Lifestyle deflation is what happens when you are overly frugal. Frugality is often praised as a key element to achieving financial independence. Frugality is one of the hallmarks of the FIRE movement I help pioneer in 2009. However, it's easy to take frugality too far.
I'm frugal to a fault. For 13 years after college, I saved 50% – 70% of my income partially due to humble living conditions.
From ages 28-37 I drove a $8,000 car that depreciated to $3,000 even after my income grew by 3X. And even after I had finally escaped the corporate world in 2012, I still couldn't stop saving at least 50% of my income. This was despite my income taking a big hit!
By the third year of early retirement, however, I started seriously questioning the point of working and saving so much if the money was never going to be spent. Saving for retirement in retirement is illogical.
I started getting angry at being unable to kick my frugality addiction to the curb. People with much less were spending so much more and having a great time doing so. Why couldn't I be more carefree?
How Frugality Leads To Lifestyle Deflation
Despite my best efforts to spend more like everyone who posts about their fabulous lives on Facebook, touching retirement principal still felt like a crime.
Instead of relaxing as a good retiree should do, here's what I did instead to maintain a 50%+ savings ratio. This aggressive savings ratio post retirement has lead to lifestyle deflation.
- Worked on ways to generate $200,000+ a year in passive income
- Took on part-time consulting gigs with three fintech companies over three years
- Continued publishing 3X a week on Financial Samurai plus a weekly free newsletter
- Developed new online business partnerships
- Downsized to a smaller house to free up cash flow
- Bought a Honda Fit instead of a Jeep Grand Cherokee Limited back in 2017
- Invested 90%+ of every dollar earned online from 2012 – 2015, instead of spending it
Then one day, I burned out. I dropped all my consulting gigs in 2015. I wrote the biggest e-mail autoresponder known to man saying I was too busy. And I finally found some breathing room to spend a little more than normal.
Finally Started Spending More Money
Instead of limiting myself to $100 shoes, I ventured out and bought a $240 pair of shoes (on sale for 50% off of course). The guilty feeling only lasted for an hour while the pair of Tod's loafers is still my favorite shoe three years later.
Instead of taking an Uber Pool to save $6 to go downtown, I began ordering my own Uber. I still feel guilty for some reason, but the feeling has lessened because I remind myself that time is way more valuable than money.
Instead of staying at a 3-star hotel in Angkor Wat, Cambodia, we decided to stay at a 5-star hotel for $100 more a night. We knew we were never coming back, so we also hired a private van with much needed AC to be our driver for $50 a day. It was so worth it.
Finally, three years after retiring early did I finally start spending more money. And you know what? It felt good because it was a gradual increase.
Lifestyle Deflation May Be An Inevitability
Then I realized something. Keeping spending constant after a certain age eventually leads to lifestyle deflation because everything is relative.
If everybody still watched cathode ray tube TVs, you'd be happy with your tube TV. But you're no longer as happy when everybody else is watching a paper thin 4K TV.
If you don't at least increase your spending at the rate of inflation, your quality of life will begin to deteriorate because you can't help but notice progress all around. This constant comparison with how other spend their money leads to angst and anxiety.
For those of you who can't seem to lift your spending despite an increase in your income and net worth, let me share with you five ways for overcoming frugality to avoid lifestyle deflation. Dying with way too much is poor consumption planning.
Instead, we must all decide on a decumulation age to spend down our wealth and life our best lives.
Halting Lifestyle Deflation In Five Steps
If you want to arrest lifestyle deflation to improve your quality of life, here are five steps to help you spend more.
1) Find your marginal spending ratio.
Being overly frugal means you either don't make enough money, fear your income won't last, or are stuck mentally in a time when you didn't make much money. There is no denying that having less money means you are forced to spend less.
If you suddenly started making an extra $10 million a year, you bet your bottom dollar that you'd be able to spend more freely. Therefore, the easiest way to crush frugality is to make exponentially more money. By doing so, you can't help but spend more.
The key to unlocking additional spending is determining how much extra money you need to make in order to spend an extra $1. Strike down your scarcity mindset.
Some consumers will spend an extra $1 when they only make 50 cents more. Others might require earning $10 to spend an extra $1. Earn enough to find your ratio for various things.
For example, I need to earn at least $500,000 more a year to feel comfortable spending $8,000 more on a first class ticket to Europe or Asia. Until then, I'll sit in the middle seat near the toilet for 12 hours because $8,000 / 12 = $667/hour!
Related: When Do You Finally Feel Rich
2) Make your income more defensible.
Lifestyle deflation is avoidable with strong income streams. If your income and wealth are tied to the survival of a startup that has only 12 months left until it runs out of cash, there's no way you'll ever break free from frugality. Conversely, if you work in a massive corporation that never fires anybody, you should be able to open up the wallet a little wider.
Nowadays, the best way to create a more defensible income is to build multiple income streams. This includes both passive and active incomes. Get to a passive income level that covers all your expenses. If you do, you will crush your frugal habits.
Achieving a $200,000 passive income figure was a relief after 16 years of trying. It is more than my wife and I spend each year. When we added on corporate consulting income on top of online income, we finally stopped checking the price of food before ordering at a restaurant.
We also didn't care about the latest cost of an electronic gadget anymore because it was a business expense. We knew that worst case, even if our business went to hell, we'd have passive income made up of 10+ different sources that would carry us through on top of our principal.
3) Estimate your mortality.
Acknowledge your mortality and calculate how much you'll have left at age 100. Just as most Americans don't properly calculate their retirement target and plan for how to get there, many of us don't calculate how much we'll end up dying with if we don't spend more.
We should be entering a decumulation of wealth phase between ages 40 – 60. This way, we don't die with too much money. I'm personally starting to decumulate at age 45, which also happens to be the ideal retirement age. At age 45, you really start becoming aware of your mortality.
Right now you will be taxed at 40%+ on any wealth you leave behind after $12.06 million per person (as of 2022). Divide your current net worth by the difference between 100 and your age. If the number is greater than your average annual spending, you should be able to spend more freely.
Every month, I run my finances through Empower's Retirement Planner on my iPhone, and every time it says I'm in “Great Shape.” Love it! I imagine it's kinda like being a beautiful person looking at him/herself in the mirror each morning. You know you're beautiful and can't get enough of yourself! Try Empower's Retirement Planner and other fantastic financial tools yourself to see how you're doing. Simply sign up for a free account using the button below.
4) Find your forever home.
Once you've purchased a home you see yourself living in for 10+ years, you'll feel a tremendous amount of relief. Saving up for a home is the largest financial undertaking for most people, especially those who live in major cities. Therefore, once you've conquered the tallest mountain, everything else will feel like an ant hill. Food and clothing are cheap in comparison.
Buying a primary residence is like paying yourself first. You'll build equity through forced savings and hopefully principal appreciation over time. If you're renting, you'll always wonder when your rent will go up or when the landlord will want to kick you out for whatever reason.
As a result, you'll have a tendency to hoard your money to pay for moving expenses, and potentially a more expense apartment since rents tend to always go up.
I'm not sure there is any physical asset nicer than spending money on the perfect home for your household. Since most of us are spending more time at home, the value of owning a nice home has gone up post pandemic. And yes, owning a perfect home costs money to maintain, which helps with your spending problem. The X factor is that your home could appreciate handsomely in value, making you even richer!
Found Two Nicer Homes
After finding and remodeling an affordable home in San Francisco with panoramic ocean views, I finally felt I could spend whatever excess cash flow I had on nicer things. Each stage of the remodeling process had me shelling out an extra $30,000 – $60,000 over a 3-6 month period. Once all the remodeling was done, it felt like I had an extra $10,000 a month to spend on whatever I wanted.
In October 2023, I upgraded homes again given stocks had rebounded and property prices had come down. I found a dream home on almost a quadruple-wide lot that was fully renovated.
Recognizing I still had a difficult time spending money, I decided to go all in on this one home. To pay cash, I had to blow up my passive income by selling stocks and bonds, which hurt a lot. But over six months later, I have more liquidity due to consulting and a real estate capital distribution.
5) Set and achieve ambitious targets.
The reason why the 1/10th rule for car buying is so powerful is because it forces people to tether their wants to achievement. Many people get mad when they want to buy a $40,000 car, but realize their $80,000 income means they should only purchase a ~$8,000 car.
Flip the equation. Set a goal to earn $400,000 a year instead. It will motivate you to work towards your desires. With all the extra hustle, it will allow the buyer to think twice about spending so much on something s/he really doesn't need. And if the $400,000 income is achieved, then there will be no guilt spending so little.
Just like how you'll feel so much better eating a cheeseburger after you've trained six months for a marathon, you'll feel so much better spending money after taking years saving up for a certain stretch goal. The guy who got up to eat a cheeseburger after watching four hours of football isn't going to feel as good as the marathon runner who eats the same cheeseburger!
My Ambitious Goals
When I started suffering from tennis elbow at the age of 33, I made it a goal to go undefeated in one season at the 4.5 level. It was my way of giving the middle finger to pain. When I went 12-0 with various doubles partners in 2012, I felt an enormous amount of pride.
It was easy to replace my ratty tennis bag with holes with a snazzy looking one. Three years later when I got bumped up to 5.0 (top 1%), my tennis budget blew wide open because players aren't supposed to improve after the age of 35.
In early 2015, I made an ambitious goal of growing organic traffic (not paid) to one million pageviews a month. After consistently hitting over 1 million organic pageviews a month for six months in 2017, I felt zero guilt paying $15,800 for a hot tub and $58,000 for a used Range Rover because it took me eight years of writing three posts a week. To understand how difficult that is, try writing one 1,500 word post a month. Now multiply that effort by 10.
If you really want to feel better spending money, try to stick to something difficult for at least 10 years. Since so few do, once you do, you will have no problem spending to combat lifestyle deflation.
Finally, I had an ambitious goal of writing a book during the pandemic. When Portfolio Penguin approached me in late 2019, I decided what the heck after lockdowns started on March 18, 2020. Buy This, Not That took two years to write and became an instant Wall Street Journal bestseller! It's now in its 4th print for 2024.
6) Spend more aggressively before the children come
Now that I've been a full-time dad for over seven years, I realize having children may prevent you from splurging. Why? Because every parent wants to demonstrate good personal finance habits in front of their children. There's also the expensive cost of paying for college. At the same time, most parents become wealthier over time.
As a result, to prevent living a life of monastic frugality for 18 years until your kids leave the house, you may want to spend aggressively before having kids. This way, you get spending out of your system and can be more frugal while raising your kids.
If you want to spend more money after your kids arrive, then spend the money on their education. There's no better investment in your kids as their education will teach them how to thrive.
Avoid Lifestyle Deflation And Enjoy Your Money
Most of us are afraid of being judged by others for how we spend our money. But the reality is, everybody's financial situation is different.
Paying $10,000 for a first class ticket is ridiculous for someone making less than $100,000 a year. But if you're worth $100 million, $10,000 is like a dollar bus fare for the rest of us.
You can overcome your frugality disease by starting small, and working your way up. The easiest way to reduce your frugal habits is by making more money and achieving certain stretch goals. That said, you may find that after decades of saving and investing diligently, you will have a curious inability to spend money on yourself. It just feels off spending money on things that don’t have the potential to create value.
It's when you buy things with money you don't deserve (trust fund, inheritance, lottery, using a credit card, your spouse's income, etc) that your conscience may start making you feel terrible about your spending.
You don't get a gold star for being frugal. Being overly frugal simply means you haven't earned or planned enough. This leads to lifestyle deflation. You only get a gold star if you're able to maximize your lifestyle with the money you've earned. Don't let frugality be a crutch or an excuse for not making more.
I regret not spending more in my 20s and 30s. In my 40s and beyond, I'm determined to let the lifestyle I enjoy keep up with inflation and then some. For those who have their finances together, I hope you do the same!
Related: It's Revenge Spending Time!
Achieve Financial Freedom Through Real Estate
Real estate is my favorite way to achieving financial freedom because it is a tangible asset that is less volatile, provides utility, and generates income. By the time I was 30, I had bought two properties in San Francisco and one property in Lake Tahoe. These properties now generate a significant amount of mostly passive income.
In 2016, I started diversifying into heartland real estate to take advantage of lower valuations and higher cap rates. I've invested $954,000 with real estate crowdfunding platforms to date.
Take a look at my two favorite real estate crowdfunding platforms that are free to sign up and explore:
Fundrise: A way for accredited and non-accredited investors to diversify into real estate through private eFunds. Fundrise has been around since 2012 and now manages over $3.3 billion for over 500,000 investors. For most people, investing in a diversified private real estate fund is the way to go. Fundrise predominantly invests in residential and industrial properties in the Sunbelt region, where valuations tend to be lower and yields tend to be higher.
CrowdStreet: A way for accredited investors to invest in individual real estate opportunities mostly in 18-hour cities. 18-hour cities are secondary cities with lower valuations, higher rental yields, and potentially higher growth due to job growth and demographic trends. If you have a lot more capital, you can build you own diversified real estate portfolio.
Both platforms are Financial Samurai sponsors and Financial Samurai is an investor in Fundrise.
How To Combat Lifestyle Deflation
Lifestyle deflation happens when you don't properly track your finances. Once you get a good understand of your finances, you can spend much more freely.
Stay on top of their finances by signing up with Empower. It is the best free financial app on the web. Before Empower, I had to log into eight different systems to track 35 different accounts to track my finances. Now I can just log into Empower to see how my stock accounts are doing. I can easily check how my net worth is progressing too.
Empower's 401K Fee Analyzer tool is saving me over $1,700 a year in fees. I had no idea I was paying them for years! Another great feature is the Retirement Planning Calculator. It uses real data and Monte Carlo simulations to produce realistic retirement results.
Enjoy your wealth to the maximum! The pandemic has reminded all of us that tomorrow is not guaranteed. If you have a friend or loved one that's super frugal, you can also give them a gift card. A gift card is a great way to force them to spend money given the gift card can't be saved and invested.
For more Financial Samurai, you can join 60,000+ others and sign up for my free weekly newsletter here. I've been helping people achieve financial freedom since 2009.
Economy Plus excellent at 6’2″ and 5’10” all flights always. Keep Smiling
Many good points here – this is a serious problem for some of us.
Your advice about buying to build equity had me rolling on the floor in laughter,I rent in a Vancouver BC suburb,above ground suite for $500/mth which includes everything including the backyard.
My friends who own( to build equity),never have time to enjoy life as they work a full time job and a part time job to keep building their equity position.
By renting my space which I have never paid more than $750/ mth in my life has led me to accumulate financial assets which always return more than real estate.Speaking of which,every month this year my portfolio returned to me more than a years rent.
My friends spend double what I pay in rent just on maintaining their houses(taxes,maintenance,internet,hydro,gas,cable etc),then you add in the mortgage payment of $2500+, for thirty years,and last but not least the opportunity cost of $200,000 down payment at 6%.My friends cost to own is around $4700/ mth,which works out to $1,500,000 over thirty years,my renting at $750 costs me $270,000 over thirty years.
I know that they will have an asset to sell after thirty years that historically returns 1-2% but you would also have to take into account on my end of starting with a portfolio of $200,000 and adding $4200 a month for 30 years at 5% would give me a $4,352,000 portfolio.
Glad I made you laugh! Always a good skill to have.
Oh man, if only I bought Vancouver real estate 5 or 10 years ago! That would be sweet. I settled with buying San Francisco real estate and finally sold a house I bought in 2005 for $1.52M for $2.74M in June 2017. It wasn’t a huge percentage gain, but I walked away with close to $1.8M after the house appreciated from ~$1.7M in 2012 to $2.74M in 2017. It was the easiest $1M I’ve ever made.
At the end of the day, if you’re happy still renting your same place 30 years from now, more power to you. You just have to look at what your lifestyle and net worth is today. If you’re happy, awesome! If you’re not, make a change. Why be poor if you can be rich and free right?
Related: The Average Net Worth For The Above Average Person
I love the example of how much you’ll be taxed on your wealth when you die. That’s definitely something to incentivize spending! I think the spending examples you pointed out related to living more comfortably in Cambodia were a great example! Since I’m far from retirement, I still try to be relatively frugal, but at the same time I want to live what I consider a comfortable and good life where I’m not just penny pinching the entire time even before retirement!
I think how frugal you are depends on your financial obligations and where you are in the life cycle. If you have a spouse, young children to raise, a car and house mortgage it is probably advisable to be frugal regardless of age. Happiness can be obtained without a large amount of money. However if you are in the 6th or 7th decade of life frugality is hard to sell no matter the income or amount saved. I want to enjoy the moment because I do not know how many moment I may have. It is difficult to sacrifice all for a future that is not promised. The number of people who live to 100 is less than 1%. We did not come here to live and stay forever.
Wait until youth travel sports start. I don’t even keep track of the money spent traveling all over to play the best competition.
Just chasing balls is wrong training for an enjoyable life. Teach hiking and various skilled outdoor activities. 1960s Dad said no sports until HS because puberty will determine your physical stature and pre puberty sports results in lifetime injuries. Dad was only allowed to attend HS to 9th grade but was excellent runner and pitcher from Freshman season. I have many star nieces and nephews in their 20s to 40s with injuries from crap coaches on traveling sport team & HS. My Hamburg NY HS of 1960’s only certified physical education teachers with Master degree and college athletic experience coached. The way we were coached back then is still valid today. Example track & cross country no long runs instead stretching, calisthenics, sprints finish with 2 mile run. Swimming sprints and light weights no long swims and never practice the day before a meet. Also every day in all sports & gym a 10 minute lesson on how to stay health and fit for life. Example 1968 fellows no French fries instead have a second hamburger no bun.
I am having the opposite problem right now. Hard to save more money with a little guy. The average monthly daycare fee is $2,500 in the Boston area and daycare give us a list of things to buy and leave it at daycare ranging from crib sheets to snow boots and snow suits plus others. It can blow up the monthly budget quickly.
Yes, I definitely can see how a child can blow up a monthly budget. I guess I’ve been saving so aggressively for so long, but my buffer hasnt allowed me to feel The strain yet. I will budget for $3000 a month in preschool cost starting at age 2.
We’re making a lot of these “spend more to get more” decisions lately. Some are real no-brainers – upgrade 8 hour train tickets across Germany from 2nd class to 1st for $30 for the entire family (and get access to free first class lounges, food, and unlimited coffee and beer!!). I’d be foolish not to, right? Upgrade to 1st on the flights across the Atlantic? I don’t know but probably several thousand dollars cash or equivalent in airline points. Probably not worth it at my budget level (where several thousand dollars could buy us a nice 1-2 week family cruise in the off season). Maybe one day I’ll really struggle with how I’m going to spend all this wealth and go for that 1st class ticket.
Deciding to “spend more” has second order effects. There is more to the decision than the money spent versus your means. e.g. Traveling consumes energy, eating out contributes to your wasteline, replacing items (cars, furniture) too soon wastes scarce resources. It turns out that keeping the green in your wallet is often the “green” decision.
Thank for the link to the Personal Capital website! I just put my information in and I LOVE having one spot to get a clear overview of my current financial situation and a place to plan my goals.
I’ve lived in a more frugal mindset than I currently have. I think I could cut back but I enjoy spending a little more. Enjoying the moment is all we have but we don’t want to do it at the detriment of the future obviously.
That being said, the times I had my head down and stacking were actually pretty good because I love seeing that net worth going up!
I had just gotten a well-paying job when I had my very first heartbreak. I lived in a family member’s basement and paid a nominal amount of rent. He encouraged me to plan a visit to family overseas so that I would have something to look forward to while I tended my heart. I said no at first and told him I should start paying him more in rent since I had income finally. He laughed at me and told me that he couldn’t charge me more because the room was far too crappy and that I should spend my money how I saw fit. I called that family member and asked if I could come. Bought a ticket for 6 weeks later to take advantage of optimal purchasing time. I’m so glad he encouraged me to spend. My income had doubled but my expenses hadn’t. It was a good plan that did my heart well.
I’m in awe of 5.0 tennis players since I’m a long time 4.0, I bow to your supreme talent level! I am early retired but make 100k in a couple of days a week of side gig activity and also spend about that much and 100k is also coincidentally about what my investments would provide with a conservative draw down ratio. So I suppose that means I’m spending about 50% in retirement and reinvesting about 50%. But I’m doing everything I want to do, in fact am typing this in the car as my wife is driving us home to Arkansas from a week of hiking 14er’s and riding a RZR on crazy Colorado mountain trails. It is a used car of course because I just can’t make myself buy a new one though it would not represent a significant cost to us.
FS –
I think I needed this, a nice little “kick in the ass” if I can say that. I tend to save 60-75% of my income with no real “FOMO”, yet. But putting it into perspective of, “if you spend an Extra $1, how much income is needed”? For me that would be around that $1.4-$1.45 mark, and one can easily generate side hustle income to get over that hump.
-Lanny
Most of the articles out there are directed towards millennials. Younger crowd. Either single or couple folks are writing it. There is a complete lack of personal finance blogs by parents in their 40s. A single person or DINKs couple talk about putting max in 401K, how they save 90% of their income, and it totally does not sound right to folks with MS/HS kids.
Life does NOT change after marriage. It changes AFTER kids.
Before kids – one posts that next door millionaire drives a $3K Civic. After kids, the expenses which one never knew existed start coming up – and there is NO cutting short on them.
Thats why I feel that internet is full of blogs by non-parents (or at least their success stories when they were non-parents), and hardly has any wisdom from 45+ year olds (who are probably too old to start their blog sites). Its all 40 and under folks.
This is a great point. I am 36 and make around $125k with overtime. The goal right now is to make that without having to work so much. That being said, while I love this website, I feel it doesn’t cater to me. It’s impossible for me to put away so much because of a 16 year old daughter. It just makes me mad because I wish I had made better decisions in the past.
Get mad, or get motivated I say.
Another one is, get busy dying, or get busy living. Favorite movie.
Completely agree – the step-up in expenses pre-kids to post kids is difficult to comprehend, but simply for us it went up maybe 2x – from 80k -> 160k. plus you need a bigger house (as an upfront investment). And it won’t stop until they are 25+. so each kid basically adds around I estimate 50% more savings needed plus your increased house size
Hi Sam,
Huge fan of your blog. As I’m a living example of lifestyle deflation this post got me fired up.
Currently in my early 40s and earn 6x more than i did in 2003, but I strive to maintain my early 2000s spending habits of 45 -62K per year. Due to poor investment and life choices over the past 17 years I don’t feel like I can spend more if I want to maintain my savings and retirement goals.
I don’t see myself opening the purse strings anytime soon and worry that I won’t have enough to retire on. Inflation will continue to erode my lifestyle if I try to maintain my current spend and the grind gets old. I do live in SF which I’m now ready to part with and find a place more conducive to home ownership. You wrote a post on barely making it on $250K per year. I’m right there. Between my regular and side jobs I’ve made on average $200K per year for the past 4 years. I’m dumbfounded because it feels like a lot of money yet every April I find I spend around $90K in taxes- federal, state, local, SSI both fed and state, self-employment, investment taxes, and the new medicare up charge. I’m committed to my current 50-60K per year lifestyle because after taxes there’s really only investment income left if I hope at all to retire. I feel that success in SF and the bay area is really dependent on finding the right the spouse who shares similar financial goals. Every year I’m told it’s good that I’m paying more in taxes but frankly I want to keep more of my income in order to afford more than once a month Roam burger at $15/burger which if I was sharing a place and expenses would make more sense.
Thanks again for keeping up the posts after becoming a new parent. I regularly check in for reasons to keep the faith in the idea of financial freedom.
Love this article! One strategy I use is to hit my savings target — somewhere in the 35-50% range — and then let go of worrying about trying to grind out the additional 1%, 3%, 5% by being extra frugal. Hit the target and don’t try to save extra nickels. It’s a good mental strategy to be on track big picture but not worry so much. Easier to do after you’ve been saving for 5-10 years.
Although most will feel more freedom once they build the wealth. This outlines exactly why we aren’t saving more money than ~35-40% of what we earn every month. It could have been more, but we have to be overly frugal as well. We want to enjoy dinners going out, travel overseas and much more. And yes, it cost us money. But rather spend a bit more now, instead of saving for the future that seems yet far away.
The frugal mindset never leaves. My father has a city pension, 401k, house paidoff, etc. Told me he wouldn’t order wine on a flight to Italy cause it was $2 more than the beer…
There is a difference between being ‘frugal’ and being penny-wise, pound foolish.
Buy high quality goods which last for years, it will end up being cheaper, you will have fewer items, etc. Paying $30 a meal at a good restaurant vs 2 x crappy meals for $15 at your local applebees… etc. Going on that vacation you always wanted vs wasting money on visiting the same location 2 hours away over and over.
As my income increases year after year, its more about fighting lifestyle inflation, I wish I had the problem of fighting lifestyle deflation, but my passive income is just terrible.
One time my Dad was talking about making sure his retirement money lasts. His spending in retirement was more than he planned for. It was only through the conversation that I learned he was worried THAT HE MIGHT HAVE TO TOUCH HIS PRINCIPAL !!! In his mind, retirement meant that you only spent the income generated by principal. Decades of frugality is hard to break!
Interesting, I think my dad after an open heart surgery and reaching 75 years of age is in your shoes and is trying some lifestyle inflation, when he comes to visit me and we go out for to eat he is very open to going anywhere and pays for it too :)
Maybe because I was raised by a super frugal, I got to see the dark side of being overly frugal, but well to do father I learned to strike a balance early on, . I still save like crazy, but the way I approach my spending is that : Does this Spending provide me a value in the long run? If the answer is yes, I go for it. Being a nice a pair of shoes that will last me a long time, a good bicycle that will help with keeping me fit and healthy. Or a night out in town with friends, that will increase my happiness and strengthen my social network.
I have friends who are super frugal to the point of hurting their social life. If you keep coming up with excuses for not going out with friends and or insist in staying in and eating a meager home cooked meal people will eventually move on. Or barely travel to save on airfare and hotel. ( And they can afford it). My father had a lot of those habits.
Again everything in moderation and nothing excessive. Everybody who knows me knows that I am very disciplined when it comes to money ( thanks dad), but I aint got a reputation for being cheap.
I honestly think at the end of the day frugality shouldn’t cost you, your happiness and it doesn’t have to.
Just remember if you can afford it and it provides value for you in the long run, go for it….
I’ll never forget the time that I wanted to take my dad out for his birthday and he said he’d rather I just give him the money. That really sucker-punched me. I felt sorry for myself, but I also felt really sorry for my immigrant parents and their extreme “live within your means” mentality that they can’t seem to break free from. It’s depressing and very sad.
Maybe it’s the food? My dad (and I) hate eating out because we’re uber picky eaters and prefer home cooked meals (especially when they’re made by my mother)! We can find something wrong in a cheese sandwich.
Instead, I treated him to a foot spa treatment where the little fishies clean your feet. He loved it! Plus I help my folks out financially on their trips overseas.
Maybe if they’re going on a trip somewhere, you can give them spending money or surprise Dad with a nice toolkit? I’ll never forget how happy my dad was when I brought the Makita screwdriver set home. You’d think I’d bought him a Lamborghini!
***
I think I’m going to live vicariously through you guys until I FIRE and I’ve enjoyed reading the comments. Keep it up! :D
Thought-provoking article as always. I don’t know how you churn these out day in day out, but its something I aspire to.
I love that people are frugal, but part of going through life is to enjoy the journey as well. Balance is key, and multiple streams of income help. Going to a nice restaurant, buying that pair of shoes or splurging on that jeep tour are all experiences we reward ourselves with, and visualizing a reward helps motivate us further.
Hi. Married 46 yrs spouse has lost 52k (1k + mo) at Casino last 5 yrs
I am devastated over this – being a Saver n hard working wife.
Going underground now with my anger and sadness
Can’t take enuf meds to help
I need a divorce, or counseling ?
Yes to counseling. Probably yes to divorce. You have a super serious issue. You need more help than an online blog can provide. Please get some professional help. I wish you well.
Jack passed away. Gr8 guy. Bad ppl /neighbors. They took my fully paid home thru a wrongful probate. Haven’t received 1 thin dime. ya. Tronson Grain
LLC Doyon ND.
Great post . We raised 3 kids and lived on my husband’s salary. We have always lived below our means although I wouldn’t call us misers. Our largest savings was staying in our “starter” home even when our income doubled. That allowed us to spend a bit more in other areas while still saving about 30% of income. All 3 children went to pricey private colleges, expensive summer programs , camps, braces, etc. I figure we spent about 1 million on them above the norm . After taxes. Now youngest is shooting for med school and my husband is 3 years away from retiring ( with a good pension thank goodness ). We plan to pay for at least 3 years if he is lucky enough to get in but the total will be $400000 of unexpected expense in our 60s. So parents, save and save some more. Guess we our super kid oriented ; it’s all spent on them and we plan on leaving them a decent inheritance . THAT makes us happy!