I am still studying in Uni and i have saved quite abit of money from my parent allowance (yes i suck, still taking money) and other small source of income but..(I am on scholarship so no liability now)?

In life, if you remove the need to be “right”, you’ll realise that there’s no bad and good mindset, just a mindset that either adds or takes away what will give you most satisfaction and long-term fulfilment.

The act of spending (or splurging), saving or investing is not good or bad. It is just whether it is needed or not needed for you to truly extract the most value, whatever this value may be, for your life.

Taking money from parents is also not a bad thing. Yes, you could work for your allowance, but it doesn’t make you a superior being and taking it doesn’t make you an inferior being.

However, working for your allowance instead of taking money from your parents, may bring you long-term benefit in building your resilience, exposure to negative incidents, help you build the foundations for your career after you graduate, deepen your understanding of a particular industry, so on and so forth. And again, it may not. If you’re not working for that goal or if those are things you don’t personally value.

In terms of buy now or else it’ll be more expensive after graduation, I do agree but it’s important also to be mindful of why they are important to you.

For example, I sometimes reflect and think it would have created more value for me long-term if I had held off and saved to buy a DSLR when I was in school instead of spending it on clubbing or many pieces of affordable clothing in my school days. The reason is because as my income grew in the last few years I’ve managed to afford comfortably a good DSLR and the lenses. I’ve always had an interest in photography and been the person taking candid photos of my friends. In recent years, I started challenging myself to take portraits for my friends and now strangers for a fee. I did not intend to make money, but rather use the money to change the way I viewed my skills and value delivered to others. I am now doing this on the side as a side hustle, and it brings me joy and some extra money to put into whatever I really want. The act of buying a DSLR didn’t immediately make me a better photographer. The awareness of how much I enjoyed photography and mindset of approaching my hobby in terms of the value I can deliver made me a better photographer.

This reflection always reminds me that even if I had bought it when I was younger, I may or may not have gotten the true value of the item if my awareness of what I truly got value from was low or my mindset at that point in time was not to deliver value to others through my hobby.

The best thing you can do for yourself is to dig deeper and become more aware of what truly matters to you and brings meaning into your life. It is hard, but whether to splurge or not becomes less of a guilt trip and more intentional once you’ve sorted this out.

No one is ever too young to start creating a deeper self awareness.

I have not met a single person who made and kept their wealth who did not demonstrate their fair share of financial discipline.

Every one of them had a good foundation of financial budgeting, stayed within their means while increasing their income.

There's no such thing as "auto spend less". Spending less is a muscle, you need to exercise it.

Great that you are aware, but not all things are assets when they increase in price. The compounded cost of financial decisions is stark in the longer run.

Follow me here.

I think it would be best if you can find yourself some peers who are better in managing their finances or are more incline to investment and financial freedom. From there you will be able have someone to set an example for you.

Most importantly, you want to plan ahead if you want you money to work harder for you and allow you to be more comfortable in the future. There are various things that you may need to spend in the future such as house, wedding and renovation etc.

I came to realised that at the later stage of my 20s and end up I feel that my younger peers have a better head start as compared to me. That's why I have started investing in recent years.

Any choice you make you must think that is it worth it and whether it will affect your future in a long run or maybe you can start now and have a head start

You may want to check out my article here which talks about how it is extremely important to pay yourself first.

Now that you have zero to no liabilities, it may be easy to manage your money. However, it is not magic that you will auto spend less and want to save more the moment you graudate. And that has to do with Parkinson's Law.

The law says that our expenditures rise to meet our income. When we earn more money, our needs become more and we end up spending more money. In order to even make wealth, we need to break the Parkinson’s law by setting limits to ourselves.

The reason why most poor/middle class people today are unable to get out of the Rat Race and having to continue to work every day until age 65 is because they don’t buy into assets and have poor money management skills.

Most of us go to school to learn and master the skills we need for our job next time and be a good employee, (Excel skills/Coding Skills/Passing BAR/Getting your medical license etc) but fail to learn how to manage money because schools did not teach us how to do that. We are brought up believing that the only way to have a good life is to study hard, get a degree and work at a good company and retire at 65.

While this is what we are brought up to believe in, we do not have to adhere to it or even abide by how our parents or predecessors grew their wealth. In order to reach financial freedom as early as possible, we need to cultivate good money habits and invest into assets which generates income for us in the long run and reduce liabilities as much as possible. The more money goes into our pocket and the less money goes out of our pocket, the wealthier we will be and the more sustainable we can remain rich for the long run.

Each of us have different financial thermostats and mindset when it comes to money. Poor people do not have the financial thermostat to manage a large amount of money, that is why the moment they win a lottery of $1 million for example, they spend it away just as easily the way they obtain it.

A rich person on the other hand, has the financial thermostat to manage a large amount of money, thus, when they manage to make their first $1 million, they spend even more effort than before to try and preserve the money and grow it even further through the owning of assets such as stocks/mutual funds/real estate or businesses.

So start culitvating good money management habits as soon as possible. That is the best bet against financial instability.

Hope this helps!​​​