Wild Wonder: Expensive Single Behavior

Years ago, a certain family friend told me to get married to "save up". Interesting. Knowing that I work in the wedding industry and I know how the wedding budget blows up.

She said, when you are married, you no longer have to spend tons of money to go on dates, you can just be together at home, aka cheap dates, saving up for the future, blah blah blah...

Now I'm not one to write in behalf of the married ones, but I am credible enough to write about what she probably meant: The Expensive Single Behavior.

What is that, I hear you ask. Well, here it is.

• Retail therapy/Gadget band aid - Buying of feel good things such as clothes, books, shoes, make up, toys, etc. sometimes mostly on impulse. Saving up for a new gadget like the latest iphone, ipad, camera, etc. It's the thrill of saving up your hard earned money and finally being able to afford to buy what you've been lusting for a long time. But the downside after getting it is... so what now?
• Activities - when you're single you want to be busy. So engagement of activities is on this list (new activities included)
• Soul Searching aka Travel - Scouting cheap airline tickets to go everywhere, anywhere, but here. 
• Food Trip - Dining in expensive restaurants, drinking spree in posh bars, etc. It has gotten worse now social media has blown up. We all want to share where we were.
• "Coffee"- nowadays disguised as networking, but it used to be really just catching up with some old friend (like those you have not really touch based with for like, 5 years or so) and see how your lives match up. 

And trust me, these doesn't come cheap.

To be honest, I already did all that. And because I did, here are my lessons.

• On retail therapy - I end up with buyer's remorse; Gadget Band aid - The thrill is gone because in a few months something better will come along. 
• Activities - I got a life. I pursued graduate studies. I had the best time, then after graduation ,I tackled "other jobs" that is not related to my full time job and that allowed me to be myself and get creative. 
• Travel - Never tie up your vacations just because it is love life related (in my case, flying to where your significant other is, unless the person is already your beau for a really, really long time or your fiance, but never in a just dating mode/ you're not serious about). Vacations are state of minds. Lalo na if you were just talked into travelling when you're not that into it before. Now when I travel, I focus on educating my self and discovering the place as it is. I see it as my own educational field trip. The only downside of that is I tend to suffer from a vacation hangover (now that trips have become more awesome!)
• Food Trip - it went through my lips, now its on my hips. Now I need to take it out from my hips LOL
• "Coffee" - I stopped "crossing oceans for people who won't even jump puddles for me." Does these lines sound familiar? "Hey, yes,let's have coffee sometime."or "Dinner soon!" Yeah, you get my point. I think you are intelligent enough to know in your gut who actually meant it.

I'm not saying that you stop doing those. It's always different strokes for different folks. In my case, what I did was I tie up all the important factors and made sure to invest it well to things or relationships with better longevity. Not because it is the cure of the moment.

An example would be time. Since Time cannot be bought, I spend my free time with my trusted and long-time friends, where we catch a movie together, eat at an ordinary fast food chain with a $2 meal and have the best of time just hanging out at the park, or at a nearby mall.

Bottom line is, spend it well, with people those you know that matters most, not some "friends-of-the-moment". Because honestly, ang gastos talagang maging single lalo na't ang hilig mong mag pa-andar sa Facebook. Mas bad trip when you don't really have the money to pay for your expensive single behavior when you really cannot afford it. Even more bad trip when you owe someone a certain amount of money and you flaunt your expensive single behavior on Facebook and that person who you owe money to, sees it! - Wait, that's a different topic na! Anyway...

I can already hear the rebuttal: But how am I going to meet someone if I don't go out?! Again, it's always different strokes for different folks.

I keep going back to what my friend in graduate school once said: " Once you have satisfied your intellectual self, everything else is mundane. " And it is true. 

But the "intellectual self"is highly debatable and that saying depends on the comprehension of whoever the receiver is.

You know what I mean.