A good defense and a good offense

Clever Dude was rather nonplussed by a commenter's potty-mouth response to Clever Dudette's post on frugal lunches.

The gist of what the commenter meant to convey was emphasizing higher earning power over increased frugality.  Put another way, the suggestion was to earn more rather than spend less.

Put yet another way, earning more is a good offense, and frugality is a good defense.

A good defense is great for protecting what you have.  “Make it do, or do without” emphasizes resourcefulness and careful spending.  Practicing frugality is crucial for getting through lean times.  But if one is defending like this all the time, it's hard to advance.

A good offense is necessary for expanding production capacity, expanding extent, expanding capability.  Practicing prudent risk taking is necessary for investing, for learning new skills, for advancing in one's job, for setting one's finances up to take advantage of other opportunities as they come up.  Working on the offense, though, involves neglecting, or even eroding, the defense — time is spent, and sometimes time and money are spent to explore new opportunities.

Both are good habits to have, and doing both magnifies one's ability to save, get out of debt, plan for retirement, quit a job to start a business, etc.  The main trick to making these two tactics work together is striking a balance between frugality and increasing one's earning potential.  Both take time, and one is usually done only at the expense of the other.  If I spend time clipping coupons and scouring ads to save $25 on my monthly grocery bill, that time is gone, and I saved $25.  I'll probably need to spend the same amount of time again to save another $25.  If I instead use the time to market a business I'm in, write a few more posts, etc., then I'm increasing my earning potential but I don't have that time available to minimize my grocery bill.

It's a giant trade-off.  If I earn $35,000 per year (after taxes), I can save $10,000 per year by spending only $25,000.  I might be able to get that spending down to $20,000, but I surely can't get it lower than $0, so the maximum I can save each year is $35,000 unless I earn more.  But it might cost me $2,000 and two weeks' off of the job to take the class I need to generate an extra $5,000 per year.  Working on the offense means forfeiting some of the defense.

Anyway, there are times for frugality and there are times for learning to earn.  The trick is figuring out what balance is appropriate.