Quote from RedDuke:
There has to be a balance between saving and spending. It is just as bad to spend it all as to save it all. We only live once.
Exactly. I have seen both sides up close. My dad was actually nuts, autistic sort of, he just could not put together a value system so he settled on "cheap" as a value system. I had a hard time getting health care and never had glasses when I needed them for school, that is how cheap he was, and I had ratty clothes for the most part. I was always reasonably thrifty after I was on my own until I got married. My wife ran up debts I did not even know about while I was really thinking over small purchases. When I found that the credit companies could screw with me like that I just gave up and started spending without regard for the future, between dad, my wife, and the credit card companies they made me crazy. I spent right up until I was out of work and I just stopped paying them all, I was about ready to get a horse and go into the woods and never come out by that time. We managed to grab some real estate while muddling through all that and put the kid through a very good school but the debt thing just got boring after awhile. I had kept the debt largely unsecured and at some point I realized I never was going to really need credit or a credit rating again so I paid off a couple of debts, they were the polite ones, and I stiffed the ones that were pushy about things and I retired to a life of trading index futures, so far that pays ok and I don't really have any regrets.
I think I started to see the credit thing as an attack on my manhood and household or something, the lenders could lend my wife money without me knowing about it at all and completely fuck up my plans to pay the mortgage off early.
I'm actually getting credit offers, I'm tempted to take them up on a card or two and just stiff 'em but the wife gets annoyed by the phone calls and it would actually be fraud to knowingly take them up on the offer, not that they could do much about that but hey........
We just buried one of the extremely thrifty types. He had a ratty house in a nice neighborhood. He had six figures in the checking account, more than enough to fix up the house but he was just nuts. He was a hoarder, there was literally no place to sit in the house.. we took care of him for a year and then finally he croaked. We have spent many weekends sorting and throwing stuff away. I could not stand the guy, he was a workplace bullying bastard basically, and he especially did not like me because I just don't respond "properly" to bullying. I still wish I had a mob crew to teach people manners, I might yet...
So there are the extremes, people that don't spend when they could live in a nice house and have great vacations, and people that spend without reasoning power.. The middle is just not available to people that are nuts really.
