We live in a society of instant gratification. We have fast food, instant messaging, we can go through a drive-through for our banking—we have forgotten what it means to wait. Credit cards have taken the concept of waiting and turned it into something foreign. Why wait for something we want? All we have to do is swipe the card and the thing we want is ours.
But this kind of mindset is detrimental in so many ways.
First off, when we forget how to wait, we forget to be grateful. When everything we want is just handed to us without requiring us to be patient, we don’t take the time to feel appreciation. When we have to do without, we are so much more grateful when we do receive. Gratitude is one of the most important attributes we can ever develop, and to deny ourselves from learning this important lesson is worse than denying ourselves that item we want.
Second, when we insist on getting everything we want right now, we put ourselves in risky financial positions. We use credit, we spend too much out of our savings or checking accounts, and we don’t stop to think about the ramifications. That’s the thing about instant gratification—no one’s stopping to think. Thinking takes time, and that’s not instant. If we stop for a minute to really think about our purchases, we probably wouldn’t make a good half of them, and be all the better off for it.
Third, if our money never has a chance to sit in our savings or investment accounts, it never has a chance to accrue interest. Compound interest works in our favor to help us grow our savings, but if the money is in constant flux, there’s no interest to be earned. It’s important that there be a certain amount of money staying solid in the account in order to reap the rewards of that interest.
I think the most important reason to be patient with our spending is this—the lesson we teach our children. If we want them to understand the value of work and the value of money, they can’t see us flinging our money around like it doesn’t matter. They need to see us respecting our money.
As we learn to wait for the things we want, and as we save up for those things, we’ll find that our gratitude and appreciation increase, and we’re taking better care of our money than ever before.
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