Should We Be Spending More and Saving Less?
When I was in university, I visited a Japanese restaurant close to campus because it was inexpensive, but mostly because I got a stamp every time I ordered food there. If I got 10 stamps, I would get a free lunch. I used to joke with my friend that I would collect several free lunches then redeem them all at once and put the restaurant out of business. Funny enough, after a few months of not visiting, I went to the restaurant and saw that they had gone out of business (not by my doing). All of the free lunches I thought I could redeem went to waste.
Bill Perkin’s book Die With Zero has a lot of unconventional advice, but one of the things it made me re-think is this ‘saving’ mindset. Perhaps you’re prone to doing this too. When the cashier at the grocery store asks if you want to redeem your points, you politely decline. When you order on the Starbucks app and it asks you to redeem your stars, you say no thanks. Or you have hundreds of thousands of points or even millions of miles collected on your credit card and enjoy seeing the big number rather than spending it.
Part of the reason might be because you believe someday, there will be a better moment to redeem those loyalty points. For example, PC Optimum has events where redeeming the points gives you more dollars than usual (250,000 points = $400).
