Why do you LBYM?

[Moemg]

D - I was 33 and divorced with two young kids who I wanted to be able to put through college so I started saving and never stopped.Plus I'm on the frugal side .The trappings of wealth don't interest me.

 

[Gumby]

..

 

[Empty Pockets]

Gumby, I know where you're coming from. Your last paragraph is a powerful truth.

 

[maddythebeagle]

Sounds like something from the Millionaire Next Door and having some powerful event shape your idea....also falls into some here that talk about money giving you more choice and power....

 

[W2R]

For me there's some truth in all of the answers.

But to make a very long story short, I didn't have much money for a long time and had to be frugal.

When my salary went up sharply, I realized that I had some choices to make. I continued to LBYM and put that extra money towards my highest priorities (paying off debt and saving for ER).

I am living on only 19% of my pre-tax salary right now, but this amount is the most I have ever lived on. So, it wasn't hard. I cannot imagine what it would be like to actually be able to spend the kind of money I make.

I always LBYM because I have my eye on the goal and I refuse to be distracted from it.

 

[laurence]

Kind of "None of the above" for me. My parents didn't go hog wild, but liked things. I think the general society would mark them as frugal ( they drive volvos and hondas when they could afford a BMW and an Acura ) but they would probably be considered "spendy" on this board. But they are financially savvy, made money on real estate, and I picked up a little of the idea that you needed to accumulate assets to ensure your quality of life.

What got me to LBYM thoughts was marrying DW. Her parents are disasters financially. Rented for years, bought whatever they wanted, etc. When they bought a house they used it as an ATM machine continuously, now they are in debt to their ears and MIL constantly talks about losing the house. Meanwhile, just this Saturday she said, "I'm tired of my SUV, the CD player is broken, I'm going to trade it in." When I pointed out she just said she was going to lose the house, she replied, "Oh, I'm in so much debt it doesn't matter.".

So DW saw this growing up, and swore this wouldn't happen to her. At first I laughed at her frugalness, but went along with it because I don't have a burning desire for "things". Now I'm on board and see how much it's benefited us.

 

[d]

over time i came to realize that i worked too hard for the money to spend it without careful evaluation of the value being received with each purchase; with the result that many purchases were not worth it. ... to a considerably lesser extent, C&D

 

[MasterBlaster]

I agree with poster "d".

Most of the stuff that is for sale is not worth trading your life energy for.

That's kind of a "Your Money or Your Life" philosophy. Evaluate every purchase and only buy the stuff that is really important to you. If you fritter your money away on worthless crap then you get to work till you drop.

 

[figner]

Sort of B and D for me. My parents were pretty frugal and definitely LBTM, but otherwise weren't really into managing their finances much. From them and from summer jobs, I learned not to spend money I didn't have, and got good at living the student lifestyle. Right after landing my first job out of college, a good friend sat me down with a spreadsheet and showed me how soon could be FI if I saved a good chunk - got hooked immediately and have been living more and more BMM ever since.

 

[ADJ]

For me it was being raised in another country in a comfortable environment but with very frugal parents and not being influenced so much by a consumer culture I was also taught the virtue of not demonstrating too much outward display of wealth and most important of all, the need to be contented and so accumulating more did not create the need to have more and more things. Instead I was pretty contented with what I had.

 

[Martha]

This question is hard for me to answer because I am not sure I am LBYMs, it is just we ended up having bigger means than I ever dreamt of.

Greg is LBYMs and I think he was born that way, with some influence from his frugal father. Without him I am pretty sure I would not be FIRE'd now.

I grew up poor and there was no setting aside money for a rainy day. Money or the lack of it just wasn't a big part of life when I was young. You raised and grew you food, you barter for firewood, you build your own homes, you try to earn enough at a particular time to be able to buy x, y or z. But it got worse as I got older. My father got sicker and couldn't work and the house we lived in was falling apart around us. Nevertheless, the lack of money wasn't as big an issue or influence as all the health and other problems my family suffered. It made life feel very transcient, as something bad could happen at any time. As a kid I did want to go to college and I liked school and learning. That was the extent of my planning and even so I didn't think about it much--life seemed too fragil to risk planning for something that could end up in disappointment.

Somehow I ended up in college. It took a couple of tries before I finished. I met Greg. Somehow I ended up in lawschool, thinking that maybe just maybe I could use my degree to help poor and disabled people. I worked at legal aid while in school. I got offered a nice, low paying legal aid job when I graduated. But I found I was taking the client's problems way too personally and began to work for the bankrutpcy court. I saw a lawyer there and I liked his work and asked for a job. I got it. It turned out to be at the biggest outstate Minnesota lawfirm and I stayed there 21 years, becoming a business lawyer of all the unexpected and unplanned for things.

During my career I made plenty of bad money moves. Stupid 401k investments. Pushed Greg to buy a house that was too expensive. Bought a lake cabin. Bought too many vehicles. I never really thought about retirement. But despite these stupid moves we (mostly Greg) did a number of things right. We invested in rental property. We didn't spend the money generated by those assets. We sold the expensive house and paid off all the student loans. We sold the lake cabin. Greg watched the dollars and somehow I didn't spend all of them.

So, I guess this is a public thank you to my husband for being the planner.

 

[Coach]

My parents were an interesting pair of models. Dad's a spender, Mom was a frugal money watcher. Mom inherited and financed their retirement -- if it has been up to Dad, they would have been living on Social Security.

And my salary went up faster than my expenses. I started out pretty hand-to-mouth, but pretty quickly raises mostly went to retirement savings.

Then the retirement account hit $100K and greed kicked in!

Coach

 

[JustCurious]

In reading some of the responses, I should have added "F"... you saw how uncontrolled spending ruined your parents, and you vowed it wouldn't happen to you.

Maybe I'll start a poll....

 

[bbbamI]

Have been po. I want to be po no mo.

 

[REWahoo]

Greg is LBYMs and I think he was born that way, with some influence from his frugal father. Without him I am pretty sure I would not be FIRE'd now...

Somehow I ended up in college. It took a couple of tries before I finished. I met Greg....

But despite these stupid moves we (mostly Greg) did a number of things right...

Greg watched the dollars and somehow I didn't spend all of them....

So, I guess this is a public thank you to my husband for being the planner.

Hey Greg! Looks like Martha just send you an early Valentine.

 

[whitestick]

B & D
First paying job, outside of home, at 12, learned lesson of work. After daughter born, learned I had to save to support family for the future, which included DW and me after she was grown. After grandson born, learned that I needed to leave something for future generations to get a start. I'm slow, but I eventually get there.

 

[Khan]

B C D and E

Both sets of grandparents survived the Depression on small farms.

We didn't have health insurance and ran up incredible medical bills with my brother's cancer.

Learned not to ask for stuff because I knew we couldn't afford it.

Never really wanted 'stuff' that was important to other people : top end cars electronics jewelry clothes houses...

 

[Spanky]

Those of us who LBYM are in the minority. We do so despite strong influences from society to spend everything we have, and then spend some more using credit. So why do we do it? Here are some reasons that I have come up with:

A) You were raised or lived in another country, and are somewhat innoculated from the consumerism influence in America.

B) You either grew up poor, and you know the meaning of a dollar, or, you did not grow up poor, but your parents lived below their means.

C) When you were an adult, you suffered some financially catastrophic event (ie loss of job, health issue, loss of family member, etc) that caused you to re-evaluate your lifestyle and adopt an LBYM lifestyle.

D) At some point during your adult life (usually middle age) you realized that if you kept spending every dollar that you made, you would not get ahead and you would never be able to retire comfortably, so you got religion and started LBYM.

E) You were born frugal, and it's just the way you are.

Which one of the above is it for you? Is it some combination? Is it something else?

For me, it's a combination of A and E.

A, B, and E for me.

 

[rockyj]

It would go somthing like, because of B, I became E, and later realized ala D (and the fact that we've been blessed with sufficient means to comfortably live beneath them - ala Martha) that savings and investments eventually could buy my life back from employment so that I could spend more of my time on the planet doing what I think is important.

Given that, the question for me would be "Why not LBYM?" It isn't much of a sacrifice if you've got a decent base to work with and never got on the status-symbol/techno-gadget/whatever-other-acquistion-floats-your-boat treadmill in the first place. It's not like the joke about the clueless twit who devilishly tempts a vegetarian friend with "Ah, come on, you can have just one bite of this juicy steak, can't you? I'll never tell". Like the vegetarian, we're not "missing the steak" when we don't accumulate stuff (or routinely eat mediocre restaurant meals instead of cooking good meals at home, etc.). We're just not interested for the most part.

Are there things we don't buy or do now that we might if we had more disposable income - almost certainly. But we live comfortably and don't really miss the other stuff. Extra stuff can be a pain to take care of; DW keeps me honest there. On perhaps a more preachy note, living a life of material excess seems a tad decadent in this world as well.

 

[lazygood4nothinbum]

f) probably just semantics but as far as i know i never lived below my means and my parents never used the term. for us, our means included saving money. as far as i knew, saving money was just for a rainy day, so that you don't wind up in debt when it rains. outside of the context of er--something else i had never considered until i just jumped ship--lbym sounds like deprivation. better to live within your means and to put something away for a rainy day. of course, now that i am er'd and i suppose living below how a non-er'd person mght live on my means: let it rain, let it rain, let it rain.

 

[Gumby]

[..

 

[Helen]

My Father was born in 1907 (he was 50 when I was born) and was very much impacted by the Great Depression. My Mother grew up poor but claims she didn't know she was poor. So, I grew up with frugal parents.

I lived at my means for the first 10 years of my work life. Then, my Dad asked me to learn about finance so I could take care of things if something happened to him. My Mom just doesn't have the mind for finance. I didn't know jack about money and fear is a very good motivator. I figured I'd better practice with my own money, so I read everything I could about investing. I put together a retirement plan for my partner and I and stumbled upon the Retire Early forum at the Motley Fool.

That's when LBYMs kicked into over drive for me. My partner is frugal and was happy when I started our 401ks and Roths. Our incomes keep going up and we paid off the house in 12 years and started buying I Bonds.

We're saving 42% of our gross and will be able to pull the plug in six years when we are 56.

 

[LOL!]

F) Means is so big, there is no chance not to live below means?

 

[Buckeye]

Gumby - I feel the same way as you so about being able to buy any groceries I want. Thank goodness I don't live within 100 miles of a Whole Foods.

 

[Dreamer]

B and E for me. I can relate to almost everything that Gumby stated in his posts.