“There’s never enough money” is a sentiment shared by almost everyone. There’s a statement, for which a Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded for its mathematical proof, that says: “A household spends not the money it has received, but the money it plans to receive.” We don’t go to the movies because we’re planning to buy a refrigerator next month. We use consumer loans. We receive many services on credit, such as utilities, and so on. In other words, the structure of our expenses is tied not to the money we have received, but to the money we plan to receive.
For most people, life goes “from paycheck to paycheck,” and there is no money for anything beyond what is already planned. There is no such thing as extra money. If a household is saving for something, then a) there is a goal, and b) something has clearly been sacrificed. Of course, I am excluding from the discussion the 0.1% to 0.5% of the population who always have extra money.
Given such a bleak picture, one might feel tempted to give up and stop offering their services or products—after all, no one has any money. This raises the question: “But people are spending money on something, right?” What exactly are they spending it on? On things they have a need for. So, instead of looking for money in the client’s wallet, we should be looking for the needs that we can fulfill.