Identifying your financial needs and wants is an important part of understanding what influences your financial decisions.

We can look at financial needs as the ability to purchase what we need to survive – food, clothes, accommodation, and so forth.

Interestingly, what one person sees as necessary for survival can change significantly throughout their lifetime, depending on many factors.

For example, you may believe having meat in your diet is a fundamental survival need, and therefore having the money to purchase meat is a financial need.

However, if you decided to relocate to a place where meat is either unsafe to eat, or extremely expensive, this need may be re-evaluated and may become something you want as oppose to need.

Differentiating between financial needs and wants requires a review of our fundamental survival needs.