Were you always an LBYMer?

[DangerMouse]

I had a extended period, probably between 20-30 where I spent everything I made and a bit more. The only smart thing I did at that time was maximise my pension savings. In my 30s I woke up and realised that "things" did not define who I was.

To this day I don't believe that I consciously LBMM as some do on this forum. We still buy what we want, however I find that my wants are not driven by the same demons that haunted me in my 20s. We are fortunate to have a good income which does allow us to have what we want and still save.

We've never owned a boat, an expensive car or a McMansion and have no desire to do so.

 

[vicente solano]

I just earned more than I spent. And I am not a miser. Sometimes I´ve even spent money for the hell of it. Now that I think about it I still spend as lot of money out of boredom

 

[hankster]

I was always savings oriented but unfortunately indulged in debt to buy what I wanted with one hand while saving with the other. I thought LBYM meant being able to make all the payments and still save/invest.

In my mid-40s, I read a book by Dave Ramsey that changed my mindset. Although I don't go along with some of his investing or SWR opinions, he certainly slapped me upside the head with my borrowing stupidity for non-essential items.

We're now debt free and pouring nearly half of our household income into savings and investments. Wish I had figured this out 20 years earlier We would already be FIREd.

 

[easysurfer]

I've pretty much been a LBYMer all my life. Simply, I don't like to owe others money and don't like others to owe me money and I think LBYM naturally leads to that.

Some things I don't mind paying for though because it's frustrating try and cut corners to save some money but then have that not work. (For example, quality power tools, and I avoid generic toilet paper )

 

[TromboneAl]

When I was in my twenties, I got the Andrew Tobias book, which talked about buying lots of cans of soda when it was on sale, and keeping it under the coffee table. That appealed to me. Also, his saying "A penny saved is two pennies earned" (related to taxes) resonated with me.

 

[samclem]

Interim report: So far, it looks like there are relatively few "late bloomers" in the group. Over half of respondents have always been savers. I would have guessed that we would have been more evenly split, but only a few of us began to LBYM after our 40s.
Maybe that's a function of the "early" part of "FIRE". At 40 years old, if someone has a hefty balance on the charge cards and two new cars in the driveway with 7 year financing, even if they begin LBYM in a major way, they'd probably be shooting for a comfortable "on time" retirement at 65-70 YO. So, they might be reluctant to hang around here. Too bad, as there's lots to learn no matter when you start.

When I was in my twenties, I got the Andrew Tobias book, which talked about buying lots of cans of soda when it was on sale, and keeping it under the coffee table. That appealed to me. Also, his saying "A penny saved is two pennies earned" (related to taxes) resonated with me.

Yep, that book struck a chord with me, too. Also, some marketing propaganda from the A.L. Williams company got me thinking. Then it was "Random Walk Down Wall Street" and the hook was set.

 

[Katsmeow]

People will often say that LBYM comes from being around LBYM parents, etc. Well. Not always.

My parents were always very frugal. They paid off their mortgage very quickly, never incurred any debt, never used credit cards and on not a whole lot of income saved an impressive amount (alas, it didn't grow very much as they were true children of the Depression and wouldn't invest in anything except US savings bonds and certificates of deposit).

They were always talking about not spending money, saving, retirement, etc. And, I resented it. I saw my parents as always wanting the cheapest and not paying attention to quality. It used to irritate my mother when we would go into a store to buy me school clothes and I would not look at price tags but the clothes I liked always cost more. She could not see a difference in quality between, say, something made of silk and something made of cheap polyester (not all polyester is cheap but this was]

When I had money of my own I felt like I was let out of jail. I could suddenly buy wonderful and enticing things (this is not to say that my parents never bought me anything, they did. It was just the unrelenting message of don't spend money that seemed to suck the fun out of everything).

So I was a spender. I was always a spender. I lived above my means.

When did I get religion? I spent most of my adulthood in and out of debt. I was fortunate to have a good income. I wasn't an idiot. I knew about the cost of interest and so on. But, I never thought about the possibility of early retirement (if I had I might have changed sooner).

I think I thought of adulthood (pre-retirement) as the time to acquire stuff and spend money on fun things. Everyone I knew who was retired lived very modestly and didn't spend much. I guess I thought there would be time for that. I could save later.

Eventually though I realized I was 50 and didn't have much to show for years of high earnings. By then I was married with kids and I could look ahead and see that, well, later was here.

So we've repaid our debt and are getting ready to downsize but, yeah, it us a long time to get here.

 

[mickeyd]

I do not recall when it hit me that not spending a dollar was the same as saving a dollar in my savings account. Probably goes back 50+ years ago. I was often teased as a kid by others as a skinflint, cheapo, tightwad, squeezing the buffalo, and probably a few others behind my back.

I wonder what the retirement situation is with those now-grown-up kids?

 

[Tesaje]

Always lived a little below my means. I put myself thru college and had $2k in the bank some 32 years ago and a $300 debt I got so I could get a credit history. The only time I had any credit card debt was a few years when I was married to a spendthrift. He talked sense but did the opposite. I got promotions and made more than I needed and saved it. I spent some years buying myself treats but never impinged on my savings. I paid off my house and now live on about half of what I make, so I'm pretty sure I can retire comfortably. If something was still usable, I kept it. Now, I need to clean out the accumulation of stuff I really don't need.

 

[WhoDaresWins]

I voted 40-50 as this was the age of reason for me. We always lived within our means, never any debt beyond credit cards that were always paid off monthly and our mortgage. But retirement plans never really gelled until we were older after the buying sprees following our lean graduate school years.

 

[Danny]

From the beginning.

However lately I've been hell bent on spending - want to make sure I don't leave too much on the table when its time to fold'em....

 

[Rambler]

Dad's Credo:

Use it up,
Wear it out,
Make it do, or
Do without.

I don't follow this to a "T", but still pretty closely, as in TV and gadgets. Rarely would I wear clothing until it is threadbare (as dad sometimes still does). OTOH, I do donate a lot of gently used clothing to causes such as typhoon recovery in the Philippines, etc...things that would no longer suit me well in business settings, but are still highly usable.

R

 

[bbbamI]

I suppose I've always been a LBYMer except for the years that it took every penny just to get by. I couldn't get much lower than survival.

When we started to earn more money, I saved as much as I could because I knew what it was like not to have money. I didn't want to ever feel that way again. My friends were buying toys and larger homes; I suppose that was their gratification. For me, watching my investments grow gave me greater pleasure.

I'm a low maintenance gal and am very satisfied.

 

[travelover]

Former paper boy here. All I really needed to know about finances I learned from that paper route - everything from capital investment to cash flow. In an otherwise insecure financial family environment, having money in the bank made me feel secure.

 

[DayDreaming]

I remember getting a 25 cents/week allowance as a kid, and saving that up so I could deposit in the savings account that my parents opened for me when I was pretty young. I just didn't see the point of blowing it all on candy like most kids would have back then.

 

[NW-Bound]

I have always been a LBYM'er, but in recent years have loosened up a bit.

Just a bit.

 

[Midpack]

I'm amazed at the outcome of this poll! I grew up comfortably middle-upper and went to college. I've never lived beyond my means at all, but in my 20's I thought I needed a BMW, designer clothes, vacations at trendy resorts, etc. and had little savings to show for it early on. Fortunately I grew out of that starting at about 30 and increasingly so ever since. Not entirely by plan, we became increasingly LBYM by never increasing our standard of living despite higher and higher incomes to the point that we spend way less than half our income. We never really wanted more and FI has been a primary goal of mine since about 30.

Again, I'm just surprised that most everyone has been LBYM throughout their lives. Demonstrates more than ever to me how unusual (in a good way) this group is compared to the general population. Also tells me that polls here are certainly not representative of the general population...

 

[samclem]

Again, I'm just surprised that most everyone has been LBYM throughout their lives...

Madison Avenue and other societal cues to "spend it if ya got it" are really strong. It could be that early learning, while we are forming our core values, is the most effective way of countering these influences.

There's a good reason religions place a heavy emphasis on parents taking kids to church regularly and in inculcating them with the teachings and values of the church early. The early lessons stick the best.

But it's never too late to be a convert!

 

[mickeyd]

All I really needed to know about finances I learned from that paper route - everything from capital investment to cash flow.

That's a damn-sweet title to a book. You better get to writing one or some-one's sure to steal that title.

 

[mickeyd]

I spent my money like I was going to the electric chair till the age of 47.

Glad that the Governor finally decided to set you free. Was it the DNA that did the trick?

 

[MikeD]

We spent all the money we made but not much more than that until around age 42. I have always liked having the stuff I wanted as I did not have anything I wanted as a kid. Even as a child I dreamed of being able to get a job so I could buy stuff, which, as soon as I got a job, I did. I always bought exactly what I wanted at the cheapest possible price. I love getting a deal on what I want. This behavior was re-enforced by my life expectency of approx 45 due to childhood diabetes. Then at age 42 I got a kidney and pancreas transplant and started expecting to live a lot longer. This made me more thrifty. Then I had to go on disability at 60% of pay and the thriftiness really kicked in.

Mike D.

Don't know how the italics got turned on for a while there. It was a mis-typed keystroke, I guess. [corrected]

 

[FIREd]

The funny thing is that both DW and I used to be teased by our family for being cheap. The LBYM gene certainly doesn't run in DW's family. My family is pretty frugal, so for them to make fun of me, I must have been pretty tight fisted with my money! As a kid, I avidly read Disney comic books that I inherited from my dad and my favorite character was... Scrooge McDuck. I always wanted to take a dip in a pool of gold coins

 

[bbbamI]

As a kid, I avidly read Disney comic books that I inherited from my dad and my favorite character was... Scrooge McDuck. I always wanted to take a dip in a pool of gold coins

Kinda like this?..........

 

[NW-Bound]

... I've never lived beyond my means at all[/U], but in my 20's I thought I needed a BMW, designer clothes, vacations at trendy resorts, etc. and had little savings to show for it early on...

Again, I'm just surprised that most everyone has been LBYM throughout their lives. Demonstrates more than ever to me how unusual (in a good way) this group is compared to the general population. Also tells me that polls here are certainly not representative of the general population...

I still remember in my early 20s telling myself that when I got a full-time job out of school that I would get myself a BMW. Not a 320, but a "real" one. A 733! Then, when I got that first good-paying job, I was also married and with a mortgage to pay. That 733 cost more than one year of my salary then. The lust for fancy cars quickly faded. Soon, I found myself buying an old full-size Ford pickup as a spare car, just so that I could haul landscaping material for our new home.

Recently, we went to a Honda dealer to help my daughter with her buying a car. Seeing all these new shiny cars in the showroom does not excite me at all.

... My family is pretty frugal, so for them to make fun of me, I must have been pretty tight fisted with my money!

I am more frugal than my two younger brothers. Being older and further along in my career, in 1987 when I bought the house I still live in, it was the largest in our family. My brothers have since both "upgraded" and now live in nicer homes than mine. They had to keep up with their friends, and I felt no such need.

My mother once told my brothers that she couldn't see how I still had my old 27" TV and not threw it out. I simply did not see what was wrong with that TV, but wondered what I was missing, so we went out and bought the first HDTV in our family. This was in 2001.

The novelty soon wore off; the HDTV did not make lousy programs any better. All members of my extended family now have better HDTVs than I have, simply because they bought later and even paid much less than I did. My 42" still works, and I see no needs to replace it. Even that old 27" CRT was not thrown out. It was brought up to my boonies home, where we watch TV even less than when at our main home.

... As a kid, I avidly read Disney comic books that I inherited from my dad and my favorite character was... Scrooge McDuck. I always wanted to take a dip in a pool of gold coins

There were Disney comics in French. Did you read these or in English?

I wonder if they were as popular with French kids as the Franco-Belgian comic like Tintin, Spirou, Lucky Luke, Schtroumpfs (Smurfs), Johan et Pirlouit, and Asterix, etc...

 

[DunWrkingSoon]

Better Late than Never

I never aspired to have the appearance of an affluent lifestyle like others I have known, so in that sense I never went beyond my means. However, I was somewhat careless with money, mostly going places and doing things, with a few electronic toys and the like, until my late 30's, when I got a little more serious about saving and planning for retirement. It was not an overnight abrupt change but gradually I taught myself not to want "stuff" all the time and spend money on things I didn't use or need. Even at that, I still found some wasteful spending that I finally cleaned up thanks to this recession. Rather than feel deprived in any way, I feel good about my situation at present and it certainly is a good rehearsal for spending in retirement. It's good to know I have plenty of elbow room if needed. I just don't want to go too far the other way and be afraid of spending anything and not get the enjoyment out of life that I desire, though I think I'll do fine there. This board has helped me see how it can be done.