Resources Must Be Used To Be Useful

If you have a car, but you never drive it, you are living the exact same life as one where you don't have a car at all. This idea applies to food you don't eat and money you don't spend. 

Resources are only useful if you use them. 

With that said, I want to be clear about something here. If you own a hammer, you don't have to use the hammer once a day to justify having it. You may not even need it as much as once a year. The one thing that does matter is that, when a situation can be remedied by one of your resources, you choose to use it. 

I think that's part of the reason that stories tend to only tell you things that matter; resources that don't aid in the story detract from the story.