Re:The Art and Science of Spending Money
by Viliam1234 on Monday January 16, 2023 @04:18PM
(#34405618)
Yeah, similar here. It seems to make some people angry, it's like if I have money, it is my moral duty to spend it all immediately. But the things I want are surprisingly cheap. Even computers, were crazy expensive 30 years ago, but now they cost almost as little as books.
The expensive food, I think is not about the taste, but about getting dozen tiny pieces of food, each of them has a French name, and you always wait 10 minutes until they bring you the next bite. You pay for the feeling that many people have spent a lot of time and work preparing your food, even if the result is not really better. Probably other people enjoy that feeling; I don't.
Take cars, for instance. I can afford to buy a new car. My current car is old enough to have its own driver's license. But, why? It runs all right. It's solid. It has literally never let me down. I don't worry about it getting a dent. I don't worry about taking it on decent unpaved roads. Sure, it will die eventually, but until then, why would I replace it?
Or take vacations. I like vacations. But I don't need to fly to Vegas and stay at the Encore and drop a few thousand at the tables in order to feel like I had fun. I can have fun camping in the Mojave and never pay a dollar for a motel room. (I mean, I can see the point in a really nice hotel room from time to time...)
Or take eating out. I like good food, at least once in a while. But a good medium-to-high-end steak place is as far as I want to go. These Michelin starred places? I look at their menus, and I don't see anything that I actually want to eat.
For me, it's not that I'm still worried about money. It's that I don't have much of a taste for expensive things.