“Should you enjoy your life today, even if it means less money to spend tomorrow?”

No! No enjoyment for you! That may sound a little bit Seinfeld “Soup Nazi”, but that’s the way it’s got to be.

Don’t you know that the person with the most money wins? Economic reality saw God sell out long ago. You want the best seats ringside in heaven? They’re for sale! Good deeds alone don’t get you there anymore. God’s got expenses too. And it turns out you CAN take it with you! As being mortal is only for a lifetime and the everafterlife is, like, a bit longer … you’ve got to save your dosh, man!

That’s only if you believe in life after death. (And if you don’t, are you sure you don’t want to hedge your bets and save something?)

This whole hedonism/Scrooge thing is one nasty set of scales to try to balance.

You can’t just overload on enjoyment. Well, you can, I guess. But you’ll have nothing for later. Maybe not even exist. Ask River Pheonix. Or Dr Hunter S Thompson.

And you can’t just not live. Or you’ll turn out boring. Like Kevin Rudd.

A concept I call “delayed gratification” is the middle ground. It doesn’t mean that you can’t enjoy yourself now. But it does mean that if you do delay some gratification/spending now and save/invest some for later, you’ll have extra moolah to spend enjoying something even more in the future.

That’s the power of compounding returns. A buck saved today can be turned into two or three bucks to use to pleasure yourself with tomorrow. Well, not tomorrow, but you know what I mean.

Bruce Brammall is the author of Debt Man Walking (www.debtman.com.au) and a licensed financial adviser.