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Maladaptive Frugality

herbertlui.net

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Re: Maladaptive Frugality

#141

Post by glasss »

steveBK123 wrote: post #108
wenc wrote: post #36

I read this article 10 years ago by a guy named Ricky Yean who went to Stanford as an economically disadvantaged admit and couldn’t shake his poverty mindset and it cost him when he was running a startup. Why “few successful startup founders grew up desperately poor” https://rickyyean.com/2016/01/22/privilege-and-inequality-in... Poverty mindset is maladaptive because it teaches you only money is worth anything, so y…

> Poverty mindset is maladaptive because it teaches you only money is worth anything, so you hoard it. But in truth time is also worth a lot and sometimes it’s wise to use money to buy time. This is something I've observed in overly frugal family. Stuff/money is worth too much to them. You can't gift them anything "nice" because they will put it on the shelf and never open it (don't want to damage it). Gifting them c…

That's not being frugal, that's a hoarder mentality.

Re: Maladaptive Frugality

#142

Post by jjice »

I had a very similar experience and still catch myself on occasion. Even with my "higher" spending, it's still lower than most. I hadn't realized, but I had associated the act of not spending money as righteous, and spending money as bad.

I think it was Ramit Sethi who said something along the lines of "spending money isn't inherently moral or immoral", and that was something that resonated with me. I had to pull myself out of the implicit mindset of "spending money should cause guilt". It's been very nice.

And to clarify examples of this: I no longer hesitate purchasing a drip coffee on Saturday afternoon, or on getting a beer with some friends at the brewery.

Re: Maladaptive Frugality

#143

Post by jjice »

chromacity wrote: post #9
freetime2 wrote: post #5

For years I did this with the thermostat - something I learned from my father who always kept the house under 65F (18C) in Winter. I'm somewhat ashamed to admit it even led to arguments with my spouse early in our marriage when I would enter a room and find the thermostat set to a balmy 70F. Eventually I just sat down, looked at how much it costs keep the house a few degrees warmer in winter, and realized we could af…

Funny, I went the other way round in the Bay Area. PG&E bills were so high so it was the choice of putting on a jacket or paying $1k extra over the winter months. And my reasoning was "I can afford a jacket".

I think I would still take that option, at least partially! Our gas bills where I am have gotten awful in recent years after the gas company separated from it's parent and all the homes (apartments) around here have god awful insulation since they're 80-150 years old.

I bought some fleece sweatpants for $40 and the amount I was able to keep my home unheated was totally fine and I made that money back within that month.

Also the cost of apartment-friendly insulation paid for itself immediately as well (which wouldn't apply to most decent apartments).

Re: Maladaptive Frugality

#144

Post by XorNot »

freetime2 wrote: post #5

For years I did this with the thermostat - something I learned from my father who always kept the house under 65F (18C) in Winter. I'm somewhat ashamed to admit it even led to arguments with my spouse early in our marriage when I would enter a room and find the thermostat set to a balmy 70F. Eventually I just sat down, looked at how much it costs keep the house a few degrees warmer in winter, and realized we could af…

I had a home battery put in recently and switched over to wholesale power...and the most shocking thing has been how little power our reverse cycle air conditioners actually use. Like, we bought them for efficiency, but between solar panels and a battery I can actually just have them on all night and we might just barely run out if we had good sun that day.

Basically a bunch of technology has just crossed over to make being comfortable not just affordable, but visibly so (which would've been great when I was a kid - it made a huge difference when I hooked the power monitoring up for my dad and proved to him that he should just set the AC to a target temperature and the fastest fan speed he could stand the sound of and it would use less power...and he actually did it!)

Re: Maladaptive Frugality

#145

Post by _alternator_ »

square_usual wrote: post #137
anticorporate wrote: post #118

I struggle with this. I feel so guilty for replacing my four year old phone this week, even though my old phone has had hardware issues for more than a year. There wasn't really a puritanical element for me, it seems to be just from growing below the poverty line. The flip side of it is I've accidentally joined the FIRE movement. Making a moderate tech salary for most of my time since graduating college but feeling g…

> After my last job in tech I took about a half a year off before realizing I also felt guilty about not working, and took a job I wanted Well, yeah, that's kind of the problem. If you're the kind of person who can FIRE, you're not the kind of person who'll be happy on permanent vacation at the age of 40. It's nice to have that option, but many people who get into FIRE commit themselves to a lifetime of slight misery…

I think this is a false dichotomy. My wife and I worked through our 20s, but regularly took vacations. We flew to NYC from LA at least 2x per year from 25-30. We had season ski passes. We lived frugally but well.

I was in grad school, she was a consultant. Our income was solidly lower middle class for LA, and we still managed to save 25-40% of our income per year.

Now that I've got a kid and am in my 40s, I've taken a year off, and I don't think I'd be bored in "early retirement". I'd probably spend time with my daughter, do more camping, and work on intellectual side projects (I have more than I can count).

The trick has been: I don't try to keep up with other people, I follow my own passions. I know how to cook, and to make my own fun. I'm curious and I like find out answers on my own. I never took on credit card debt.

I'm lucky because I had support from my parents through early college. I got student loans and supported myself after sophomore year or so. (I'm strategically still paying the minimum on those loans fwiw.) otherwise I stayed out of debt until I got a mortgage in my late 30s.

So, it is possible to do both. But I have noticed that I have a better ability to control my desire for acquisition than most people, and a decent amount of frugality in most areas of my life.

Re: Maladaptive Frugality

#146

Post by basch »

jimbob45 wrote: post #68
chromacity wrote: post #4

Most people in the US are pulled into living on credit straight out of school. You get a student loan, then a car loan, then a credit card, then a mortgage. You finance vacations, appliances, kitchen remodels, smartphones - mostly to keep up with friends and coworkers who finance their lifestyles too. A lot of people are in non-stop debt from the age of 18 to 55, if not longer. By most estimates, only about 10-20% of…

Having a credit card is like having a video game passive that makes everything permanently 2% cheaper. Everything should be put on a credit card for that discount as well as fraud protection provided you are disciplined enough to never ever ever ever ever ever carry a balance.

3% at restaurants is offset by 3% fee to use cards at restaurants. this benefit is evaporating.

not an argument for or against cards, but they are becoming closer to neutral than a discount.

Re: Maladaptive Frugality

#147

Post by jjice »

terrabitz wrote: post #117
Havoc wrote: post #77

> What I took away: eating at a good restaurant was bad, taking out cheap food was good because it saved money. Any sort of morality like framing around it is likely to lead to issues imo. The closer you can get to an analytical approach the better I think - can I afford it, is it good value for money, is it useful/furthers my goals etc

It's really a shame. I grew up in a frugal household that venerated Dave Ramsey, and there was a ton of moralizing of finances that didn't need to be moralized. Stuff like "debt is always evil, buying frivolous things like fancy coffees is stupid", etc. There are unfortunately a lot of people that base their spending and saving decisions not on what they actually value or what their goals are. Rather, they base them…

FWIW the Ramsey folks (whom I haven't really listened to in a few years) are cool with buying "frivolous things like fancy coffees" if you're out of debt. Not saying that's right or wrong (I personally think you can have a damn coffee), but their general philosophy is that if you're out of debt and are saving whatever percent of your income, do whatever you want.

Re: Maladaptive Frugality

#148

Post by Mezzie »

HiPhish wrote: post #113
solatic wrote: post #61

The most helpful tool here, I've found, is maintaining a personal finances spreadsheet. It's one thing, without a spreadsheet, to have the emotion of "I'm not going to have enough and I need to save more to make sure I have enough." I'd argue it's even evolutionary; we want to make sure we have enough to get through the winter we know is coming. It's quite another when your spreadsheet shows you saved X, your monthly…

I think in the case of pathological frugality the spreadsheet approach could make things even worse. A whole 20% spent on enjoyment? I bet I could drive it down to 15%, maybe 10%. In fact, do I really need these things? Why not go down to 0%, maybe 5% once every few months. After all, I might need that money in the future.

This is why I don't budget. I'm not immensely financially irresponsible: I make maybe 1/3 to 1/5 what the average person on HN makes (~50k), but I still contribute to my 401k enough to get my match, I could fairly easily tank about a 10k expense/probably live for 3-6 months on the money I have set aside with adjustments.

But whenever I've tried to budget, I run into the same problem anorexics do with counting calories. I will literally hurt myself in order to see the savings number go up. I can live on $10/week for food. All it will cost is my health. I can be in pain for 8+ months out of the year (MS muscle spasticity + heat intolerance ) so I don't use my heat or A/C because those cost money. Etc. I will literally berate myself to the point of a panic attack over buying a $25 book from an author I've loved for decades, believing it makes me a horrible human being to be so 'frivolous'.

Re: Maladaptive Frugality

#149

Post by Mezzie »

engineer_22 wrote: post #124

I am a consulting engineer serving small communities in Central New York. Ostensibly my job is to design construction projects to fix a problem, but most of my job is actually helping the community figure out how to pay for the fix. My greatest frustration is Maladaptive Frugality. There are whole communities with this mindset, and it takes a lot of effort to communicate the reality to the town/village board that the…

That reminds me of the roads in my city. They're disgusting.

The reason is because the city charter mandates they have to take the cheapest bid. Of course the quality is crap and none of the fixes last! Fortunately, we just changed that, so hopefully it will get better.

Re: Maladaptive Frugality

#150

Post by jjice »

engineer_22 wrote: post #124

I am a consulting engineer serving small communities in Central New York. Ostensibly my job is to design construction projects to fix a problem, but most of my job is actually helping the community figure out how to pay for the fix. My greatest frustration is Maladaptive Frugality. There are whole communities with this mindset, and it takes a lot of effort to communicate the reality to the town/village board that the…

Yeah this is bad frugality on their part. I like that term "Maladaptive Frugality" - I think it captures it well. You're focused on the initial cost instead of lifetime cost. If you can afford a higher upfront cost for a lower lifetime cost on something that has a long enough timeline, it's the way to go almost all the time.
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