TOEFL Independent Writing Task
Essay Topic: Enjoying Your Money
Example Essay by Jeenn Lee Hsieh
Essay Question:
Is it better to enjoy your money when you earn it or is it better to save your money for some time in the future? Use specific reasons and examples to support your opinion.
Example Answer (Jeenn Lee Hsieh):
For those young people like you who find it difficult to make ends meet, saving money at present may just turn out to be bad advice. The point is enjoying your money when you earn it through investing in yourself in any logical way other than saving it for the future. Consider: there is a limit to how much you can save now, but there is no limit how much you can earn tomorrow.
To begin with, if you are thinking "wisely" about your financial status in the future, it would be no practical use saving money at present. For example, saving a little money "foolishly" every month, and at the end of the year you are likely to be surprised at how little you have. Jokingly speaking, saving a small sum of money is not unlike folding it over and putting it in the pocket, as if it were a safe way to double the amount. Therefore, it is advisable to keep money in the head instead of the pocket. Otherwise, you may sound penny-wise and pound-foolish from where you are to where you want to be. That is because a cent well spent now can bring in a dollar for the time to come.
Further, enjoying money in the right direction is investing in yourself. Since you wish to become rich some day, it makes more sense to spend the money to develop your knowledge and experience at present than to purposely keep idle banknotes for future's sake. The mentality of financial security ought to be more associated with making good use of what you can earn today before it is too late paving way for the future. Incidentally, to illustrate, Henry Ford is quoted as saying to young people: "Don't save any nickle; invest in yourself." Believe it or not, this rags-to-riches American claimed: "I never saved a dollar until I was forty years old". The lesson behind is that, if money is your hope for independence, you would never have it because the only security you could have in this world is a reserve of knowledge and experience.
The bottom line is that you may either choose to save peanut money today or earn handsome income tomorrow. Although blind frugality can enable you to feel some sort of financial security at present, only by investing in yourself can you increase earnings to a successful level. Accordingly, when still young and eager to learn, all you have to do is keep head over water and open your eyes to the future.
(Essay created by Jeenn Lee Hsieh)
