I love the IWTYTBR philosophy too. My favorite part is the concept of "guilt-free spending". Once you get the "big wins" down like you talked about, you can set aside 15-20% of your monthly net income to be spent any way you like. This seems intuitive at face value, but the example Rami uses with buying a $150 pair of cashmere sweatpants brings it home. It was inside his $500/month or whatever "guilt-free spending" budget, so it doesn't matter if it was a good deal or not. You just have to want it. He says his friends all commented how it was a dumb purchase and he could have gotten regular sweatpants for $20 instead, but that's missing the point.

I've taken the same approach, and this month some of my guilt-free spend went to a nice burr coffee grinder to replace my old blade one. But I'm not going to try to calculate the amortized joy per $ or long-term savings I'll get out of it, I just love brewing coffee, this makes it better, and I could afford it.

>Once you get the "big wins" down like you talked about, you can set aside 15-20% of your monthly net income to be spent any way you like.

In fact, I think no matter what your budget is like, it's important to have at least some "doesn't have to be justified" budget set aside, even if it's just $5 a month. If your monthly "doesn't have to be justified" budget is $5, and you decide to blow that $5 on an expensive coffee every month, that's perfectly OK and you shouldn't feel guilty.

I think there's a distinction to be made between "guilt-free" and "dumb/wasteful" spending. I can totally understand spending $150 on a pair of sweatpants if they "bring you joy" and are useful and will last you a decent amount of time. But just because you're willing and able to spend your money without guilt, doesn't mean any and every purchase is a good one. At the very least, spending a lot of money on a series of low quality items that you end up having to replace is a sustainability issue.

And that doesn't preclude you from getting a good deal either. That doesn't mean you should spend days shopping around for a few dollars off every purchase, but "voting with your wallet" is always worth doing.

No, I think the point is that you shouldn't make this distinction with respect to your budget. It's saying that if you take care of other wasteful spending, get your big wins, then plan for $500 of spending, then it doesn't matter if you make a dumb purchase. Don't feel guilty that you didn't get the best deal, don't feel guilty about the concept of a "good" or "bad" purchase, it just was within your budget, you wanted it and someone was selling it. You can't always do this comparison and avoiding dumb/wasteful decisions.

Yes, I am exaggerating a bit, but I think you missed the point.

I don't feel guilty at all. I feel fantastic not buying the sweatpants. I [quite specifically] don't want the joy from them. I just need clothing and I like to look sharp. A month ago I visited a second hand store. It was really well maintained, the experience was much like visiting a museum. They had a lot of second hand clothing all washed, ironed and nicely folded / on coat hangers and it was all nicely sorted by size.

I buy 8 pants for 3 euro each simply because they look fantastic on me. If it was a [new] clothing store I wouldn't buy 8 but I'd spend 100 euro on 5 of them and at most 50 for the other 3 if I ran into them there. I just didn't put myself in a [new] clothing store type of situation. I prefer to expose myself to (usually not very nice) second hand clothing at some interval. Sometimes they have something nice. Parts missing I buy new.

I see some wonderful old leather chairs too, the best one was sold regrettably. I also consider buying a really heavy suitcase massage table that I absolutely do not need but it looked really awesome, was in mint condition and was absurdly cheap. A fun day.

Clothing stores nowadays strike me as if everyone is going to a funeral. By comparison its a depressing experience but sometimes you have to. I wouldn't be able to sell those cloths at those prices, I'm paying for their ability to sell me things. (fool me)

If I have the time I do like to browse used merchandise, as well as find stuff on craigslist etc. that I know I can fix up or deal with rather than buy a new one.

Often it's cheaper given the bigger picture just to buy a new one, though. But, finding some old tech t-shirt in a thrift store is fun!

I definitely don't buy new vehicles.

You know, I had a technical job interview a few months ago where the interviewers told me I spent too much time on the little details and ignored the big picture. I didn't get what they meant until this comment, so thank you!

> It's easier to justify the cost of a 200+$ espresso maker if I'm really that big of a fan and already have a defined habbit.

That's exactly what I did: Started a small spreadsheet to work out how long it would take to pay off a $400 espresso maker. Turned out I would make my money back within a year.

Then there's the added bonus that I now own a decent espresso maker which has been great for making guests coffee/showing off. I also get to choose the beans and milk which means that if I wanted to, I could substantially lower the price of my self-made cup of coffee if I was ok with lower quality beans/milk (turns out that I am not ok with that, so no savings there :().