
I tried 'Kakeibo': The Japanese art of saving money - jjoe
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/08/how-this-japanese-method-of-saving-money-changed-my-lifeand-made-me-richer.html
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earlINmeyerkeg
First off, please don't take anything I'm saying out of context which is in
terms of regular people that make enough to pay their bills. Lower income
types struggle with these things so I wholly recognize they're in a different
type of game.

However, this whole article sounds like some pretentious westerner who thinks
because they opened their mind to some sort of zen meditation that their
problem became easier to solve. Also this same person chants the praises of
writing things down and decrys the usage of software because you can't
meditate while typing in stuff. It's literally no different than writing
something in your checkbook.

When you have multiple accounts at different financials, have a 401k, and
other assets, paper management gets complicated and time consuming incredibly
fast, especially if you entered something in wrong. Can you imagine adjusting
a ledger for a whole year because you transposed a number? Sure reconciling
the difference can fix it, but it's sloppy and isn't right. Software takes all
the hard work out of it and turns it into very simply data entry. You can also
back it up too.

Budgeting is a problem with the individual. People who inflate their worth
with the things they have tend to blow their money away on the latest and
greatest or on literally anything they want as soon as they can get it. These
people don't adhere to those stupid questions this meditative system says your
supposed to adhere to. These people don't associate spending money as a bad
thing. It is an instinctive behavioral pattern and not something taught. How
many people actually know how to read over loan docs and understand proper
debt management? A lot of people know "Pay your bill" which, yes, is very
easy. But how many people actually factor in their interest in the cost of the
thing they buy? People ignore the incremental costs, and forget the total cost
in the end.

Remember that the reason a large majority of the economy works is because of
suckers like this. Impulsive people would rather buy something at a quoted low
price than risk never having that sale again. They don't look for trends or
remember the costs of things down the road. They also don't factor future
costs for things they need like car repairs (which is why lots of people max
their loan amount for a vehicle, only to end up not being able to repair it
when a serious issue occurs).

Honestly in my life, I've just become incredibly apathetic to other peoples
financial situation. The few people that actually do know a solid means of
budgeting truly know the value of the dollar and time. They aren't perfect,
but they learn from their mistakes. They forgo spending $5 on a cup of
starbucks and instead opt for $5 of a can of folgers. Instead of Rolex, they
get a Seiko. If they see a 50% off sale, they consider the final price, not
the fact that it happens to be 50% off. Also impulse buying is a big one.
Being able to deny yourself something long term is one I rarely ever see among
people without money.

