives as we want.

In the short term I hope to go to part time so I can do more volunteering, spend more time with my wife, daughter and friends, and play more sport. That to me is a long lasting treat.

We are never going to achieve this time freedom if we keep buying unnecessary things.

I highly recommend treating yourself to time, and to cut down on things.

So go out and treat yourself to financial independence. You deserve it.