151–160 of 226 posts
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’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…
And as I've put in the effort to be more mindful of my spending, it's felt more liberating than anything else. All this to say, you might also find it can actually feel better to do other things with money than spending it.
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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.
That's not to say that it couldn't be random that a lot of the recent advancements happened in the US, I just don't find it likely.
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It's not that hard. She rents the house she lives in for more than the cost of her mortgage. She makes income from that there. They don't own a car. Her husband gets a free bus pass from work. No housing or transportation expenses. So what's left? Food? Her husband works in tech (first Amazon, and now Google!) and saves 100% of his income. And they live off hers. They have like $1.7 million saved from his Amazon stoc…
But it's incredible amounts of luck combined with having a partner who works for a series of big well paying public companies. Being able to buy a house and rent it out for more than you pay is /hard/ because it's based on luck. No one in a major tech hub could start and do that right now. Houses in the bay regularly sell for $10k/month in total cost but rent for $5-6k. And then immediately say goodbye to 40%+ of you…
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> And who wouldn't love to live in their "Depression" The Japanese are committing suicide at higher rates than Americans[1], and a million of them have chosen to live as shut-ins rather than participate in society.[2] They're also not having children. Maybe that's your utopia but it sure isn't mine. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_Japan [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori
There's an argument that Japanese people don't accept being medicated as much as people in US/EU, which, combined with very supportive parents, means that the depressed people just stay home as shut-ins instead of trying to function on anti-depressants, as they do over here.
Answer: it's to support her parents' retirement.
I do not think this is accurate. While she does provide them with support, the article states that they actually need very little. She's saving a lot more than what's needed to support them.
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Yes, this is being overlooked by most readers... this article is a woman plainly describing her mental illness.
Hard to describe that as mental illness, I might go the other way and say people so consumed by their social status that they throw away their perfectly functional year old iphone/cloths/cars/etc to buy the latest version are suffering far more harmful mental illness. And that might just be the surface, people who throw their lives away going into massive debt to buy the largest house and nicest car they can afford a…
> He doesn’t mind the way I want to live — he just goes along with it.
> I once had a conversation with my husband about how if I died, he’d have to keep taking care of my parents. It’s a dark topic, I know, and he wasn’t thrilled about the idea. But he wouldn’t kick them out.
> My dad is now retired, and when my mom retires she’ll move in with us too. The plan is to give them this house eventually, and get our own nearby.
She says her parents aren't pleasant people. Imagine how her husband feels about dedicating all his future earnings towards their happiness. She thinks this is normal.
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…
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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 eve…
As Paula Pant of Afford Anything [1] would say, you can afford anything, but not everything. The author here is house-hacking [2], which certainly isn't everyone's cup of tea, but it is one way to get around high housing costs. I've listened to enough financial independence podcasts to know that it's absolutely possible to hit a 90% savings rate. There are guests on the show who have done it on much less income than…
As near as I can tell, luxury (think 50k+ $ cars, huge mansions, expensive clothing, jewelry) exists for one and one reason only: impressing others, and in particular, males impressing females in hopes of sexually attracting them. Either that, or people just "going with the flow" without thinking. I cannot come to any other logical conclusion.
I've noticed that people buying expensive things don't really want to admit that they are buying it just to show others that they can afford it.
If you can afford food, shelter and some medical/dental care, and you can pay your bills (electric, gas, internet, whatever) without worrying about them, I don't think money will improve your happiness. Especially if you need to endure additional stress for it.
The Western civilization has it extremely good. If only people read history and truly understood and appreciated what this world consisted of not a century ago, they'd celebrate each day on the streets. Voltaire says that the perfect is the enemy of good, and that's a deep message.
I salute these two! If it doesn't bother them, I see no issue with the way they live whatsoever.