The Art of Spending Money

The art of spending money lies in the balance between passion and value. When a retired teacher uses their pension to collect local chronicles, or when a programmer splashes out their year-end bonus on a rare vinyl record, these actions go beyond mere consumption. Spending money after accumulating initial wealth on luxury bags and watches, or items adorned with gold and silver, is not the art of spending money.

When a wealthy woman leads the trend in contemporary art aesthetics and spending money evolves into collecting, it marks a complete transformation in self-perception and an elevation in cultural literacy. While it is still a form of consumption, the essence of collecting is to measure the depth of the spirit with money, an art of balancing material and emotional aspects.
Successful businesspeople who enter the collecting circle must have their unique insights.They can intuitively identify the connection between the collectibles and themselves, and effectively predict the return on investment of their spending. Moreover, they adopt the concept of a diversified investor.

Take the British Railway Pension Fund as an example: from 1973 to 1988, the fund allocated 5% of its liquid funds each year to invest in artworks, collecting approximately 2,500 pieces over 15 years, including Western sculptures, oil paintings, post-war contemporary art, and Chinese artworks. In the end, the average annual return rate exceeded 20%, with Chinese artworks achieving an annualized return rate of 15%.

For individual collectors, true collecting is a heart-pounding encounter, not a numbers game in an electronic spreadsheet. This also validates the golden rule of art collecting: the pursuit of profit often falters in the face of cyclical fluctuations. This is the true art of spending money.