Maladaptive Frugality

Most people in the US are pulled into living on credit straight out of school. You get a student loan, then a car loan, then a credit card, then a mortgage. You finance vacations, appliances, kitchen remodels, smartphones - mostly to keep up with friends and coworkers who finance their lifestyles too. A lot of people are in non-stop debt from the age of 18 to 55, if not longer. By most estimates, only about 10-20% of US households are debt-free.

Spending and getting into debt are useful tools. But I don't have any friends in tech who need to be told "hey dude, you should be spending more". I have quite a few friends who would be better off spending less.

For years I did this with the thermostat - something I learned from my father who always kept the house under 65F (18C) in Winter. I'm somewhat ashamed to admit it even led to arguments with my spouse early in our marriage when I would enter a room and find the thermostat set to a balmy 70F.

Eventually I just sat down, looked at how much it costs keep the house a few degrees warmer in winter, and realized we could afford to be comfortable. And if I were really hell bent on saving money, there were other lower-priority expenses I could cut back on first. But I don't even think it was even necessarily about the money - it was more that saving energy and toughing it out felt virtuous to me. Which is all fine, but not something that should be imposed on your partner if they don't share the same beliefs (or if they just get cold easier than you).

A wife is a useful thing to have in this respect, not because they tend to profligacy, but because this kind of thing is much easier to detect and fix in someone close to you than in yourself. Both my wife and I have lived frugal lives at various times[0] and I feel much happier with the degree of spending we have now.

I'm reminded of the intelligent corvids in Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Memory where the sum of the two birds forms a being with intelligence in a way that the individual segments do not. The frugality is a deeply embedded piece of our being and undoing it seems hard, but together we financially operate in a place that leaves us both feeling comfortable.

0: In the US sense of the term, not in the sense of the term as known in Taiwan or India.

My spouse and I both grew up in this kind of household. Interesting to see how we & our siblings all responded, some followed suit and others had opposite reaction. I think some people are good at frugality and some are good at income maximizing, and few are good at both.

I turned into an income maximizer.. started working at 14.. post college left home, took a high stakes career and hopped to new opportunities proactively. Response to not wanting anyone to be able to control me via money.

For my spouse & I it was a reaction to 1) having a lot of childhood of consequences/regrets of over-frugality like frozen pipes bursting, parents lamenting not going back home for 10 years during which their own parents died, asking for a single $10 toy for birthday and having them buy a knock-off instead, etc.

2) a reaction to teenage parental control via money like when I was moving to the big city for my job and the housing deposit was due before the hiring company was going to wire me my housing stipend, and my parents refused to float me $1k for a month (and then gifted me more than this as a graduation gift a few months later).

So I think you want to instill a respect for money in your children but not a fear.

In this subject area, I recommend Jacob Lund Fisker[0]'s Early Retirement Extreme book [1]. Don't let the title fool you. The man has a surprisingly level-headed and refreshing approach to spending.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Lund_Fisker [1] https://archive.org/details/earlyretiremente0000fisk

This is very culture-specific. I've seen this in Poland. Under USSR rule frugality has been necessary to survive, but it left a lot of people forever stuck in that mindset, long after things got better. I know people who have a fortune in the bank, but live like they're broke, because they're afraid to spend anything from a "rainy day fund" even on rainy days.

I do something kinda similar, I guess it counts as maladaptive frugality?

Whenever I have something a little extra in my fridge, most often Italian prosciutto, I refrain from eating it, instead saving it for a "special occasion" even though it is, like, my favourite thing in the whole world. Eventually I have to throw the mouldy prosciutto away because I was too frugal to eat it.

I'm practicing though, learning to eat it. I don't know why it's so hard, I mean it's delicious! Should be easy!

For some, I think there’s that satisfaction that comes with saving money (like you’re somehow “cheating the system”, even when it’s just a coupon that gets you to buy something you wouldn’t otherwise). In some cases, that satisfaction grows with the amount of time or effort expended to save the money in the first place, which is ironic because that money-value-of-time probably far exceeds the actual amount saved. Practically every engineer here probably has a story about spending a ton of time or effort to optimize something by a tiny amount; saving money can be like that too. It’s a little joy in life, and so long as it doesn’t outright prevent you from spending money when you should (or impose excessive optimization costs), I think it’s fine.

The maladaptive part is when you start regretting not saving money, because it has two knock-on effects: it makes the decision to spend much more emotional (which negatively impacts rational decision-making) and it can negatively impact the enjoyment of the thing itself. For example, the maladaptive part might take the form of being reminded of the cost every time you look at the repaired phone.

> What I took away: eating at a good restaurant was bad, taking out cheap food was good because it saved money.

Any sort of morality like framing around it is likely to lead to issues imo.

The closer you can get to an analytical approach the better I think - can I afford it, is it good value for money, is it useful/furthers my goals etc

Spending money sparingly is like reducing weight in an automobile. A car will get better gas mileage, go faster, break less often, and be more responsive with less weight.

So it is with spending. When you spend less, you can retire earlier, your finances are more secure, you feel less pressure and stress, etc. You have more flexibility in the kinds of jobs you can take. Perhaps best of all, you end up accumulating less stuff, and less complicated things, which makes your life simpler.

Frugality doesn’t get the flashy press that consumerism does, but it’s a winning life strategy.

A similar term (often found as a reaction to Amazon LPs) is frupidity.

I was so frugal that I didn't refinance my (admittedly already low) interest rate during Covid because "we were planning on selling the house in a year or so". Oh well :)

I read this article 10 years ago by a guy named Ricky Yean who went to Stanford as an economically disadvantaged admit and couldn’t shake his poverty mindset and it cost him when he was running a startup.

Why “few successful startup founders grew up desperately poor”

https://rickyyean.com/2016/01/22/privilege-and-inequality-in...

Poverty mindset is maladaptive because it teaches you only money is worth anything, so you hoard it. But in truth time is also worth a lot and sometimes it’s wise to use money to buy time.

Fellow frugalite here, and man, is it hard to break the habit of agonising over every purchase. Took me nearly 20 years in tech before I convinced myself I could justify just buying a new laptop every 5 years, and not sit around waiting for things to compile on the old one - and thats an item that is both essential to my work and also tax deductible. The agonising is even worse with items that are technically non-essential (but would make life better)

The most helpful tool here, I've found, is maintaining a personal finances spreadsheet.

It's one thing, without a spreadsheet, to have the emotion of "I'm not going to have enough and I need to save more to make sure I have enough." I'd argue it's even evolutionary; we want to make sure we have enough to get through the winter we know is coming.

It's quite another when your spreadsheet shows you saved X, your monthly cost of living is Y, and therefore you have enough money saved, even if your income went to zero and you made no changes to your lifestyle, to last you for Z years. Being able to take YouTube University rule-of-thumb advice like "of your take-home pay, use 65% for necessities, 15% for long-term savings, 20% for enjoyment" and seeing how much money that is per month for you in your personal circumstances, along with rules of thumb on things like what ratio you should have achieved by which age on net worth-to-income ratio (1x by 30, 2x by 35, 3x by 40, etc.) and seeing what your personal actual ratio is, to get a sense of benchmarking yourself.

I mean, the influencers could be totally full of shit, but it doesn't matter. Getting actual numbers for where you are, plus getting "generic" advice that you know wasn't directed at you personally, and seeing how those numbers make you feel, can do a lot to either tell you "you don't need to be so frugal anymore" or "yep, your emotions are totally justified, keep saving".

Agreed - I find I spend almost the same time on small decisions as large, and let the default (subscriptions, extra cars, storage) ride. That's turning the decision into a drama that befalls you (and avoiding those that don't). Or you find yourself down or up become cheap or profligate.

So, what big spending is adaptive? Better to drive decisions objectively based on future value.

Some scenarios:

- It lasts a long time, and you'll need to do it anyway. Best to get it early and enjoy it longer - for iPhones, cars, houses, marriage...

- It lasts a long time and you use it daily. Always pay for what you'll be glad to have: good socks, a powerful computer, a nice view.

- Your beloveds needs to know if you care more about money or them. Choose them.

- Something expresses your values: you appreciate an artist's work, so you pay good money for it. Some panhandler is stoic, so you give him a hand. (Just be careful about posturing.)

Another mindset is to think of your money as family (writ large) money, and invest in the future of family or friends. It's as much a vote of confidence as an injection of cash, and it helps you detach from the needy instrumentality of the money to consider what's best for their future. That's the weirder phenomenon: trillions held by baby boomers until they die (just in case), while their progeny waste time in terrible jobs and narrow circumstances for lack of investment. That's maladaptive hoarding.

Agree wholeheartedly but I worry some will read this and go all in the opposite. The key point is that humility helps make you free. Couple that with not being a slave to frugality and you can live without as much guilt and without a much restraint.

I see this with devs all the time, devs that want to pitch their startup and use a subdomain like .vercel.app that gets blocked after 2 weeks

There is frugality and there is taking inflation into account when deciding on save vs loan. For the last many years it was net profit to take loans, spend and pay them back later because inflation meant you got more goods/services that way. On the other hand keeping cash/savings over some smallish buffer where opportunity costs dominate is/was always net loss. That not touching US-specific stuff like insane student loans, credit card terms or healthcare.

> I plan to have fun spending my money in the future, so it’s time to start practicing now.

The most optimal thing to do in our world is to pick an age, say, 60, and until your 60th birthday, maximize your suffering via frugality to just under the tolerable limit so as to maximize your potential for compound interest. This leaves you with the most freedom and opportunity during the most fun part of your life, when you no longer have to sell your labor and can do whatever you want.

Within our current model, trying to slip in bits of fun through spending money before that age is getting a poor return: you're trading vacation time, which you could instead barter for more money on retirement, and you're carrying with you a bit of suffering because you have to worry about going back to work. The best thing to do is just push it all until retirement.

The limit of human suffering before suicide frequently happens is apparently quite high, so, you can really stretch yourself out here. Live in your car in the Walmart parking lot, eat beans and rice. You maybe trade a bit of the compound earnings to establish certain time constrained things you want to cash in on at 60 like having a partner or kids, but beyond that, maximize that compound interest!

I hope it's obvious that this is a criticism. It's just, the more I think about it, the more this seems the selective pressure and incentives in our society are set up. Mostly I think it's insane that we both have an idea of "retirement" and also that we set it at an age where a significant portion of the population won't make it, and for those that do, a significant portion will get to enjoy five years of it, and for the remainder, health is bad enough that maximum enjoyment isn't possible anyway.

>> I have a hard time spending, to the point where I would often procrastinate on buying things that I know I’ll need in the future.

Well, what I noticed is that I go to great efforts to avoid buying me some stuff that would make my life easier (say an electric bike or a better computer). Month starts, I get my paycheck and every day I fend off the desire to buy the stuff I want/need. And then come the bills. Like some surprise "regularization" gas or electricity bill that costs more than the item I didn't buy. If it's not that, some darn thing breaks and needs repairs. And if it's not that, kid has to go in some school trip, there's some birthday or wedding we have to attend, someone asks me to lend them some money (coze they know I save) or some other event happens and requires a ca$h infusion.

By the end of the month, money's gone and I haven't got nothing. At some point working just to pay bills and expenses makes Jack a dull boy. So funk it, I buy that stuff AT THE BEGINNING OF THE MONTH. And when shit arrives demanding money I can truthfully say: "I don't have any money left". But at least I got the thing, opposed to neither money, nor item.

I think of this kind of thing whenever HN commenters complain about how some TODO app is using 300Mb of memory or has 700 dependencies.

If a society does not thrive its advice and morals ar obviosly less valueable. So if a society tithers on the brink of civil war or is stuck in a theo cracy. Its advice on frugality is less valueable.

For sure it's more common for people not to save enough. But for people who are frugal and save diligently for most of their lives, there often comes a point where they cross a threshold where they have met all of their financial goals, and the "problem" is no longer how save money but to enjoy spending it. And this can be a real challenge for people who have built up deeply ingrained saving habits.

My mother, for example, refuses to replace her iPhone SE with something with a larger screen despite 1) having failing vision and difficulty reading the screen, 2) using her iPhone every day, 3) easily being able to afford it. The idea of spending $1,000 on a phone is just something she is unable to bring herself to do, even though I think it would help alleviate a real source of frustration in her life.

My father, when he started shopping for his most recent car (and probably his final car), set out with the intent to buy a luxury car. But again, despite being able to easily afford one, all he was able to bring himself to buy was a well-equipped Toyota. Don't get me wrong - it's a great car and has served him incredibly well. But it makes me a little sad that he wasn't able to bring himself to finally treat himself to a luxury car after a lifetime of hard work and saving. They did a lot of long road trips together in that car in retirement, and I think they would have enjoyed something a bit more luxurious (though on the other hand, the reliability of the Toyota is not to be discounted).

(EDITED)

Otoh, have a few friends in tech (and high finance) who need to be told "dude, we'd be better off if you worked less hard"

(Sorry.. I grew up deprived of data teaching me that "Schlep quickly compounds into Interesting Times")

Having a credit card is like having a video game passive that makes everything permanently 2% cheaper. Everything should be put on a credit card for that discount as well as fraud protection provided you are disciplined enough to never ever ever ever ever ever carry a balance.

I think what you're attributing to frugality might be a more a matter of age? Many older folks are just wary of change.

I'm not that old, but every time I upgrade my PC or phone, some of my workflows break and I need to pointlessly re-learn things I'd rather not re-learn. UI buttons get moved around, icons change, some settings are removed and others are added... this was exciting the first ten or twenty times, but it's just tiring now.

Basically, I'm at this stage in life where my reaction to systemd wasn't "oh wow, this is progress" but "ugh, I need to learn how to start, stop, or modify services again". In another ten years, I'll probably just say "no, I'm not doing this again, just let me use my old computer for as long as possible".

When I started driving my car had vinyl seats that you had to peel yourself out of on a hot day, a plastic steering wheel that you could barely touch when the sun was out, hand wound windows, fixed seat belts and a handbrake that barely worked.

Even the cheapest car on the market feels luxurious now.

In comparison the difference between a Toyota and a Lexus is marginal.

Expensive cars are mostly about status signalling, we are long past good enough.

> The idea of spending $1,000 on a phone is just something she is unable to bring herself to do

She wouldn’t need to spend that much. You can get a perfectly fine refurbished iPhone 16e for $400.

My own parents are in their late 90’s. Because they grew up in the wake of the Great Depression, I always assumed their extreme frugality was a function of the economic distress in their formative years. They also properly accounted for the fact that old-age care is very expensive. Parenthetically, most do not seem to anticipate that accelerated burn rate near the EOL. It’s also a phase whose duration is hard to predict.

I agree your mother should get a new phone with a big screen, but what qualifies as a luxury car? There are Toyotas that cost 6 figures USD.

Or get a previous gen used iPhone, then she can have both a big screen and feel good about the cheap phone.

But what is 'luxury'? You may have in mind a Rolls Royce. But maybe he doesn't want that.

If they've been frugal their entire life, they aren't as far along the hedonistic treadmill, a new reliable car is a luxury.

If you're used to darning socks, buying new socks is a luxury.

If I buy a PS2 today, why is that not a splurge, if I didn't have one previously? Yes it doesn't have the best graphics but it's a step up from my PS1. Getting the latest and greatest just because, is keeping up with the Joneses. And that's a path to spending money, not happiness.

The knowledge that you have enough in your bank account if things go to pot, itself brings happiness

In this subject area, I recommend Jacob Lund Fisker[0]'s Early Retirement Extreme book [1]. Don't let the title fool you. The man has a surprisingly level-headed and refreshing approach to spending.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Lund_Fisker [1] https://archive.org/details/earlyretiremente0000fisk

So I think you want to instill a respect for money in your children but not a fear.

I see this with devs all the time, devs that want to pitch their startup and use a subdomain like .vercel.app that gets blocked after 2 weeks

Spending money sparingly is like reducing weight in an automobile. A car will get better gas mileage, go faster, break less often, and be more responsive with less weight.

Frugality doesn’t get the flashy press that consumerism does, but it’s a winning life strategy.

Yep, I have a rainy day fund that I never look at when calculating surprise expenses, because "I might need it later". It's potions all over again!

My parents and grandparents lived under scarcity during Soviet (satellite) rule, grandma would can food and store well past best by, save plastic bags and various knickknacks, resisted spending on herself even as she bought us gifts when we came to visit. I think the contrast to US excess stuck with me and I always lived leaner (feeling that possessions own you and your time), though far from her frugality.

Yes! I related a little too much with the blog post. My grandparents were Sindhi and they had to flee from Pakistan to India during the partition. As refugees in India, they had to start their life basically from scratch. Now I get why it's ingrained in me to be frugal, and even take pride in it when there's none. I see the very same behaviour in my Sindhi friends when they feel bad for spending money on essentials like hospital visits.