

I can't afford it is a choice - jakeludington
http://www.chrisbrogan.com/i-cant-afford-it/

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UnoriginalGuy
Buying lottery tickets is completely rational.

Buying a lottery ticket gives you licence to dream. If you don't buy one then
you're stuck in your respective rut (family, work, financial, geographical,
etc). But if you do buy one then you can dream about "what I would do if I
won!"

It doesn't matter if the chances are one in a trillion, because winning is
only a small part of the "value."

There are two distinct types of lottery tickets, each with different kinds of
value: instant gratification (e.g. scratch offs) where the exciting aspect is
higher but the time to dwell is lower, or the delayed gratification (e.g.
weekly draws) where excitement is lower/delayed but the dwelling time is
higher.

But in general every time I read someone bash lottery ticket buyers because
"don't they know the odds!!!" I just have to roll my eyes. Because these
people couldn't have missed the point more.

~~~
philwelch
Sometimes I fantasize about winning the lottery but never get around to buying
the ticket. It's the perfect scam.

~~~
UnoriginalGuy
That's basically thought-theft. You're stealing from the lottery without even
realising it.

Go hand yourself in to the nearest police station right now!

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pavel_lishin
> _Movie at the theater: $12 (average)_

> _Popcorn and a drink: $13_

> _Or, Netflix/Amazon Prime, RedBox and spend $3 or $4 on the experience, plus
> whatever’s in the fridge._

Sure, if you have a room that is functionally a movie theater. And if the
movie you want is on one of those services.

> _People tell me all the time that they can’t afford something. But then I’ll
> watch their Twitter feed, or Facebook, or Instagram, and I’ll see the reason
> why not._

What they're saying is that they can't afford both thing A and thing B at the
same time, and that they would rather have thing A.

Maybe they would rather have Starbucks in the morning than whatever thing they
were discussing with you.

------
nlawalker
I've always thought that the more important and interesting choice to ruminate
about in this vein is "I don't have time."

You _do_ have time, it's just that you're filling it with something else you
find more important. Every time I tell someone "I don't have time" I try to
envision myself telling them "I have more important things to do with my time"
instead. It's usually an unnecessarily harsh thing to say out loud, which is
why I typically don't vocalize it, but it's an interesting thought exercise
that can help to keep you honest about your priorities and visualize the
perspectives of other people that come asking for your time.

Also, just like there are people that really _can't_ afford certain things,
there are some justifications that I think most people would consider
perfectly reasonable for really, actually not having time. But in many cases,
both time and money are choices.

------
BobWarfield
Wealth is not revenue, it is income that comes about in abundance. To increase
income either increase revenue or decrease expenses. It turns out that
decreasing expenses is nearly risk free and is easier. Hence the Millionaires
Next Door are good at that strategy. Not sure why this book is having a
resurgence, but the other big point it made was the value of owning your own
business versus working for someone else.

A close corrollary of the expense thing is to evaluate debt as an investment
with a guaranteed return equal to the interest you're paying. Once you see it
like that, it's very hard to argue against paying off all of your debt as
quickly as possible. Those returns are hard to come by on the revenue side.

------
dlss
OP doesn't seem to understand the ideas he's trying to communicate. Speaking
as someone who loves advice, there are few things that annoy me more than
_bad_ advice.

Your spending is a choice, yes. But since the benefit of a purchase (the
profit) isn't included in the cost numbers, advice like OP's must always be
wrong.

Imagine someone who drinks 20 lattes from starbucks a month alone while
reading (spending $1200/year), and would be happier reading spending his time
and money reading in the park and getting a $100 massage once a month. For him
changing what he's spending on would make him happier.

Now imagine someone who has avoided spending money on an office, and so holds
business meetings at starbucks around 20 times a month. Is this a bad
purchase? What about someone who drives late at night to save time by avoiding
traffic, and who sometimes keeps himself awake by buying coffee from
starbucks. I think these cases are much harder to call "wrong".

OP should focus on what's true: if you analyze how you're spending your
resources (time, money, attention, and energy), you can often find awesome
ways to improve your life. Instead we have an article about how going to the
movies and buying starbucks is a waste of money... which is to say we have an
article that is a waste of time to read.

Not to mention this gem:

 _> I have this thing about lottery tickets. Why do people invest in a gamble?
(You might try and reply that everything is a gamble, and to that, I’d be
polite and say nothing.)_

There is a big difference between negative EV betting (lotteries), and
positive EV betting. Let's take as an example hiring someone who might not
work out, but probably will. If you don't think that hiring is a gamble, you
haven't played the hiring game long enough. People's partners get accepted to
their dream job across the country, and the strain of the separation causes
them to move as well. Their college friends found a company and poach them.
Even the most vetted candidates don't always work out.

Which is to say that everything is a gamble. If someone tells you otherwise,
they haven't been in business long enough.

</rant>

~~~
csense
> Now imagine someone who...holds business meetings at starbucks...[or] drives
> late at night...and...keeps himself awake by buying coffee from starbucks

These examples are _unusual_. The _typical_ case imagined by the OP is that
the value of movies and Starbucks is smaller than the price paid for them, and
for a consumer in that typical case, it's possible to arbitrage by
reallocating budget away from them.

From the article:

> I try to hold off or not buy at all, when it’s just a "want" without any
> real obvious value beyond the purchase.

It's pretty clear that he's saying to avoid purchases where cost >>
long_term_value (where ">>" means "much greater than"). He _is_ taking the
benefits into account, but largely restricting his attention to cases where
the benefit is minimal -- at least from a long-term view.

> There is a big difference between negative EV betting (lotteries), and
> positive EV betting.

You're definitely right to criticize the author on that aspect -- his stated
reason for avoiding lottery tickets doesn't give a favorable impression of his
understanding of probability.

------
nicholassmith
I started tracking my finances much better about 3/4 months ago, it was fairly
eye opening, I found I was spending: £40 a month on a cup of coffee each
morning, £48 buying lunch rather than taking it in, £25ish on magazines to
read on the train, and a whole host of random little buys that I never needed
adding up to £300 a month. I decided I couldn't afford it anymore, dropped
them, don't miss them.

I've also gone down the route of Netflix & Spotify, we have no TV subscription
(cut-the-cord of that particular beast). It makes life much easier, and my
house has never been less cluttered.

(I do like a lottery ticket though, I've won some trivial amount off them
~£30-40, mostly because it's £2 a week and it's a bit of fun)

~~~
mdpye
Damn man, where do you get lunch for £2.40 a day? Even our subsidised canteen
hits £4 no bother (admittedly I'm getting a hot meal)

Edit: and the penny drops. That's the difference between buying and bringing
from home, still got to factor in the supplies

~~~
jrogers65
The cheapest and easiest way I've found for the lunch problem is making it in
the office. Buy a loaf of bread, some cup-a-soup, ham, cheese, pickle,
whatever you fancy and then make fresh sandwiches every lunch. Takes five
minutes and saves a fair bit of money.

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GotAnyMegadeth
Didn't really understand the title, should it be:

"I can't afford it" is a choice

------
arscan
The rational thing to do is to spend money in a way that maximizes happiness.
My favorite paper on the topic (actionable and based on science):
[http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~dtg/DUNN%20GILBERT%20&%20WIL...](http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~dtg/DUNN%20GILBERT%20&%20WILSON%20\(2011\).pdf)

~~~
greenyoda
Happiness is a complicated variable to optimize. You could be maximizing
happiness in the current moment (a Starbucks coffee right now) at the expense
of happiness in the long term (financial independence at age 50).

------
rprasad
Pardon my french, but the linked blog post is just a pile of santimonious
bullplop. There are many, many people in the U.S. and outside of it for whom
"I can't afford it" is _not_ a choice.

There are plenty of people who cannot afford to live in a safe, or even
reasonably safe neighborhood. There are people who cannot afford life-saving
medicine or medical care. There are people who cannot afford to send their
children to college, or even before that to buy them the iDevices and
computers that would give them an edge in their education. There are plenty of
families who have not bought new clothes in years because they simply can't
afford it after the necessities have been paid for.

This is happening _in the U.S._ : in the East Bay, just a few miles from SV;
in south-central LA, in most of San Bernardino and Riverside counties, in
Detroit, in Cleveland, in south-west Chicago, in New York, in New Orleans...

Blog posts like this just reinforce the common perception outside of SV that
Silicon Valley is now populated by a bunch of wealthy, out-of-touch
individuals who have no understanding of how hard life is for people who
didn't hit the jackpot in terms of family, upbringing, or education.

~~~
dorkrawk
You are absolutely right, but that's really not the point of this post. While
real poverty is an issue worth talking about, that's not what this guy is
trying to address.

The point seems to be that many people who have disposable income treat that
money as disposable and then wonder why they don't have more money. There are
many people who could afford more of what they really care about (be it time,
travel, things, etc) if they didn't nickel and dime themselves on things that
might not really be that important to them.

