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No Desire To Spend

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Re: No Desire To Spend

#51

Post by prodigal_erik »

debacle wrote: post #27

"The people who generally have their financial shit together don't usually realize when it's pay day." Seems like a pretty specious argument. If you pay bills, then you know when bills are due and you know when payday is. That's finance in a nutshell - managing your AR and your AP. "Do you live within biking distance from work? No? Then move closer to work." I live in one of the better school districts in the area an…

That issue isn't age-correlated. I'm over 40 and never had kids, but there are 25-year-olds who are concerned about teacher quality (and during the grades it matters most).

Re: No Desire To Spend

#53

Post by prodigal_erik »

startupfounder wrote: post #18
cperciva wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot of people who are physically incapable of biking to work -- not because of distance, but because of some combination of {age, injuries, lack of fitness, difficult terrain, luggage}. It's easy for a fit 20 year old who lives on a flood plain to say that more people should cycle to work. It's not so easy for an overweight 40 year old who needs to drop her kids off at daycare, works at the top of a steep h…

The fact is most people work within biking distance of work, yes there are SOME that can't, but most just plain don't want to. In NYC is is faster to bike then any other mode of transport. If you are in fact a overweight 40 year old who has kids and luggage needs then what about: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/faradaybikes/faraday-por... ? An electric bike for hills, add on a kids seat on the handle bars and on…

A bike can't offer anything more than a cardio workout for your legs. That's not a substitute for a gym with benches and weights and suspension. And showers, because if you don't break a sweat the ride is even less of a substitute.

Re: No Desire To Spend

#54

Post by hkarthik »

"The people who generally have their financial shit together don't usually realize when it's pay day."

This. I've lived this way for the past 8 years and it's been a breath of fresh air. To me, this is the definition of "living within your means."

Although I think it's not for anyone. Some people actually enjoy pinching pennies or spending frivolously while watching their bank account constantly in either case. I can't really identify with that, and it would drive me crazy.

Re: No Desire To Spend

#55

Post by silvestrov »

debacle wrote: post #27

"The people who generally have their financial shit together don't usually realize when it's pay day." Seems like a pretty specious argument. If you pay bills, then you know when bills are due and you know when payday is. That's finance in a nutshell - managing your AR and your AP. "Do you live within biking distance from work? No? Then move closer to work." I live in one of the better school districts in the area an…

If you pay bills, then you know when bills are due

USAism because you're still using checks and other old money tech.

In the modern world: My rent, insurance, electricity, heating, phone, mastercard, newspapers, etc are payed automatically every month. Whenever I get a bill, it contains a 'subscription id' which I enter in my online bank, and all following bills are then sent as an electronic invoice to my bank which then automatically performs the requred transfer of money on the due date. I don't even see those bills unless I want to spend time looking at it. I don't receive those bills in the paper mail. Everything is online.

Same with my wage. It just goes into my account after taxes are automatically payed. I don't need to do any work to pay my taxes.

Thus, I don't need to know when it's pay day unless I use too much money.

Re: No Desire To Spend

#57

Post by debacle »

silvestrov wrote: post #55
debacle wrote: post #27

"The people who generally have their financial shit together don't usually realize when it's pay day." Seems like a pretty specious argument. If you pay bills, then you know when bills are due and you know when payday is. That's finance in a nutshell - managing your AR and your AP. "Do you live within biking distance from work? No? Then move closer to work." I live in one of the better school districts in the area an…

If you pay bills, then you know when bills are due USAism because you're still using checks and other old money tech. In the modern world: My rent, insurance, electricity, heating, phone, mastercard, newspapers, etc are payed automatically every month. Whenever I get a bill, it contains a 'subscription id' which I enter in my online bank, and all following bills are then sent as an electronic invoice to my bank which…

I pay one bill each month with a check, because it's actually easier (car loan from some crazy remote credit union) than using ACH. The rest are electronic, but they still need to be approved before fund transmission.

Re: No Desire To Spend

#58

Post by dagw »

legulere wrote: post #49
dagw wrote: post #41

Do you live within biking distance from work? No? Then move closer to work. This has three huge benefits... It also has one huge downside the article neglects to mention. If your work is in the center of town (as many offices are) you often either have to greatly increase the amount you spend on housing or greatly decrease the 'quality' of the housing. For disclosure sake I do live in an apartment in the center of to…

Does the quality of the housing mean space? Living a more minimalist life also means having less stuff. The reason why we build everincreasing houses is that we need space for our stuff.

Sure it can mean space. I disagree that the only reason to want more space is to hold more stuff. I want more space so that I can have a room that I can close the door on and call my own (and by extension let my daughter and girlfriend have their own rooms as well). I'd like rooms with dedicated functions like a workshop for me to build things in and a room where my girlfriend can paint. I'd like a guest room so I can have friends stay the night without being forced to sleep on the couch in the living room. I'd like a small garden so I can grow food and cook outside.

Now as it stands non of these wishes have become important enough for me an my girlfriend to give up the city, and they are all 'problems' that can be worked around, but there are more reason to want space than simply to store things

Re: No Desire To Spend

#59

Post by SageRaven »

patio11 wrote: post #40

I spent more than a few years scrimping to the bone earlier in my twenties. The notion has an intrinsic appeal to me. Just so you know the context when I say: For what it's worth, if you're a HNer, I'll tell you something Ramit Sethi says often which would have been useful to internalize, oh, five years earlier: it is very hard to cut expenditures in such a meaningful fashion that your financial situation qualitative…

I think much of the utility of frugal living is the mindset it ingrains in you. It becomes a valuable life skill that has a much wider impact than simple finances. You gain a reflexive ability to determine the true value of a purchase, both in the now and in the future.

Say you have 2 people earning $30k/yr. One is trying to live frugally, the other is not. Suddenly the latter gets a $10k/yr raise "just by asking". I'd wager that the person with the deliberate, frugal mindset will still have more discretionary cash the day before payday than the one who got the raise.

Re: No Desire To Spend

#60

Post by leeHS »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #50
patio11 wrote: post #40

I spent more than a few years scrimping to the bone earlier in my twenties. The notion has an intrinsic appeal to me. Just so you know the context when I say: For what it's worth, if you're a HNer, I'll tell you something Ramit Sethi says often which would have been useful to internalize, oh, five years earlier: it is very hard to cut expenditures in such a meaningful fashion that your financial situation qualitative…

Good point, to an extent is a vicious cycle. If you want to get that salary raise, at some point it has to be backed by somebody actually buying something. If everybody becomes super frugal then the economy shrinks and unemployment gets worse. I guess this is because we're at a point where we don't need anything close to 100% employment to cover everybody's 'basic' needs.

This is a REALLY good point. The benefits of being frugal are increased when the majority is not. It's sort of the same thing with the birth rate. Our economy will grow as long as we keep replacing the workers.
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