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🏃♀️ On The Up and Up 🏃♀️
Happy Friday!
Today I want to talk about mastering a skill. 🎯
We say a lot about how spending is a skill. You can’t often perfect skills but you can master them.
So where is that line between novice and master? I think the Japanese concept called Shuhari explains it well.
Shuhari is a Japanese martial art concept that describes the stages of learning to mastery and roughly translates to “follow the rules, break the rules, transcend the rules.”
Photo credits to Tim Barlow Online
💡 Shu (守) means to follow a teacher fully without question. When you’re first starting to learn something whether it be a hobby, language, or topic like personal finance, you choose one teacher and follow them fully.
When you’re a total beginner following one teacher and all their rules isn’t bad, it reduces overwhelm, but you shouldn’t spend much time here.
⚡ Ha (破) means to break away. Once you have an understanding of basic principles then you should experiment with breaking the “rules.”
This is where you can compare your desires, lifestyle, and season to that of your teacher and start to study other schools of thought to design your own rules.
🎯 Ri (離) means to transcend. At this stage, you’ve “mastered” your skill. We put it in quotations because sometimes mastered gets mistaken for perfected. You’ll never be a perfect spender or perfect at anything for that matter.
But at this point, you’ve experimented and studied, probably for several years, and you’re at the point where you can make your own rules.
Once you start down the path of values-based spending, you’ll spend most of your life in the ‘mastery’ stage, so don’t rush getting there. Explore, play, and experiment so you can be confident that your financial goals and spending practices are right for you.
On Tuesday we released a very fun episode: Meal Planning For People Who Hate to Cook. As someone (Jen) who does not love cooking (but LOVES eating) this one was close to my heart.
Today’s episode was also a fun one! We even had to do some field research for The Secret to Curating a Capsule Wardrobe You’ll Love. Make sure to check out Insta for some BTS footage!
Tune in wherever you get podcasts and don’t forget to leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify!
Jen’s picks for a stellar weekend.
✅ Listen to This: Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros. I know, I know. I am one of them now. IF there was any doubt, the wait time for this audiobook was so long on Libby and Hoopla that I used my 30-day free trial of Audible to reserve it.
✅ Do this: Check your cash flow on Empower. You’ll want to enter the holiday season with a clear picture of how your finances have fared over the year. Head to the Banking tab then select Cash Flow. Change the time frame to 11/1/22 to 10/31/23 and compare the Income and Expense tabs.
✅ Meal Plan This: Butternut Squash Lasagna. Straight up fall comfort food. 😋
This Friendletter is Brought to you by:
🏃♀️ On The Up and Up 🏃♀️
Some people save their money in multiple accounts, I prefer to keep one fund with extra cash that I can pull from and replenish whenever I need to, still others have slush funds (slush funds are usually related to illegal activities!). 😬
Hopefully everything you’re saving for is on the up and up and if so, may we recommend CIT Bank. CIT Savings Connect HYSA is currently offering 4.65% APY with a $100 minimum to open and no account opening or monthly service fees. **
Open a CIT Saving Connect Account to save for all your (legal) activities!
Catch ya later,
⭐️⭐️ P.S. Want to share all this goodness with your friends AND earn cool Frugal Friends merch?
**Means this is a sponsored or affiliate section. We may earn a small fee or commission when you choose to try one of our sponsor or affiliate partners. But opinions are still 1000% our own.
