How to manage money & wealth with Swedish lagom

Downtown Stockholm, Wednesday afternoon. You are sitting in a cafe and next to you is a seemingly ordinary guy.

Opposite, at another table, there is a middle-aged woman sipping her coffee. Chances are that these two are successful entrepreneurs, who cash out a lot of money out of their businesses’ profits, each year. Stockholm is a world-class start-up hub (and unicorns hub too, where the unicorn is a privately held start-up valued at over 1 billion dollars).

Whoa! A lot of money going around, huh? Agreed! The point here is that although the Swedes (Even the ordinary ones) accumulate a lot of wealth, fast, they really do not show it. It is their lagom way of thinking, that prohibits bragging about possessions and money. No-one really cares too much and nobody will (dare) ask someone else about his monthly wage or net worth, at a social gathering.

Lagom has a way with money, so read on to find out how you can balance your relationship with money and wealth!

Here is your lagom checklist about how to deal with money:

1. Come to terms with your expenses: you don’t have to save the very last penny but you really need to know where you spend money.

2. Start saving money: lagom is not against spending money today (for good reasons of course) but it also encourages you to create a safety net for the future.

3. Prefer quality over quantity: it’s very easy to embark on a shopping spree to buy all these 5$ T-shirts. Hold on! You need to act lagom and choose fewer things to buy but of higher quality.

4. Spend money smart: whether you have enough money or not, it is not a bad idea to behave a little bit more sustainably. Why buy take-out food every evening? You can cook a nice dish and take the leftovers the next day at work!

5. Record your expenses: if you don’t know how much you spend per category, how can you know where you must save? Tracking is the first step. Write them down on a paper or use your bank’s mobile app (most of them categorize all your purchases made with cards – physical and online ones).

Spending over the top is not sustainable. And it is also not fun at all, rather exhausting. Keeping a balance with your money the lagom way, can save your sanity and support your future too!