I'm honestly so jealous of the husband's situation. 7-figure networth before hitting 30, a 4-bedroom home in a major tech hub, and a compulsively frugal wife who is obsessed with financial planning and amplifying your shared incomes/networths. The dream.
This article just feels like a vector to drive traffic towards her sites, though.
I mean, I’m in a similar boat. I did the whole “make it rain” thing for a few years by dripping in designer clothes, fancy restaurants, etc. But that lifestyle made me way more anxious as impostor syndrome kicked in. Having money doesn’t really solve problems; there’s always someone with more who will make you feel poor. Buy a Gucci bag and it’ll feel like half the world is dripping bespoke Hermès. You can’t win.
I live way more frugally these days. I don’t intentionally scrimp and save, I just find it difficult to spend what I make without buying $5,000 purses that will get donated when they’re way out of fashion in 2 years.
I know, I know: first world problems. But it’s emblematic of the wealth inequality in the US: a lot of people are struggling to make ends meet while some people have to invest effort into finding ways to spend the money they make.
> Buy a Gucci bag and it’ll feel like half the world is dripping bespoke Hermès. You can’t win.
This is fascinating. I suspect 99% of people simply don't care and can't even tell a $50 purse from $5000 one, and this Gucci vs Hermes rivarvly is only relevant for a tiny minority of sad snobs. Like the other poster said, good for you for ditching this.
It feels like a recipe for marital disaster that she's living this extremely frugal lifestyle despite him making good money and he "goes along with it" (her words)
Wow, I can't count the number of men I've met that would want a wife that is extremely frugal. Also you're reading into the "goes along with it" a little bit too much - Literally inventing a whole relationship drama from 4 words is a bit insane.
Yeah, I've made a bunch of assumptions about what the husband is like based on what can be inferred from this article.
I'll keep that to myself because I don't want to offend anyone and get downvoted, though a lot of it is drawn from what I was like when I dated someone like the author.
She only had to spend half of her post-China childhood in poverty before her mom started earning doctor money, but she still thought/behaved very much like the writer of this article. Though unlike the author, she hates her parents.
I see compulsive frugality as a boon in a capitalist society. Especially in the United States.
It might be a dream if the feeling of security, of having assets, money in the bank, is the thing that's missing in your life. That'll be the case to the degree that you were insecure and poor as a child, I'd expect.
I grew up poor, but not as poor as the lady in the article. And it was in Ireland, so there was a social security net, my college degree was paid for, etc. So I feel comfy enough once I have a year's take-home income in the bank. Past that point I feel good spending money on things my partner and I enjoy, things we may not have time for if we have kids or might not be able to do at all when we get old. Working hard is only good if the work in itself is rewarding, or the money buys you things that are rewarding. Money in itself doesn't really have that allure. A six or seven figure bank account wouldn't excite me - I've spent the best part of a million pounds since I started my career, and certainly don't regret not saving it.
Proponents of financial independence would say that high savings rates eventually buy you control over your own time which is one of the most rewarding things in the world.
>Working hard is only good if the work in itself is rewarding, or the money buys you things that are rewarding.
This is a pretty restricted view of turn power of money. Charity and/or helping one's family is rewarding. Also rewarding, as the other commenter pointed out, is the freedom to not chopse between non-rewarding work and poverty.
Full-time blogger wife of a wealthy tech worker is like the millennial version of the full-time philanthropy/NGO wife of bankers/lawyers/execs in times past.
Once he placed the ring on her finger he accepted her terms .. as an American who hasn’t grown up with Asian cultural norms I would never marry someone with an obligation to take care of their parents also in America.
Then it might surprise you that 30 states in the USA have laws requiring you to be financially responsible for your parents' care if they cannot cover it themselves.
That's odd to me, and I'm not sure how common it is. I would never have expected to have to take in my parents growing up, but now that I'm reaching middle age it definitely seems like not only something that may happen, but also a far better situation than the alternatives. If not me, perhaps a sibling could do it.
Also, my spouse's parents wouldn't necessarily require care, but honestly I'd really prefer if they came to live with us too.
I may be an outlier, but I see the nuclear suburban family lifestyle as a recipe for misery and loneliness. I look forward both to multigenerational living and to more dense walkable neighborhoods.
I have a normal American background. I grew up in a house with my parents and elderly grandparents.
I married a woman with full knowledge we would have to support her mother who had cognitive issues due to a stroke.
I’m not sure where this idea came from that it is somehow an Eastern ideal to take care of your parents. It is common across many parts of Europe and the US.
Social Security is nice, but that’s just money. It doesn’t address the emotional and cultural aspects of keeping the elderly part of society.
What kind of American? Multigenerational living is still routine among African Americans and Hispanic Americans, and pretty common among rural white Americans. The median distance an American lives from their mom is just 18 miles.
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 even if it means I save less now.
OP's $1.7M in investments? If I had that, yeah, I'd surely be saving 90% of it, too. Maybe 95%.
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 my family, and we'll be lucky if we hit 40%. It just depends on what assumptions of necessity you're willing to give up to do it.
I think about this a lot, as another frugal but high-earning household that earns way more than we spend, even after maxing out 401(k) contributions. Most people in our position save more than they need partly as a means of hedging personal risk (higher-than-typical retirement and medical expenses, children who grow up unable to financially self-suffice), and partly (IMHO) just because they gain some satisfaction from seeing numbers climb and because hoarding wealth is not seen as having any downside. However, at least the first of these reasons could be much more efficiently managed by having social (rather than individual) safety nets, for the same reason that insurance works. Some people also save with the thought of giving away a ton of money at death, but this again holds money out of useful purposes until decades away. With these thoughts in mind, and with the example of religious folks with much less disposable income than us who tithe, we annually give away whatever money we don't have use for after sensible but not excessively conservative allocations for immediate and future needs. To be clear, I'm not certain this is the right thing to do; ask me how I feel about it in a few decades!
> Some people also save with the thought of giving away a ton of money at death, but this again holds money out of useful purposes until decades away.
What makes you believe that? The overwhelming majority of savings are held in bonds, stocks and real estate, not in paper notes in a vault. You might quible over the usefulness of savings and investments vs other allocations, but assuming is useless is pretty extreme.
Thanks for writing this. Saving is not storing money. It is delaying your right to “use” it, thus allowing others to “use” it now (which is why you expect a return interest).
That is why banks are not evil. On the contrary: they are the basis of a healthy economy.
Many economically productive things are immoral (cigarettes, child labour) and many are amoral or zero sum (somebody choosing one food brand over another is of no value to society). Anyway, the usefulness to humanity of an investment must be orders of magnitude less than a donation.
In all honesty, putting money in real estate or stocks is just speculation which is fairly meaningless - the only benefit that brings is that it drives market forces to evaluate a certain good at a given price, and even still I don't believe it's all too useful today. Further still, putting money into real estate with a hope of ROI is, in my opinion as a home-owner-to-be, actively detrimental to society. Having seen the market prices in my current city rise more than 2x in less than 10 years without the wages seeing anything remotely close to the same adjustment. Just because somebody can make a profit doesn't mean that any intrinsic value has been made.
I'm measuring with respect to the default. When I say "useful" I mean "more useful than the default". Investing in stocks and bonds is the default (very few rich people save cash notes in a coffee can, so that's not worth talking about). Market investments don't help with the climate crisis (in fact their effect on climate are generally negative), human rights, etc, whereas our investments in 350.org and the ACLU do. Additionally, these orgs also have the ability to utilize the market as a means of growing money, although if they focus on this excessively that can be a distraction from their core mission. But we're getting into higher-order discussions here...
My parents tithe 10% before tax each year. When I became an atheist I decided it wasn't going to make me less generous, so I "tithe" 10% of my pre-tax income to an assortment of charities and put the rest of my excess in savings. Of course the right amount varies greatly by an individual's circumstances, but 10% seems like a good rule of thumb unless you're super-rich.
Just to be clear, this is a story of a person who has been traumatised by a combination of the worse parts of US and Chinese poverty. It's not a nice story, at all...
Also, the two websites she runs, as linked at the bottom of the page - one of them is a blog/content site about living frugally, one is about making money any way you can. They're part of the same problem that the article (probably inadvertently?) illustrates.
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 are clearly harming themselves.
Its an ugly cycle, people who check out of it are definitely not mentally ill IMHO. Average US consumerism is an addiction.
Is that really the worst part of US poverty? I didn't see anything about drug addiction, abuse, prostitution, or prison.
Chinese poverty, I suspect, gets far worse than that.
Just seems like straightforward frugality, and she probably did far better than her ancestors going back a thousand years (or ever). Chinese premodern poverty was always worse than European.
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 here and now. I like my disposable income, I like living in a nice neighborhood, I like taking vacations, I like eating out. I’m keenly aware that I’ll be left penniless once I can no longer work, but I have a plan for that. Until then, I have a couple of good decades left, so I’ll enjoy this time together with my family. I’ll cross that other bridge when I get there.
On the contrary, living paycheck to paycheck is survival. Being able to just say "fuck it" and walk from a job that's bothering you, or investing in a business idea you get, or starting a family dynasty, these are taking advantage of and enjoying life to the fullest.
I live frugally, and I feel like my accumulating wealth is a laser cannon strapped to my back, ready to deploy as I see fit. The freedom is exhilarating.
I'm... not nearly as extreme as the author, but pretty frugal. Not "rent out most of the house" frugal, but "make and stick to shopping lists", "spend a couple of days mulling over a purchase of 0.05% of my income" frugal. My spouse is like you.
Just a word of advice that you may already do. Please have very good communication with your wife about financial matters. This situation is very stressful for the frugal person, and it has caused all of our biggest arguments. The only thing we've found to help is very clear communication.
One of the problems with this strategy is that it ends up becoming a burden to your family and others (who sacrificed to save for a rainy day). And it may happen sooner than you think.
> I’m keenly aware that I’ll be left penniless once I can no longer work, but I have a plan for that.
I too really want to know. I'm guessing living off the state? I know that's the case for most people I know, but pensions are all managed by the state where I live so you don't really a choice. You get a baseline poverty level income even if you never paid taxes.
I lived more or less that way until age 30. But then as my income rose dramatically, my lifestyle gradually grew in cost as well. But I don't think that cost is truly buying me more fun. I had a ton of fun in my younger years on a lot less income.
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.
This (the writer’s view) is what anxiety makes you think. And as an expert in anxiety (by experience, not study) I can tell you: no, that is not a life worth living. You are a slave of your future.
The author is frugal as a hobby and for her blog. She has close to $2 million net worth and her husband most likely earns $300k+. Extreme frugality is impractical from a time/$ perspective but that doesn't concern her because she doesn't need to worry about money or about developing a career.
This. Her brand is called "Merry for Money" (intentional pun?).
I'm disappointed and feel slightly bait and switched. Her husband's income enables her take on ephemeral gigs and run a blog full-time instead of working at a regular 9-5 job. Also, her extreme frugality is just a fun thought experiment, blog topic and hobby for her. It is impractical and an ineffective use of time for non-hobbyists --- if she had to work a full-time job, she would be better off spending more time developing her career and less time being extremely frugal.
Additionally, I like reading about 1st/2nd generation immigrant stories but she appears to also solve the integration and cultural challenges of her immigrant background by marrying an all-american rich white guy.
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 inclinations too much.
The causation here is the opposite: rich guys are more likely to get married because they are attractive partners. It's like discovering the correlation between the cleanness of a car and its price and hoping to increase its value by keeping it clean.
When I read stories like this, I always think of the systemic factors that are creating this behavior; that America, and indeed many countries in the world, do not have the social safety nets to take care of its own people when they can't work anymore. It would be better and more efficient for a nation as a whole to take care of its children so that they can choose their own avenues of success rather than needing to choose between two hard choices. Imagine where mankind could be if we had everyone being able to have the basics, and ample free time to think, to explore, to experiment, to create. I dream to see such a world, and to see the human progress that results.
> ... so that they can choose their own avenues of success ...
At present 'success' in practice is basically synonymous with 'resource consumption'. At a guess that is going to be a very sticky connection that might even be wired in at the biological level; it seems to be quite consistent across the different cultures I know of.
It is not possible to liberate people to pursue success by improving the social safety nets. People who use their free time to advance society are as rare as hens teeth; even most of the productive people use their free time to advance their own interests or their immediate families interests.
I think there is a good argument for making sure everyone has few-questions-asked access to ~9,000 kJ/day of food and some sort of safe housing to live in. We live in wealthy times. But a social safety net isn't going to set people up for success in any way that is meaningful to most people.
> I think there is a good argument for making sure everyone has few-questions-asked access to ~9,000 kJ/day of food and some sort of safe housing to live in. We live in wealthy times. But a social safety net isn't going to set people up for success in any way that is meaningful to most people.
I find that a very sad view. Many people I know can't start a business or do risky things because of food, shelter, medical insurance/premiums. I know I'd jump if I knew that if/when I failed, I wouldn't be destitute.
Right now, doing such is primarily relegated to inheritance, familial money, or miraculously winning it 'big' (Horatio Alger stories). They have the cushion. They can fall back to safety within family money. They have connections.
We don't have any of those things going for us. But then again, people also think we're just too lazy or unmeaningful. No, we just know what's being risked, and we can't make that choice with the threat of destitution.
At present 'success' in practice is basically synonymous with 'resource consumption'.
This reminded me of one of my favourite quotes from Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri:
"Resources exist to be consumed. And consumed they will be, if not by this generation then by some future. By what right does this forgotten future seek to deny us our birthright? None I say! Let us take what is ours, chew and eat our fill."
Point to evidence that free time leads people to do these wonderful things.
In a macro sense, biological life/evolution, economics, and production of goods points to innovation and efficiency gains being made by risking one’s time/enengy/resources in hope of creating a new local efficient outcome.
Arguably, the advances we have now in modern day is because we have generally decided that everyone should be able to read, write, do arithmetic. Now we have a massive funnel (the entire generation) to do innovation. This is a much larger pool than was possible with a very narrow subset of the population capable of these things.
We also know that stress and poverty actually reduce the brain's capacity to think, and even moreso, a child who suffers from stress/hunger/general poverty has a stunted brain development due to exposure to stress in their formative years. So, naturally, we can say that not having systematic stressors like hunger, economic insecurity, health concerns, etc. would lead people to have greater capacity for wonderful things.
In a making stuff up sense, you can fit near any narrative you want to near any set of data about our history. Consider, used to be there was literally nothing to do for the majority of the day/night for folks. Yes, you could tend the garden and such, but that was done before sun was fully overhead or you would suffer exposure symptoms. You could watch the herds, but that was mostly passive, for mostly the same reasons.
With that narrative, many scientists in history were not people that didn't have to do some of these boring things. They were people that filled their free time with experimentation and other observations.
Of course, that is just one narrative to fit to the data. I'm sure there are others. But it is not just incumbent on one side to give evidence. Can you point to evidence that free time is not beneficial? Observationally, as a parent, forcing my kids to have boring free time has led to them doing/learning as much as forcing them to productive learning time. (Indeed, I've grown sympathetic to the argument that productive learning time often isn't either of its claims. )
The inventor in a shed is a well trodden meme. Pre 20th century most science seems to have been done by rich amateurs.
The most interesting blogs I've come across are just interested amateurs trying things out.
I'm not sure there's a linear relationship between free time and scientific progress, but people need free time to scratch their itches, and sometimes this itches progress our understanding of the world.
I like the idea of those things. However, this is HN, and full of people that would try to be productive/creative for society if they had a safety net that allowed them to pursue awesome endeavors. Many people work to earn money, not to free up time so pursue their passions and hobbies. There are a significant amount of Americans that would enjoy the safety net by watching Netflix, eating, gambling, etc. There is nothing inherently wrong with those things if you enjoy them, however, a benefit of the current model is that people who aren’t creative/ambitious/driven end up spending 40ish hours a week working on things that are useful for other people or businesses.
I’m not sure I see a case where the economic machine speeds up by giving people limitless free time.
I like the idea of a safety net for healthcare btw, bc even privately we pay too much, and the current system sucks to use, pay for, experience, etc. A world where the basics are given sounds nice, but there are a seriously concerning amount of people that are wildly lazy (I wish there was a dataset to measure this I was aware of, but I’m going off of the towns I grew up in and people I knew.)
I’ve been unemployed for a significant time period. The pressure to work is huge. I’d bet with a safety net, most people would still be working a similar amount of time.
> Imagine where mankind could be if we had everyone being able to have the basics, and ample free time to think, to explore, to experiment, to create.
Western Europe has vast social safety nets going way beyond "the basics". Yet you don't see an explosion of innovation, culture, art, philosophy or what have you. They may not be related, or a full belly isn't hungry and doesn't look for ways to fill itself.
You do though, you’re just not aware of it. When you look at the cultural life of French cities for example, it’s 1000x richer than the cultural life of an American city the same size. And one could easily argue they don’t cover « the basics ».
Many systems would be "better and more efficient for a nation as a whole" if everyone was 100% selfless and treated the welfare of others as exactly as important as their own welfare.
Sadly, the way the universe works, any such system is open to free riders who take more than their share.
Tragedy of the commons.
The only solutions we've found so far are:
1. Assign people control of what they create, so they can benefit from their own efforts, and are thus incentivized to make those efforts. Side effect: People who didn't/can't create much have a really hard time (this is what you're concerned about).
2. Assign control of what people create to a central authority that redistributes it evenly, and also have that central authority kill anyone who tries to change or exploit the system. This hasn't tended to work out well.
1. You don't need to get "more health". You get treated and you feel better again.
2. All people should have the right of food. I don't care how much you make, who you are, or whatever. You live, and that's your right. We should be working on automated farms so we can grow this locally.
3. Same, for water.
4. If you don't have a place to sleep, we provide you one. May not be big, but a place to sleep and call home is essential in solving homelessness. And it provides a way out of the poverty trap.
5. Communication should be inexpensive. I would prefer free for lower bandwidth. Its an essential for jobs and so much more. An internet connection is one of the biggest ways into self sufficiency.
> America, and indeed many countries in the world, do not have the social safety nets to take care of its own people when they can't work anymore.
I don't see any good alternatives to having children take care of their parents. Abuse is common at even the most expensive nursing homes. You can't always blame the caretakers either because being constantly surrounded by grumpy, dying people has a huge psychological toll.
> Imagine where mankind could be if we had everyone being able to have the basics, and ample free time to think, to explore, to experiment, to create.
Realistically? Probably better than 99% of people would play video games and watch TV their whole lives. Not everybody is oriented to be an artist/author, an inventor, a scientist, or some other creative type.
>Realistically? Probably better than 99% of people would play video games and watch TV their whole lives. Not everybody is oriented to be an artist/author, an inventor, a scientist, or some other creative type.
More people than you'd think, not saying they'd be good at it but they'd do more than play video games all the time. Nowadays you have people streaming, making podcasts, making tf2 hats, youtube videos, cosplay, fan-fiction, dancing, playing non-professional sports, graffiti, etc, etc.
If for every thousand people that spent all their time playing video games- or doing other enjoyable activities that don't leave a lasting legacy- one person was allowed to create an invention or make a scientific discovery or write a great novel, our civilization could easily still come out ahead. I also doubt it would be nearly so binary. I believe that most people do possess self-directed creativity and productivity, in varying ways and to varying degrees.
The percentage of people who take full advantage of being freed from working to survive isn't terribly important; it's the number.
> Not everybody is oriented to be an artist/author, an inventor, a scientist, or some other creative type.
More people probably are naturally oriented in a way compatible with that (perhaps not to be commercially successful at it, but that's expressly not an issue) before they are aggressively socialized out of it by people who want to prepare them for the economic necessities of surviving in the world we actually live in, where indulging such an orientation without the particular combination of skill and luck needed for commercial success is often a recipe for misery.
Given time, everyone would become producers in some form or fashion. There are studies regarding boredom and people would rather electrically shock themselves than sit still. If you had no job and money coming in, sure you would binge Netflix or do some other mindless activity, but how long can you keep that up? A week? A month? A year? Sooner or later you're going to get up and do something interesting. Humans have innate natural curiosity, like when you were a child, touching and noticing everything. Through excess work, that wonder is taken away because people must work to survive, but imagine an endless summer where you're tinkering in the garage, or writing code for a new project. Imagine the possibilities that people could come up with, new inventions and new ideas that eventually will propel the human race forward.
Even a good safety net is not going to provide more than the bare minimum. I don’t think I would stop saving and start blowing all my money even if the government decided to guarantee I wouldn’t be homeless or hungry under any circumstances.
What does it mean for a nation as a whole to "take care of" its children? Or specifically, what is it beyond public schools that we'd want to satisfy that?
Is it simply better public schools where they're doing poorly, or something else I am missing?
I meant children as in its citizenry, metaphorically, as one could see the country as a maternal manifestation of the will of the people. Literally though, sure, we would need better public schools that are more equalized in teaching science and philosophy, or other such disciplines. I admit I haven't delved too deep in thinking about that part.
> ample free time to think, to explore, to experiment, to create
People would probably go crazy from the boredom and start killing themselves. Work and struggle are good and inspire more creativity and inventiveness than doing nothing
There were (and still are) whole families of aristocrats who never needed to lift a finger in their life, and they seemed to find ways to not be too bored. I've never heard of high degrees of suicides amongst the very rich.
That’s an interesting jump to make. I’ve never heard any one say that’s the way to go. You’d have to have a 99.99% extremist view to be serious about no families.
They likely mean what is the more obvious assumption. We take taking care of all children as a serious problem and try to have certain benefits happen for all children. IE they shouldn’t be going hungry or not going to school.
She could buy her parents a condo in some nice retirement city for well under $200k, set them up with an annuity to pay for their food/clothing/etc, and easily have $1M left in the bank. But to each their own.
Saved/invested money is stored freedom, i.e. ability to choose how to live. The social safety net provided (or not) by others can be changed or withdrawn by the perfidy of government. It can be great when it works, but when it doesn't, what are your options? What happens when the usually acceptable public health care system fails, and you need to get treated right now, or in a different way than the local system dictates? If you don't have savings and/or the ability to travel, you will have to take what's offered.
The social safety net may provide some degree of safety, but it often doesn't offer freedom to choose.
Freedom means being able to take the time to care for yourself or your loved ones if something happens.
That day came for my family several years ago, and my wife and I are constantly reminded how much worse things would have been (even here in enlightened Canada) if we didn't have that kind of freedom.
Readit News
This article just feels like a vector to drive traffic towards her sites, though.
I live way more frugally these days. I don’t intentionally scrimp and save, I just find it difficult to spend what I make without buying $5,000 purses that will get donated when they’re way out of fashion in 2 years.
I know, I know: first world problems. But it’s emblematic of the wealth inequality in the US: a lot of people are struggling to make ends meet while some people have to invest effort into finding ways to spend the money they make.
This is fascinating. I suspect 99% of people simply don't care and can't even tell a $50 purse from $5000 one, and this Gucci vs Hermes rivarvly is only relevant for a tiny minority of sad snobs. Like the other poster said, good for you for ditching this.
I'll keep that to myself because I don't want to offend anyone and get downvoted, though a lot of it is drawn from what I was like when I dated someone like the author.
She only had to spend half of her post-China childhood in poverty before her mom started earning doctor money, but she still thought/behaved very much like the writer of this article. Though unlike the author, she hates her parents.
I see compulsive frugality as a boon in a capitalist society. Especially in the United States.
I grew up poor, but not as poor as the lady in the article. And it was in Ireland, so there was a social security net, my college degree was paid for, etc. So I feel comfy enough once I have a year's take-home income in the bank. Past that point I feel good spending money on things my partner and I enjoy, things we may not have time for if we have kids or might not be able to do at all when we get old. Working hard is only good if the work in itself is rewarding, or the money buys you things that are rewarding. Money in itself doesn't really have that allure. A six or seven figure bank account wouldn't excite me - I've spent the best part of a million pounds since I started my career, and certainly don't regret not saving it.
This is a pretty restricted view of turn power of money. Charity and/or helping one's family is rewarding. Also rewarding, as the other commenter pointed out, is the freedom to not chopse between non-rewarding work and poverty.
Also, my spouse's parents wouldn't necessarily require care, but honestly I'd really prefer if they came to live with us too.
I may be an outlier, but I see the nuclear suburban family lifestyle as a recipe for misery and loneliness. I look forward both to multigenerational living and to more dense walkable neighborhoods.
I married a woman with full knowledge we would have to support her mother who had cognitive issues due to a stroke.
I’m not sure where this idea came from that it is somehow an Eastern ideal to take care of your parents. It is common across many parts of Europe and the US.
Social Security is nice, but that’s just money. It doesn’t address the emotional and cultural aspects of keeping the elderly part of society.
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 even if it means I save less now.
OP's $1.7M in investments? If I had that, yeah, I'd surely be saving 90% of it, too. Maybe 95%.
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 my family, and we'll be lucky if we hit 40%. It just depends on what assumptions of necessity you're willing to give up to do it.
[1] https://affordanything.com/
[2] https://www.coachcarson.com/house-hacking-guide/
What makes you believe that? The overwhelming majority of savings are held in bonds, stocks and real estate, not in paper notes in a vault. You might quible over the usefulness of savings and investments vs other allocations, but assuming is useless is pretty extreme.
That is why banks are not evil. On the contrary: they are the basis of a healthy economy.
https://80000hours.org/articles/should-you-wait/
Also, the two websites she runs, as linked at the bottom of the page - one of them is a blog/content site about living frugally, one is about making money any way you can. They're part of the same problem that the article (probably inadvertently?) illustrates.
Its an ugly cycle, people who check out of it are definitely not mentally ill IMHO. Average US consumerism is an addiction.
Chinese poverty, I suspect, gets far worse than that.
Just seems like straightforward frugality, and she probably did far better than her ancestors going back a thousand years (or ever). Chinese premodern poverty was always worse than European.
I live frugally, and I feel like my accumulating wealth is a laser cannon strapped to my back, ready to deploy as I see fit. The freedom is exhilarating.
Just a word of advice that you may already do. Please have very good communication with your wife about financial matters. This situation is very stressful for the frugal person, and it has caused all of our biggest arguments. The only thing we've found to help is very clear communication.
> I’m keenly aware that I’ll be left penniless once I can no longer work, but I have a plan for that.
What's the plan?
The post sounded to me like the Smith and Wesson retirement plan.
I have a morbid, but sneaking suspicion that that it's the latter half of "live fast, die young." Maybe I'm just projecting, though ;)
His frugal wife's savings maybe...? I hope not.
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.
What's your plan?
Dead Comment
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.
I'm disappointed and feel slightly bait and switched. Her husband's income enables her take on ephemeral gigs and run a blog full-time instead of working at a regular 9-5 job. Also, her extreme frugality is just a fun thought experiment, blog topic and hobby for her. It is impractical and an ineffective use of time for non-hobbyists --- if she had to work a full-time job, she would be better off spending more time developing her career and less time being extremely frugal.
Additionally, I like reading about 1st/2nd generation immigrant stories but she appears to also solve the integration and cultural challenges of her immigrant background by marrying an all-american rich white guy.
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 inclinations too much.
At present 'success' in practice is basically synonymous with 'resource consumption'. At a guess that is going to be a very sticky connection that might even be wired in at the biological level; it seems to be quite consistent across the different cultures I know of.
It is not possible to liberate people to pursue success by improving the social safety nets. People who use their free time to advance society are as rare as hens teeth; even most of the productive people use their free time to advance their own interests or their immediate families interests.
I think there is a good argument for making sure everyone has few-questions-asked access to ~9,000 kJ/day of food and some sort of safe housing to live in. We live in wealthy times. But a social safety net isn't going to set people up for success in any way that is meaningful to most people.
I find that a very sad view. Many people I know can't start a business or do risky things because of food, shelter, medical insurance/premiums. I know I'd jump if I knew that if/when I failed, I wouldn't be destitute.
Right now, doing such is primarily relegated to inheritance, familial money, or miraculously winning it 'big' (Horatio Alger stories). They have the cushion. They can fall back to safety within family money. They have connections.
We don't have any of those things going for us. But then again, people also think we're just too lazy or unmeaningful. No, we just know what's being risked, and we can't make that choice with the threat of destitution.
The bottom goes pretty deep in the US.
This reminded me of one of my favourite quotes from Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri:
"Resources exist to be consumed. And consumed they will be, if not by this generation then by some future. By what right does this forgotten future seek to deny us our birthright? None I say! Let us take what is ours, chew and eat our fill."
-- CEO Nwabudike Morgan "The Ethics of Greed"
In a macro sense, biological life/evolution, economics, and production of goods points to innovation and efficiency gains being made by risking one’s time/enengy/resources in hope of creating a new local efficient outcome.
Free time has nothing do with that.
We also know that stress and poverty actually reduce the brain's capacity to think, and even moreso, a child who suffers from stress/hunger/general poverty has a stunted brain development due to exposure to stress in their formative years. So, naturally, we can say that not having systematic stressors like hunger, economic insecurity, health concerns, etc. would lead people to have greater capacity for wonderful things.
With that narrative, many scientists in history were not people that didn't have to do some of these boring things. They were people that filled their free time with experimentation and other observations.
Of course, that is just one narrative to fit to the data. I'm sure there are others. But it is not just incumbent on one side to give evidence. Can you point to evidence that free time is not beneficial? Observationally, as a parent, forcing my kids to have boring free time has led to them doing/learning as much as forcing them to productive learning time. (Indeed, I've grown sympathetic to the argument that productive learning time often isn't either of its claims. )
I'm not sure there's a linear relationship between free time and scientific progress, but people need free time to scratch their itches, and sometimes this itches progress our understanding of the world.
I like our world isn't wonderful as is.
Imagine what a peasant from 300 years ago would think seeing what their work would be value at today.
Its peanuts in our perspective, but not starving is a start, eating meat would be a luxury, being able to see a doctor.
Hating ourselves is trending right now, sad.
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I’m not sure I see a case where the economic machine speeds up by giving people limitless free time.
I like the idea of a safety net for healthcare btw, bc even privately we pay too much, and the current system sucks to use, pay for, experience, etc. A world where the basics are given sounds nice, but there are a seriously concerning amount of people that are wildly lazy (I wish there was a dataset to measure this I was aware of, but I’m going off of the towns I grew up in and people I knew.)
Western Europe has vast social safety nets going way beyond "the basics". Yet you don't see an explosion of innovation, culture, art, philosophy or what have you. They may not be related, or a full belly isn't hungry and doesn't look for ways to fill itself.
Sadly, the way the universe works, any such system is open to free riders who take more than their share.
Tragedy of the commons.
The only solutions we've found so far are:
1. Assign people control of what they create, so they can benefit from their own efforts, and are thus incentivized to make those efforts. Side effect: People who didn't/can't create much have a really hard time (this is what you're concerned about).
2. Assign control of what people create to a central authority that redistributes it evenly, and also have that central authority kill anyone who tries to change or exploit the system. This hasn't tended to work out well.
2. All people should have the right of food. I don't care how much you make, who you are, or whatever. You live, and that's your right. We should be working on automated farms so we can grow this locally.
3. Same, for water.
4. If you don't have a place to sleep, we provide you one. May not be big, but a place to sleep and call home is essential in solving homelessness. And it provides a way out of the poverty trap.
5. Communication should be inexpensive. I would prefer free for lower bandwidth. Its an essential for jobs and so much more. An internet connection is one of the biggest ways into self sufficiency.
I don't see any good alternatives to having children take care of their parents. Abuse is common at even the most expensive nursing homes. You can't always blame the caretakers either because being constantly surrounded by grumpy, dying people has a huge psychological toll.
What? There is absolutely no excuse for elder abuse. Are you kidding with this?
Realistically? Probably better than 99% of people would play video games and watch TV their whole lives. Not everybody is oriented to be an artist/author, an inventor, a scientist, or some other creative type.
More people than you'd think, not saying they'd be good at it but they'd do more than play video games all the time. Nowadays you have people streaming, making podcasts, making tf2 hats, youtube videos, cosplay, fan-fiction, dancing, playing non-professional sports, graffiti, etc, etc.
The percentage of people who take full advantage of being freed from working to survive isn't terribly important; it's the number.
More people probably are naturally oriented in a way compatible with that (perhaps not to be commercially successful at it, but that's expressly not an issue) before they are aggressively socialized out of it by people who want to prepare them for the economic necessities of surviving in the world we actually live in, where indulging such an orientation without the particular combination of skill and luck needed for commercial success is often a recipe for misery.
Is it simply better public schools where they're doing poorly, or something else I am missing?
People would probably go crazy from the boredom and start killing themselves. Work and struggle are good and inspire more creativity and inventiveness than doing nothing
Dead Comment
What exactly do you mean by that? State raising children? No families? That sounds dystopian to me.
They likely mean what is the more obvious assumption. We take taking care of all children as a serious problem and try to have certain benefits happen for all children. IE they shouldn’t be going hungry or not going to school.
The social safety net may provide some degree of safety, but it often doesn't offer freedom to choose.
Freedom means being able to take the time to care for yourself or your loved ones if something happens.
That day came for my family several years ago, and my wife and I are constantly reminded how much worse things would have been (even here in enlightened Canada) if we didn't have that kind of freedom.