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I’m not saving ninety percent of my income for myself

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Re: I’m not saving ninety percent of my income for myself

#131

Post by rayiner »

joshbaptiste wrote: post #92
xenihn wrote: post #12

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.

Once he placed the ring on her finger he accepted her terms .. as an American who hasn’t grown up with Asian cultural norms I would never marry someone with an obligation to take care of their parents also in America.

What kind of American? Multigenerational living is still routine among African Americans and Hispanic Americans, and pretty common among rural white Americans. The median distance an American lives from their mom is just 18 miles.

Re: I’m not saving ninety percent of my income for myself

#132

Post by badpun »

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #53
luckylion wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You do though, you’re just not aware of it. When you look at the cultural life of French cities for example, it’s 1000x richer than the cultural life of an American city the same size. And one could easily argue they don’t cover « the basics ».

It's partially because, in Europe, the states are funding arts in a myriad of ways (grants for writers, video game designers, major money for covering costs of making films, tons of museums etc.), while in the US, even the major philharmonics are only funded by private sponsors. In EU, if you're very good at networking, art can be relatively easy money.

Re: I’m not saving ninety percent of my income for myself

#133

Post by iamleppert »

I’m just waiting for the part where her husband divorces her and takes all their money and leaves the country.

Life has a way of making a mockery of all your best laid plans.

What’s the point of suffering like this? She has escaped poverty from a financial perspective but not a mental one.

Re: I’m not saving ninety percent of my income for myself

#134

Post by Retric »

arkades wrote: post #104
thatfrenchguy wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you assume spending more money will make you happier though

As marginal utility goes, though, it sounds like “spending more money” in this story includes things like “having more than one room to live in.” And, admittedly this was an inference rather than baldly stated, “nice vacations.” Money doesn’t just buy a different grade of items. It also buys a whole slew of novel experiences, of which you only get so many in your life. Yeah, some amount of spending can make you happi…

The ROI from vacations when your younger vs much earlier retirement seems to favor early retirement.

Re: I’m not saving ninety percent of my income for myself

#135

Post by skinnymuch »

humanrebar wrote: post #121
not_a_moth wrote: post #103

Not sure what to make of this. Marrying a rich man was the deus ex machina. I thought the talk about breaking the "cycle of poverty" was pointing towards a heroic use of frugality to overcome, but no, solution was marriage. And then the extremely/uncomfortable frugality, as opposed to healthy frugality, after becoming rich points to pathology more than anything else.

> ...solution was marriage... What if it's an important part of the equation? Stable marriages have rather strong inverse correlations to poverty levels. Maybe finding someone rich in this case was especially fortunate, but even marrying someone of similar economic means tends to be a boon (on average at least). And pathology... most people are "pathological" in some way. It's hard for me to tut about personal inclin…

The OPs point is marriage to a rich guy. Not just marriage.

Re: I’m not saving ninety percent of my income for myself

#136

Post by chongli »

Reedx wrote: post #102
maxaf wrote: post #56

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…

One of the problems with this strategy is that it ends up becoming a burden to your family and others (who sacrificed to save for a rainy day). And it may happen sooner than you think. > I’m keenly aware that I’ll be left penniless once I can no longer work, but I have a plan for that. What's the plan?

What's the plan?

The post sounded to me like the Smith and Wesson retirement plan.

Re: I’m not saving ninety percent of my income for myself

#137

Post by dheera »

xenihn wrote: post #12

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.

I would LOVE to save 90% of my income, but I live in the bay area and 30% of my income goes to rent, 6-10% goes to food, 8-10% goes to transportation, 5-7% on utilities, none of which I'm splurging on, so these aren't exactly negotiable.

I also budget about 10% toward educational purchases (equipment and services, mostly tech) for personal projects and learning, which I think will financially benefit me long term even if it means I save less now.

OP's $1.7M in investments? If I had that, yeah, I'd surely be saving 90% of it, too. Maybe 95%.

Re: I’m not saving ninety percent of my income for myself

#139

Post by chongli »

roenxi wrote: post #21
cercatrova wrote: post #3

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…

> ... so that they can choose their own avenues of success ... At present 'success' in practice is basically synonymous with 'resource consumption'. At a guess that is going to be a very sticky connection that might even be wired in at the biological level; it seems to be quite consistent across the different cultures I know of. It is not possible to liberate people to pursue success by improving the social safety ne…

At present 'success' in practice is basically synonymous with 'resource consumption'.

This reminded me of one of my favourite quotes from Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri:

"Resources exist to be consumed. And consumed they will be, if not by this generation then by some future. By what right does this forgotten future seek to deny us our birthright? None I say! Let us take what is ours, chew and eat our fill."

-- CEO Nwabudike Morgan "The Ethics of Greed"

Re: I’m not saving ninety percent of my income for myself

#140

Post by badpun »

luckylion wrote: post #80
thoughtfunction wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France is ahead in fashion and few other art forms. America is ahead in popular art because LA is the silicon valley of culture and has the population of Europe. After a certain point it's a language and population thing, and France has a language barrier compared to english.

I've never really understood fashion, so I can't comment on that (Whoever makes the models wear the most ridiculous outfit wins?). However, why isn't France going to Mars? Where is France (or Germany, or Sweden etc for that matter) creating the Internet, or GPS, or Hip-Hop, or Jazz, or doing cutting edge medical research? It's not that they don't do that at all - it just, that, if the safety net was such a strong dri…

Regarding culture superiority, I feel like it's just that the big and wealthy countries manage to spread their culture the most, and that's what catches on in the world. If jazz and hip-hop were invented in the Czech Republic instead of the US, there would be much larger chance of it staying just a local phenomenon, and the world would be taken over by some other cultural trend instead.
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