For years, I blamed my spending habits for every financial setback. If I could just tighten the budget, if I could just stop buying coffee… I told myself everything would work out.

Sound familiar?

Most of us have been taught that financial freedom starts with cutting back. But what if that’s exactly backward?

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: We’ve been sold the idea that saving is virtue and spending is sin—but that framing is really just permission to point fingers.

It’s easier to blame your spouse for a purchase, your kids for needing things, the economy for being unfair, or yourself for lacking willpower.

Cutting spending is fundamentally about finding fault. It’s an external accusation dressed up as financial wisdom.

The mature response—the one that actually changes your money mindset—is taking responsibility not for what’s going out, but for what’s coming in. That’s an internal challenge. It requires you to look at yourself and ask: What value am I creating? How can I be worth more?

Blaming a spending problem looks outward. Growing income looks inward.

The Math That Changes Everything

Everyone needs food, water, shelter, healthcare, education. Those aren’t negotiable. When you focus only on reducing expenses, you’re essentially rationing scarcity—deciding who gets less, what gets sacrificed, and which needs go unmet.

It’s a mindset of blame and deprivation.

But income? Income is infinite. It’s an engineering problem—a matter of creativity, skill, and persistence. It’s about what I can build, what I can learn, how I can provide more value.

It’s a mindset of ownership and creation.

Yet people avoid asking “How do I earn more?” because it’s uncomfortable. It puts the responsibility squarely on our shoulders. There’s no one else to blame. It demands effort, uncertainty, and time.

Retreating into expense-cutting feels safer because we can externalize the problem. If only they didn’t need so much. If only things didn’t cost so much. If only I had more discipline.

These are all ways of avoiding the real work: Accepting that your income is your responsibility—and yours alone.

The math doesn’t lie: you can only reduce so far. But your earning potential has no ceiling.

→ Read: Defining Financial Freedom — The One Number That Changed Everything

That article introduces the Financial Freedom Quotient (FFQ) — your passive income divided by your expenses. A score of 1.0 means financial independence.

We see that formula and immediately think, “I just need to spend less.”

That’s the blame reflex. It’s looking for something outside yourself to fix.

The real breakthrough is the opposite: “I need to earn more.”

That’s ownership. It’s the recognition that your financial situation is something you can change—not by restricting others or yourself, but by expanding what you’re capable of.

The goal isn’t to shrink your expenses until they fit your income. The goal is to grow your income streams until they exceed your needs—and then some.

Expenses are mandatory. Growth is optional. And freedom is found in what’s optional.

So the next time you catch yourself thinking “I need to save more,” recognize what that really is: it’s deflection.

You’re looking for something to cut, someone to blame, some external factor to control.

What you actually need is to create more value, find better leverage, and build new sources of income. The path to wealth isn’t through deprivation and finger-pointing—it’s through expansion, skill-building, and self-accountability.

A Closing Reflection on Growing Wealth

Here’s the paradox: Reducing expenses and growing income require opposite mindsets.

Expenses can be cut all at once. You can sit down one evening, make decisions, and execute immediately. It’s quick, it’s external, and it feels like control. But it’s really just rearranging deck chairs.

Income growth happens gradually, over time. There are faster and slower ways to build it, but when done right, the progression is geometric. For a long while, it looks like nothing’s happening. That’s normal.

The work you do early compounds invisibly. You’re working on yourself, not just your circumstances.

But I know what you’re thinking: all this sounds harder. Income growth means looking at yourself, taking responsibility, sitting with discomfort. Cutting expenses feels easier because you get to point the finger outward—blame the economy, blame circumstances, avoid the mirror.

Here’s the twist: income growth is actually easier in the way that matters most—because it’s possible. You can’t control what things cost or what people need. Those are fixed variables, outside your control. But you can develop skills, create value, and find leverage. Those are variables within your control.

It requires you to stop blaming and start building.

We need to get comfortable with projects that take time. We need to get comfortable with the discomfort of having no one else to point to.

Pick the right project. Then grind at it—consistently, relentlessly, patiently.

Because the real problem was never your spending.

It’s whether you’re willing to take responsibility for the solution.