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Maladaptive Frugality

herbertlui.net

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Re: Maladaptive Frugality

#161

Post by bigfudge »

ubermonkey wrote: post #103
hhh wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain why?

They cannot, because they are wrong. And I say this as a person who has owned no small number of fancy cars (but I got better). A new base-model Prius is absurdly luxurious compared to a base model car of 1975 or 1985 or even 1995. If you have lived long enough to see this change, then dropping 2x or 3x or 10x the cost of the Prius self-evidently puts you wildly beyond the point of diminishing returns. The Prius is g…

Even in motorsports, presumably it’s still mostly showing off? Unless you are a pro, you’d still lose any seriously comepetitivr race and have plenty to learn and enjoy driving a not-quite-top of the line sports car?

I don’t know motorsports, but in all the sports I do know it’s that way. Tennis, cycling… there are serious diminishing returns in all of those and most kit spending isn’t justified by performance as much as status or stamp collecting.

So much of our lives are taken up by worrying about tiny performance differences that really don’t matter. It makes me sad for the waste of life sometimes.

Re: Maladaptive Frugality

#162

Post by neogodless »

Nifty3929 wrote: post #151

To me this is so much about where you focus your attention. Even from a purely financial perspective. Mental space dedicated to watching your expenses is space you aren't using to improve your top-line. Some people are very proud of being frugal, spending time optimizing expenses - while earning far less than they could otherwise because they don't spend any mental energy on how to earn more. Meanwhile others are spe…

> Mental space dedicated to watching your expenses is space you aren't using to improve your top-line.

Not inaccurate, but you have "24 hours in a day". Even if you spend 1 hour on frugality, it's not like you spend 23 on "increasing your income." Why not both?

> Stay focused on earning more money > You'll enjoy life a lot more

Needs sources. We know that earning more is helpful up to a point, but it reaches a point of diminishing returns.

Similarly spending money can help you enjoy life, but we tend to be bad at predicting how happy any particular spending will make us. Learning this lesson and evolving our spending so that we do "enjoy life a lot more" can be well worth the time invested, even if it doesn't help us earn more.

Re: Maladaptive Frugality

#163

Post by neogodless »

arjie wrote: post #8

A wife is a useful thing to have in this respect, not because they tend to profligacy, but because this kind of thing is much easier to detect and fix in someone close to you than in yourself. Both my wife and I have lived frugal lives at various times[0] and I feel much happier with the degree of spending we have now. I'm reminded of the intelligent corvids in Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Memory where the sum of…

Should all women seek out wives then, so they can have two great minds to put to the task of living frugal and fulfilling lives?

Re: Maladaptive Frugality

#164

Post by ascii_ »

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.

[dead]

Re: Maladaptive Frugality

#165

Post by jandrewrogers »

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…

> By most estimates, only about 10-20% of US households are debt-free.

This needs to be qualified with the fact that it doesn't make sense for many people to be debt-free if they are financially literate. I know many people, myself included, who carry debt they could easily pay off because it would be irrational to do so. Being debt-free would actually make them poorer.

This often holds true even when ignoring obvious cases like debt interest well below the Treasury rates.

Re: Maladaptive Frugality

#166

Post by bigfudge »

tommica wrote: post #58
pornel wrote: post #33

This is very culture-specific. I've seen this in Poland. Under USSR rule frugality has been necessary to survive, but it left a lot of people forever stuck in that mindset, long after things got better. I know people who have a fortune in the bank, but live like they're broke, because they're afraid to spend anything from a "rainy day fund" even on rainy days.

Yep, I have a rainy day fund that I never look at when calculating surprise expenses, because "I might need it later". It's potions all over again!

I do that too. But isn’t it true? You might need it later. And you really have to save an awful lot to cope with a truly rainy day…

Re: Maladaptive Frugality

#167

Post by adithyassekhar »

alphawhisky wrote: post #131
adithyassekhar wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know there’s an upcoming generation of developers who are so jealous of you? Not your fault or anything. We managed to make the latter irrelevant or by no means a high earner. Everything is expensive, tech took over all the jobs, now tech itself has found ways to end those jobs. You either have to be a medical professional/media person now to live without worry.

> You either have to be a medical professional/media person now to live without worry. Civil Engineer here. Used to get clowned on by other STEM students for going into one of the "lowest paying" engineering majors. Post grad, I can't imagine a more stable job, and my generational cohort is having a hard time. Boy do I feel smart. And the bonuses after construction season? Forget about it.

Ah yes, forgot about Civil/Mechanical/Electrical. These I believe are foundational disciplines.

Re: Maladaptive Frugality

#168

Post by neogodless »

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…

> many people who get into FIRE commit themselves to a lifetime of slight misery instead of learning to be okay with living life when they can

Source for this assertion?

I've been in contact with various people at various points on the FIRE journey, and I haven't seen a lot that go "too far" towards being miserly, cheap, and miserable. Especially when they are high earners like the parent comment. They live lifestyles that may appear lavish, but are done while spending well below their means, because they are also investing in their future, while being mindful about spending today.

Re: Maladaptive Frugality

#169

Post by jandrewrogers »

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…

FIRE is achieved primarily by not buying a lot of "stuff". Living a great life and having incredible experiences is relatively inexpensive and you don't need a lot of expensive stuff to do it. If you are being miserable then you're doing it wrong.

FIRE should really just be a continuation of what you are already doing, just with less responsibility and financial risk. It isn't about saving up for a permanent vacation. It shouldn't even be conceptualized as a "vacation".

Most people I know who are FIREd are busy living a mundane life they find personally satisfying. They aren't having an existential crisis.

Re: Maladaptive Frugality

#170

Post by rawgabbit »

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…

I like these quotes as this is something my company struggles with. Can you give an example of "Tripping over dimes to pick up pennies"?

At my company, it’s always choosing the vendor who promises the most. The fact that they have extremely dissatisfied customers and leave a trail of shit is always ignored.

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