Financial Feminist

The concept of "afford anything" came to me when I realized that people who claimed they couldn't afford to travel were actually spending their money on other things. Every dollar we spend is a trade-off, and this applies to not just money, but also time, energy, and attention. We often make choices without realizing the opportunity cost involved. I came up with the concept of afford anything when I was traveling. A lot of my friends who I knew made significantly more money than me would often say, I would love to travel, but I can't afford it, which confused me. I saw them spending money all the time. They lived in really nice apartments, they drove really nice cars, they went out and ran up huge bar tabs every weekend. So I tapped into my judgment-free zone and started asking questions. They obviously could afford to travel, but instead they were spending that money in other ways. These friends were obviously in pain from thinking they didn't have the money to travel, so that's where the concept of afford anything came to me. It was the idea that every dollar that you spend is a trade-off. It comes at the cost of not spending that dollar on something else. Over time I realized that concept extended not just to money, but also to time, to energy, to attention, to any limited resource that we need to allocate. It's tied closely to the theory of opportunity cost. Choosing one thing means not choosing another. Sometimes we're not aware of the fact that we are making that choice.