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It feels like a recipe for marital disaster that she's living this extremely frugal lifestyle despite him making good money and he "goes along with it" (her words)
Only if you assume spending more money will make you happier though
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Maybe HN isn't really the target audience. Americans and/or rich people, in my experience, tend to get very knee-jerkily nervous around anything that reeks of centralised, socialized income/benefits/healthcare.
You both should at least admit that the comment you're talking about is not, in fact, getting downvoted.
When I read stories like this, I always think of the systemic factors that are creating this behavior; that America, and indeed many countries in the world, do not have the social safety nets to take care of its own people when they can't work anymore. It would be better and more efficient for a nation as a whole to take care of its children so that they can choose their own avenues of success rather than needing to…
> Imagine where mankind could be if we had everyone being able to have the basics, and ample free time to think, to explore, to experiment, to create. Western Europe has vast social safety nets going way beyond "the basics". Yet you don't see an explosion of innovation, culture, art, philosophy or what have you. They may not be related, or a full belly isn't hungry and doesn't look for ways to fill itself.
In my country the generation that survived German occupation in WWII (and huge poverty, starvation, etc), had what's casually called "occupation syndrome" -- which we use to describe more or less the same kind of behavior.
The social safety net may provide some degree of safety, but it often doesn't offer freedom to choose.
Freedom means being able to take the time to care for yourself or your loved ones if something happens.
That day came for my family several years ago, and my wife and I are constantly reminded how much worse things would have been (even here in enlightened Canada) if we didn't have that kind of freedom.
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> Imagine where mankind could be if we had everyone being able to have the basics, and ample free time to think, to explore, to experiment, to create. Realistically? Probably better than 99% of people would play video games and watch TV their whole lives. Not everybody is oriented to be an artist/author, an inventor, a scientist, or some other creative type.
> Not everybody is oriented to be an artist/author, an inventor, a scientist, or some other creative type. More people probably are naturally oriented in a way compatible with that (perhaps not to be commercially successful at it, but that's expressly not an issue) before they are aggressively socialized out of it by people who want to prepare them for the economic necessities of surviving in the world we actually li…
A lot of every people know this. It's called "the American dream". You may have heard of it.
I’m 100% the opposite way. My wife is very frugal, but I save nothing. What’s the point of pinching every single penny? That’s not life; it’s survival. Even more ironic is the fact that this is multiple decades of mere survival all aimed towards one goal: ensuring survival in those decades when work is no longer possible. Perhaps I’m obtuse, but this isn’t a life worth living. I want to enjoy my healthy years in the…
I see people that age, some are in good shape, a lot are not. A lot die before they even get to enjoy that. What is the point?
I'm honestly so jealous of the husband's situation. 7-figure networth before hitting 30, a 4-bedroom home in a major tech hub, and a compulsively frugal wife who is obsessed with financial planning and amplifying your shared incomes/networths. The dream. This article just feels like a vector to drive traffic towards her sites, though.
It feels like a recipe for marital disaster that she's living this extremely frugal lifestyle despite him making good money and he "goes along with it" (her words)
I'll keep that to myself because I don't want to offend anyone and get downvoted, though a lot of it is drawn from what I was like when I dated someone like the author.
She only had to spend half of her post-China childhood in poverty before her mom started earning doctor money, but she still thought/behaved very much like the writer of this article. Though unlike the author, she hates her parents.
I see compulsive frugality as a boon in a capitalist society. Especially in the United States.