Broccoli and other unpleasant facts of life

Distrust both quick-fix diets and get-rich-quick schemes - embrace broccoli and spend less than you earn

Financial advice is like diet advice. There are some basic tenets that hold true: for diet it’s things like ‘Don’t eat more than you need’, and ‘Eat loads of green vegetables’. Even though there are a million different diet books, as far as I know none of them will tell you to keep eating when you’re stuffed and cut back on broccoli. But from there, the advice varies wildly, from cutting out fruit to calorie restriction to unlimited bacon. It’s hard to know what’s right and how to apply all the contradictory advice to your own situation.

The basic tenets of finance are: ‘Don’t spend more than you earn’ and ‘invest the surplus’. Once again, beyond that you can choose from all sorts of approaches, many of which are contradictory. The personal finance industry has blossomed over the past 10 years, so although it’s not at saturation point like the diet industry, it’s coming up with ever-increasing spins on how to manage your money.

One of the biggest differences is how various experts feel about debt. Many will tell you to reduce your mortgage as rapidly as possible, aiming to eliminate it before you start investing in other things (or ‘vehicles’, as different types of investments are weirdly called in industry jargon). Other experts will tell you that leveraging is how your money makes serious money – the right type of debt allows you to multiply your surplus income far more effectively.

And how frugal should you be? Where is the line between sensible spending and a pointless reduced quality of life for years on end? That’s an extremely hard question to answer.

Most diets will work if you stick to them. Most money plans will work if you stick to them. But how will they perform in the long run? Can you continue to keep a tight rein on your budget or eat like a cave-dweller permanently? There’s really not much point in starting a plan that you’re going to abandon after six months. It will only make you feel like a failure.

What can you do? Be boring. Make smart and sustainable choices every day of every week. Eat your broccoli. Save a little each month. And let yourself splurge every so often. Added up, that should give you reliably solid results over time. It’s not very exciting. But there it is.