Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Price shocks in formative years scar consumption for life

knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 478 posts

Re: Price shocks in formative years scar consumption for life

#151

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

mistersquid wrote: post #60
cs137 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus, a lot of that gas consumption is spent commuting, which makes people miserable. Murdering the daily commute is a good thing Covid-19 did, although I don't expect it to last long (WFH-ers will get fewer promotions, despite working harder, and eventually RTO fetishists will rule the roost). Very few people want to "consume gas". They want to be able to live decently and have meaningful jobs. Unfortunately, in tod…

> You don't want to know how much time I spent deciding whether to use the more conventional hyphenization ("shit-ass-load") or the version with better cadence. It’s not a question of “cadence” but of grammar. “Shit-ass“ is an adjective modifying the noun “load”. Your choice is grammatically correct.

Could there not be a noun, "ass-load"?

Re: Price shocks in formative years scar consumption for life

#152

Post by phil21 »

blackoil wrote: post #48
throwaway98797 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had this problem Easy solution take a few hundred from the bank and physical set it on fire keep doing it until you don’t care it’s illegal but it works

Better approach that I am trying is try to buy luxury version whenever I need something. Broke a plate, buy one from boutique ceramic shop. Need some glasses sure a high end crystal. Though on counter side, be really sure that you are rich before trying to act like one.

This is very similar to how I tried (am trying?) to evolve my spending, usually having the impulse to buy something now before it become scarce or buy the cheapest possible thing to get the task done in the moment.

These days I realize I have nearly everything I need, so if I'm buying something I figure I can't really afford it unless I'm getting the "best" out there. Best for me means researching the best performing/quality/etc. item in the category. If I'm replacing a broken item I also take the opportunity to upgrade.

For example I needed a carpet shampoo cleaner recently. Instead of heading to Walmart to buy whatever consumer gear was slapped on the shelf, I spent a few weeks deeply researching the ecosystem and ended up with something about 4-5x the expense - but with performance to match. The difference in quality makes it almost a pleasure to clean my carpets these days.

It's easy to spend money simply on fancy and not get much out of it. But I feel pretty satisfied when I make an absurdly expensive purchase like the above but still feel great about it a year later due to the value/increased quality of life it bought me. In the moment if feels ridiculous paying many multiples more than I would have in the past, but over time these little incremental improvements add up.

It's the spending that I do like a "poor person" that bothers me the most - just buying crap on impulse, or "collector" behavior. I find I need to actively mitigate both impulses or I'd end up on a hoarding TV show.

Re: Price shocks in formative years scar consumption for life

#153

Post by throwaway0a5e »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #24
doix wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It makes you penny wise and pound foolish while always having to look over your shoulder monetarily speaking. Could you explain what you mean? I grew up pretty poor, single income PhD student/post-doc salary family with two kids. Eventually my father got a proper position at a university, but until then we were pretty poor. My parents used to sleep on the floor, we had almost no furniture(I remember playing footbal…

>Could you explain what you mean? Sure. I realize I waste a lot of time in supermarkets, shops or online stores, browsing/walking around and comparing prices just to penny pinch on low value things, when the savings I would make would have no meaningful impact on my yearly net worth, but the time and mental energy wasted browsing/walking around comparing prices could have better return on investment if used on other…

>I realize I waste a lot of time in supermarkets, shops or online stores, browsing/walking around and comparing prices just to penny pinch on low value things

Of course it pales in comparison to cashing out your overpriced McMansion in some Karen infested suburb of a major metro with nice schools and moving to rural Idaho or switching jobs for a new one with "senior" in the title. But have you ever actually run the numbers? Cheaping out and/or reducing consumption has a huge impact on weekly or monthly finances if it is applied with any breadth. Monthly finances have a huge impact on money available for savings/investment.

Re: Price shocks in formative years scar consumption for life

#154

Post by spaetzleesser »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #2

Being poor in general, during your childhood, scars you for life. It makes you penny wise and pound foolish, adverse to taking risks in your career and investments, can destroy your confidence in yourself, while always having to look over your shoulder monetarily speaking. Habits that even after you remove poverty from your live, you still feel the the anxiety and triggers in your head.

It doesn’t have to even be in your youth. I lost a lot of money with a real estate deal in the 90s plus a lot more when the .COM bubble crashed. Since then I have no confidence in investing or jobs. I always look over my shoulder and wait for things to go bad. Especially since 2008 it made sense to blindly invest into housing and stocks even while knowing they would crash eventually. Being gunshy from previous experience made you lose out on a lot of gains.

Re: Price shocks in formative years scar consumption for life

#155

Post by iosystem »

ssully wrote: post #74
usrn wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least you have a partner. If you're on your own you're absolutely fucked. Not only are you alone but everyone else is out to get you. When we have the crunch in the near future I could see me and my peers torching things. I don't even worry about this anymore; I look forward to it.

Based on your other posts, I don't think you would sound much different if you had a partner. You clearly have a lot of anger and I encourage you to find someone to talk to. I mainly mean a therapist, but if that isn't an option than a close friend. Those feelings will eat you alive.

Majority of millennials on social media sites like reddit share the same thoughts as that person. To be more specific everyone that isn't making six figures in a career like tech. I have anxiety about the resentment of my peers and I think the riots we've seen in the US non-related to the housing crisis have been bad but likely nothing compared to what's to come. The elephant in the room is that therapy isn't going to cut it and especially when almost all of young adults entering into the timeline of entry-homeownership years realize it's impossible while having flashbacks of how much easier it was for their parents while comparing homes on the market to what they lived in during childhood years. I think the older generation is naive to think that everyone is just going to adapt to apartment living without extreme resentment and torching things down. Even my tech colleague millennials are trying to prepare for what their peers are likely to do.

Re: Price shocks in formative years scar consumption for life

#156

Post by selimthegrim »

dmux wrote: post #108
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Could you explain what you mean? Sure. I realize I waste a lot of time in supermarkets, shops or online stores, browsing/walking around and comparing prices just to penny pinch on low value things, when the savings I would make would have no meaningful impact on my yearly net worth, but the time and mental energy wasted browsing/walking around comparing prices could have better return on investment if used on other…

>So I just hoard cash like an idiot as that makes me feels safe and lets me sleep well at night. If you haven't already, look into Certificates of Deposit ("CD") at your local bank. They're FDIC insured (so if the bank goes under, you're covered, up to something like $250k) and you don't have to worry about losing the principal amount you put in. If you ever need to withdraw that money in case of an emergency, you on…

Are interest rates high enough again to make laddering worth it?

Re: Price shocks in formative years scar consumption for life

#157

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

AuthorizedCust wrote: post #95
photochemsyn wrote: post #90

Mindless consumption is nothing but a disease, of the mental illness variety. People who get a dopamine burst or some similar neurotransmitter release when they go shopping have been indoctrinated into patterns of behavior that do them no good in the long run. They'll end up with a house crammed with possessions they never use, bought on a whim in order to make themselves feel better. A better mentality is to always…

> what's wrong with a steady-state economy with a stable human population We don’t have a stable population. It’s growing. We like things to get better even if we don’t have “more”. I don’t have multiple cars just for me. But the car I have now has adaptive cruise control. It costs more, it makes my driving experience better, and I’m glad I have it. Both of these, among many other factors, influence economic growth.

> We don’t have a stable population. It’s growing.

The rate of growth is declining, though. So it's not unreasonable to foresee peak population in the near future (most estimates are around 2060, and it's not going to increase much between 2050 and then).

Re: Price shocks in formative years scar consumption for life

#158

Post by throwaway193948 »

duncan_idaho wrote: post #106
sokoloff wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're able to live without the credit aspects of the credit card, why not take the 1-2% discount on nearly everything consumable that you buy? If you pay it off every month, credit cards have a negative cost (to you) and a fair amount of convenience (for renting cars, hotels, booking flights, etc).

That 1-2% is what they pay you for all your data. Credit cards are a key component of data brokers.

compared to all the other data collected about me with no benefit to myself that seems like an ok deal

Re: Price shocks in formative years scar consumption for life

#159

Post by Arrath »

sokoloff wrote: post #63
snarfy wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll never have another credit card. Frequent flyer miles, what are those? The whole industry can go fuck themselves.

If you're able to live without the credit aspects of the credit card, why not take the 1-2% discount on nearly everything consumable that you buy? If you pay it off every month, credit cards have a negative cost (to you) and a fair amount of convenience (for renting cars, hotels, booking flights, etc).

I also like the extra layer of fraudulent transaction protection vs e.g. a debit card.

Re: Price shocks in formative years scar consumption for life

#160

Post by selimthegrim »

nradov wrote: post #113
deathanatos wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not in SF. The last listing I looked at was 800 sq ft, run down, literally "as-is" property: $500k valuation from Zillow (it's listed for less … but not by much). That's about $2500/mo, in mortgage alone. Decent properties, in suburban areas, at ~$1M. Ir rural areas, yeah, they're cheaper … and salary would get "adjusted" the moment I try that.

Here's a decent 3-bedroom single family house in suburban Cleveland for $395K. https://apps.realtor.com/mUAZ/313q9jxa That's just one example but you can find thousands of similar listings all over the country. Outside of high-cost coastal areas, housing is still fairly affordable in most of the country.

That’s not the suburbs.
Post reply on HN