Why I Live Below my Means

[freebird5825]

Like many here, I've experienced financial famine, surplus, and average harvests. This thread made me think about LBYM in all 3 phases.
I agree that balance is critical. Staying out of debt is paramount.
Famine - When I was single and always broke, I still found fun things to do.
Surplus - When I was half of a couple where money was really not an issue, I still "paid myself first" and stayed out of debt.
Average - Now that I have voluntarily returned to an average income level in FIRE, I find my cheapskate habits from the Famine years are resurfacing. But not to an extreme...yet.
Methinks I like the middle ground.

 

[Notmuchlonger]

Luck and health play a big part in all of this. Only takes 1 idiot to make a mistake and ruin the rest of your life.

 

[Gumby]

Savings=FREEDOM

+1 Dex. Freedom is indeed a fat bank account, and slavery is knowing you can't live without that next paycheck.

 

[Amethyst]

Only takes 1 idiot to make a mistake and ruin the rest of your life.
true...beware hubris, and carry liability insurance.

 

[Keim]

Savings=FREEDOM

100% agreed.

 

[old woman]

Oldwoman wrote, My car may not actually be a luxury car but it is to me.

This is very much in tune with our attitude--not about cars, since we have a "car that gets us there and that's it," but buying decisions in general.

We tend to factor in "Will it last?" to our buying decisions, and avoid ephemeral things. Husband has never bought me flowers, since they're dead in a week, but over the years he has bought me a number of wonderful, artisan-made wooden boxes. Who needs more than one fancy box to put things in? Nobody, but these things make me happy every time I look at the details of the intarsia designs, or open the "puzzle" boxes and put them back together again.

(Not that we don't like nice cars. When we sold our house years ago, we looked at the proceeds check and the first thing out of BOTH our mouths was, "That's enough to buy a Ferrari!" I believe the next thing I said was, "Too bad there's not enough room in a Ferrari for a kitchen.")

Re the sense of physical pain that some say they experience when opening their wallets: Medical expenses, and TAXES cause us extreme agony. And then there's repairs! Nothing should ever go wrong with anything! And when it does, it shouldn't cost so blamed much to fix!

I am holding my tongue with the flowers. I don't like to see the wasted money, but he enjoys buying them for me. Valentine's Day he gave me 2 dozen long stemmed red roses and I am just thinking all that money for decaying vegetable matter.

My new car is a 2007 Chrysler Sebring Limited with leather seats. With taxes and everything it was under 21K so not a really expensive car.

Nothing a true car lover would lust over like a Ferrari but so many new feature my old truck doesn't have. I can hardly wait for time to replace it in about 12 years to see what is new then.