Yeah...I bought some more parts...

It’s never apparent how well you’re doing until you see someone who’s doing worse. I’ve been buying a lot of bike parts lately, and have been feeling quite guilty about it. Years of trying to develop responsible financial habits has left me with serious buyers remorse for anything over $20.

My family has been very encouraging. My wife is an avid cyclist, so she understands the purchases. My dad tells me that I could be into far more expensive hobbies, and it’s not like I’m doing anything else.

For a different reason though, my outlook has begun to change. There’s someone I know who’s life is a mess, and it’s not from circumstances beyond their control. They simply make the wrong decisions.

I once heard someone say that the difference between ignorance and stupidity was that ignorance was the lack of knowledge where as stupidity was the inability to learn from your own or others experiences. I would agree with this. Add to the mix someone that enables the stupid activity and you have a disaster. Sometimes the best thing to do for a person is to let them fail. You can’t hold onto the your kid’s bike seat forever. You have to let go at some point and let them fall. It’s the only way they’ll every understand the importance of staying on the bike.

So while I’m still not completely over my spending guilt, I can can look at myself with a little more pride. My few hundred dollars worth of bike parts is balanced out by the trust my family has in my judgement, something I now know not everyone deserves.