As a Genxer for my wife and I the thing that helped the most in getting off the consumerism cycle was abandoning all commercial television, paying for commercial free services, and cranking up the ad blockers. The constant barrage of psychological manipulation to tell you how you are not keeping up with the Jones's is overwhelming. I almost can't stomach event TV like the Super Bowl or New Years. It feels like the event is no longer importation and barely the focus as they slam cut from commercial to commercial designed to make you feel worse about yourself and push you to buy the next thingy. I honestly start getting a headache it's so much worse than it was even 10 years ago. It's like looking at the code of the Matrix now and it disgusts me. The focus isn't on entertaining the audience anymore it's about keeping you captive while the pull apart your psyche.
I have a 10 year old car I drive 100 miles a month. It's a tool not a contest. Why would I need a new expensive vehicle with phone home capabilities so they can start blasting ads at me on startup or start charging me monthly for heated seats. When I'm gone, no one is going to remember of I drove a 14 year old Nissan or brand new Rivian.
Once we got off the train it became easy. We focus on long term upgrades to our house, paying down debt, and saving for the inevitable retirement. Even as someone making 4-5x the national average, I endeavor to be frugal because it doesn't last. We spend on stuff that will actually bring joy not stuff someone has blasted our brains into thinking we need and we buy quality which makes a huge difference.
As a technologist, I’ve started to compare my career to that of a professional athlete. My utility and pay multiplier is defined by WAR (wins added vs generic replacement player), to use baseball terminology. Also, my WAR will decline with age without continuous reinvention and luck. A minority of players become coaches/managers.
In other words, at some point I will be out of the big leagues. I shouldn’t pretend that my prime earning years will last indefinitely. I am expecting and planning early retirement, at least out of the fast lane.
Your comment reinforces what I was already going to say — correlation != causation, and in fact, I think in this case they have it backwards.
You suggest that you are happier because you have cut down on your exposure to advertising and “inadequacy content”, and this has resulted in a drop in expenditures, rather than frugality directly being the thing that resulted in happiness.
It’s the same in my case - I decided, quite a few years ago, that chasing status was a sucker’s game, and stopped buying crap that signalled status. I drive a truck that’s older than me, live in a 45m2 log cabin I built myself, wear clothes that were barely fashionable 20 years ago, if I’m even bothering with clothes, and spend my days doing whatever the hell I choose, because it turns out that by not engaging in the consumer mill you suddenly have all this cash sitting around and not much to do with it, so you invest it, and suddenly spending your life working and chasing status in some career or another also seems a lot less appealing.
I’ve never been terribly happy with myself, which is just a de facto part of my nature — but I’m certainly content with my existence, and knowing that I’ve got a war chest tucked away that would make Croesus blush amply fulfils any status desires, as if I chose to, I could buy a few thousand teslas and drive them into the sea, and just carry on as I am. I believe the term is “fuck you money”, and it beats the crap out of having some shiny bauble on hire-purchase. I don’t even think about it until I find myself on the receiving end of “oh, you must be so poor to live this way, why don’t you work harder or get a new car”, and I just smile and remind myself that I could probably buy their mortal soul.
It’s also eminently achievable for anyone on a halfway decent income, if they stop frittering it away on crap.
The only thing that I do from time to time spend cash on is the occasional adventure. People tell me I should do a YouTube channel, or an instagram, and I tell them that I’m not doing this for anyone but me and those I take along with me. I don’t give a tiny flying rat’s ass about “personal brand”.
Stuff doesn’t bring joy. Status, as it’s sold via the drip drip drip of planned obsolescence doesn’t either. Security and freedom and time, do.
How does one live in a 45m^2 self built house when all the jobs are in places with insane building codes requiring 1200 sq ft minimum house complete with sewage/septic permit? You may be able to get away with that if you don't have a family but if you do sooner or later other kids will find out, your kid will be ratted out to social services for living in an "illegal shelter" which the social worker will deem inadequate and demand they be moved or taken away. The city will bulldoze the house and fine the everliving shit out of you.
Meanwhile you still have to pay property taxes, and for at least some of your food, which means you need a job. And because you have a job you need childcare. So minimally you need to pay for the property taxes food and childcare, occasional medical bills, the upkeep of the truck (emissions testing needed to legally drive to get groceries etc, so even a check engine light means costly repair). Oh and don't forget, when I was looking for a truck "older than me" during covid I found the market was absolutely insane and they were practically the price of a new truck. All in that's a full working-class salary right there, and that's with spending on nothing but essentials.
As an extremely frugal person the only way I've ever been able to live the way you live was when I was single and basically squatting in the national forest. And even then I had LEO up my ass threatening to cite me for illegally existing in nature. Hopefully any American planning this life has the money to emigrate or the will and craftiness to do it illegally.
> You may be able to get away with that if you don't have a family
I find it unsurprising that the care and attention of family requires different circumstances.
I don't really understand why whenever an alternative lifestyle is brought up there is always someone that says "Huh, yeah, well try doing that with a family, buddy!".
Some people live without family, and they shouldn't really feel the need to fit into a cookie-cutter existence that presupposes the future existence of a family unit -- they make it work.
>when I was looking for a truck "older than me" during covid I found the market was absolutely insane and they were practically the price of a new truck.
you were looking for a used vehicle during one of the very worst times in the used vehicle market for buyers ever (at least in the US; I didn't follow elsewhere).
No job, no need, and the house is entirely legal, including the septic system and other infrastructure I’ve built, and I have a kid. Also good fucking luck to anyone wanting to get a bulldozer there - it’s on a 45 degree hill slope with no road access. The truck was €4,000, and it’s a hilux. I could set it on fire and it would be fine.
The property taxes are €40 a year for the house, the mill, the ruined medieval village, and the 15ha of land.
My passive income is seven figures, because rather than fritter away on crap, I invested in a diverse range of stuff, from equities to real estate to small businesses/startups. I’m noodling about with a few new ventures of my own as I have time on my hands.
And yes, emigration is useful. I draw an income from expensive economies and moved to a cheap country where quality of life is king.
To be clear, this is the current state - I worked my arse off for 15 years and lived a pretty monkish existence, and now reap the rewards.
Portugal. We actually have two habitation licenses for the property as a whole, as there are two extant habitations there, both ruinous (rebuilding one, the watermill, this year) and there are basically no code requirements for historic structures, and any other structures on the same land under 100m2.
Portugal shut down the most likely path to his story recently (actually just today), as they decided it created "lack of affordable housing" for their own population. This is another one of those cases of "just be born before the ladders are pulled away and you can do like me."
No, I didn’t do a golden visa - rather, a retirement visa - residency is easy if you have even only a moderate income of €1,200 a month or so or assets. It also handily comes with a ten year exemption on overseas income, which I don’t feel too bad about as I avail myself of no state services beyond those which I do pay for through other taxes, and I’ve made some substantial investments in local businesses.
The golden visa was a much abused scheme largely for absentee landlords who want EU residency, and it has indeed jacked up property prices in the major population centres to an unsustainable degree - many properties have been priced to the visa threshold, and then sit vacant, unrented, often dilapidating. I’m glad to see the back of it, as it gives estrangeiros a bad rap.
> It’s the same in my case - I decided, quite a few years ago, that chasing status was a sucker’s game, and stopped buying crap that signalled status.
I have friends who make over $200k in affordable areas that constantly complain about money but buy new cars every 2 years, spend $1000's on lego sets, buy expensive toys they sell for 2/3-1/2 value within two years (campers, digital home gyms, etc), need the latest TV, Monitor, Phone... it never ends. It's not filling a need or solving a problem. It's just high price branded junk that they can pose next to on Facebook or Instagram.
As a millennial that developed a shopping obsession for a few months last year, it made me miserable. Every time I bought something I’d be thinking about what I needed to buy next to solve the (very minor) problems the new thing created. Endless research trying to buy the right thing.I’d buy something and get some dopamine for 5 minutes then have buyers remorse for days.
I cut all that off and I feel so much better. I have learned how to love the things I have instead of finding flaws for an excuse to buy the next thing.
I've had multiple co workers over the years throw up their hands in frustration and tell me to just. buy. the damn thing! I tend to do an unhealthy amount of analysis over every car or gadget I purchase.
To be honest I would be much further ahead in life if I put that same level of energy towards bettering myself as a developer.
This is exactly what happened to me last year. I used to be pretty frugal. Rarely replaced computers or other consumer electronics. Then I ended up buying a mid range sound bar. A very good oled TV. And a graphics card. Really stupid. It cost me more than mone, it was all the time researching, reading endless reviews. Configuring it all.
> it was all the time researching, reading endless reviews
Interesting. This is actually where the dopamine hit comes from for me -- being educated at the things I want to buy at the rest for whatever price-point and goal I'm trying to achieve, whether that's something for the house (TV) or something related to a hobby (bike, espresso machine, etc).
I don't see what's stupid about this. How often do you replace your sound bar or TV?
I bought some nice monitors for my PC setup 1-2 years ago after a bunch of research, but they were replacing 10+ year old monitors. I don't expect to replace the new ones any time soon, so it's not like I'm doing endless research on computer monitors. I stopped after I got these. Now I just enjoy them. I also got a TV and soundbar less than 6 months ago after lots of research; I no longer research those things at all. I'll probably keep both of them for many years too.
Last time I bought speakers before this was 2007! Last TV was 2013. Previously I'd managed to run a pc made of second hand parts from 2008 to 2017 with no upgrades.
I think you are correct in a way. I do like the TV and sound bar. But also I'm wary of the addictiveness of reading reviews, upselling myself to higher specs and higher price than I'd originally intended.
There does seem to be some sort of dopamine hit with researching options.
I think you're overthinking it. If you're buying something that's going to last for 10 years, spending 20% more for higher specs probably isn't a waste of money, if you actually use and like those extra features. It's better than getting the cheap base model and then being unhappy with it and wanting a better one in a year or two. With a higher-spec model, you probably won't feel the urge to replace it so quickly.
Yes, it really is the time more than the money. When you realize how much time was spent trying to decide if it’s worth paying an extra $200 for a feature… ouch
People who can buy more services instead of goods tend to be wealthier. I’m happier now that I can just Lyft/uber/bus/subway everywhere and don’t have to own a car- but when I was poorer I couldn’t afford to just grab a 30 minute taxi whenever I wanted and I had to own a car. I feel like this is a huge confound.
“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”
If I was moving every few months, id just stay in Airbnb's or corporate housing. Any more than that I'd get a mortgage. Housing inflation post 2008 has always covered my closing costs that it makes sense to buy and sell over renting always.
Eh, you're extending the good reasoning of 'if you plan to stay more than a few years, buy' a bit too far. There absolutely be good reasons to rent unless you intend to live somewhere long term. Even then, some vhcol locations it never makes sense to buy. You gotta do the math.
Sorry if it wasnt clear. Shortest amount of time i stayed in a place was 1.5 years. Housing inflation covered the closing costs each time I sold. Ill never rent again considering how bad the cost of housing is.
All depends. Regarding moving about every day, hard to beat owning a beater Toyota or Honda over a 2-3 year period than using Lyft or Uber for that. But if you want to move around with the latest gadgets a couple of days a week, maybe car sharing or taxi or sharing makes more sense.
I think this depends on the service being purchased and the location. Cars have an upkeep cost, insurance, etc. If you're using a car only sparingly it may in fact be cheaper to use a service.
I started buying more shit once I was strapped down with family responsibilities.
When I had little responsibilities going for a weeklong hike and camp or whatever is liberating and costs almost nothing so can save a lot. With a shrieking toddler you'll be very lucky if they tolerate something like that for 2 miles and a few hours, so the unhappiness of being unable to fulfill your goals gets replaced by some meager slivers of efficiency from material goods and home-based hobbies that cost money in the form of the rent to house the hobby if nothing else.
I wonder how much of this is "I can no longer do the shit that I really enjoy for free, so I'm at least going to buy a nice lobster to eat in the 15 minutes I have before the next meltdown of the toddler or caretaking of the elderly parent."
Same thing happened to me. Since becoming a parent I've gotten back into video games like I was when I was a kid/teenager. Before I had my first kid we didn't even have a TV now there are 3 in my house. I also read a lot more books as well.
It's much harder to just spontaneously go out and do stuff with friends. Even when the kids have been put to bed and are asleep you can't just leave the house so I end doing things at home like playing games.
I've definitely had my share two mile hikes that end in whining and complaints but as they get older (6 and 3 now) it's gotten better and more activities open up
For me it was opposite. Having kid meant that most games became unplayable, because they are not designed to be played for 2 hours once a week when I happen to have time. They are designed to waste you huge amount of time.
You've just described what has been happening to me since becoming a parent. Suddenly consumer electronics matter to me because I'm stuck in the house a lot more. I regret my purchases. But if you can only watch movies in the house then a good TV and sound bar are nice.
Alternatively people buy more stuff and are then financially stressed, making them less happy.
The article doesn't really provide anything other that correlation, it doesn't show a causative link in either direction. It does however do that classic of providing just enough to fill people's preconceived notions (because the lack of causative link means that you can easily place your own personal causation).
Maybe, but, as a millennial, buying things makes me less happy. There is the initial agony over whether or not it is a worthwhile purchase and if I decide it is worthwhile there is regret that it wasn't quite what I expected to follow. Something has to really make me think that it will improve my life dramatically to consider accepting the pain.
THIS. I think the article has the causation backwards. Anecdotally, people who tend to be good with money are also the ones who have their shit together in other areas of life and are hence happier.
I've learned to appreciate old damaged things. I dropped my new MacBook and bent the case. Great, now I don't have to worry about keeping it in perfect condition anymore, I can just enjoy using it. If it stops working, great, now I get to buy a new one that isn't damaged. That bent case ultimately relieved me of a lot of anxiety.
Oh yeah, getting the first scratches and dings in an expensive thing is very freeing.
On the other hand you can probably take it too far. I've got a 2013 HP laptop whose case is physically broken in multiple ways. Yet, I run linux on it, and I've replaced the battery once or twice and it meets my needs so I've yet to upgrade. When I do, I'll buy an ~2019-2020 vintage thinkpad or something and I'll be stoked.
I've been doing this with phones since forever. Every upgrade is really significant, and its cheap since it's a couple years out of date.
Also, sure, poor people in non-urbanized, less technologically advanced situations are happier but at what trade-offs?
I grew up in a small oilfield town. I, fortunately, managed to escape but I can tell you with no equivocation that "happy" is not an adjective I'd use to describe the majority of the population of that place.
There's an old joke - um... two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of 'em says, "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know; and such small portions."
For this millenial, stuff is cheap. Space to put stuff is expensive. It is far too easy to get all the stuff you'd ever want, but unless you can afford to live in a giant ranch-house, the clutter will drive you mad. So yeah, getting rid of things makes me very happy.
That's called Capitalism. The Economic system we've built our entire society upon breaks every 7-10 years - that's totally normal, but sometimes it breaks more than expected - as you stated, also not very rare.
Plus it requires 3% gains each year forever - which is obviously impossible.
> Plus it requires 3% gains each year forever - which is obviously impossible.
You can buy 30 year Treasury bonds that pay well over 3% (the market rate was 3.88% yesterday). 30 years isnt forever, but its a substantial portion of a human lifetime.
For those worried about inflation, 30 year TIPS are paying 1.54% real (inflation + 1.54%).
"The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. —Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn."
When it comes down to it, I just want to have certainty when I go to bed at night that I'm not failing myself, my family, or my world. I desire a clean conscience and no regrets and no one can sell those to me.
Living with (and having experienced multiple times) the degree of property crime in Johannesburg South Africa taught me an extremely valuable lesson: more stuff is more worries. While nice expensive things getting stolen doesn't translate to everywhere in the world, nice things costing you more money and more stress does. For example, having to wait for a scarce part to repair your lambo. Or having to drive your lambo at 1mph in bumper-to-bumper traffic.
So we take a generation that has been essentially subjected to the worst generational economic warfare in modern memory (from the boomers).
Where basic subsistence existence while saddled with bloated college loans, no job prospects, inflated housing costs, exhorbitant healthcare, high food and rising energy/fuel costs...
So basically, those who are "buying more" in the millenials aren't doing it by choice... basic living takes up that much more of their income, which is the definition of economic insecurity. They aren't ABLE to save. Another word for those people is "poor".
But those millenials that aren't "buying more" by some relative percentage of their income are probably... more economically secure. Yes, they are saving because the CAN save and they aren't "poor".
Millenials are definitively less consumerist than boomers. That isn't some pop sociology take, it is basic economics: THEY DON'T HAVE MONEY to be consumerists to the standards of the boomers. You don't need to ascribe it to some superior collective ethos, or arbitrary generational trend.
It's the result of boomer economic warfare on all the other generations. The boomers should have their medicare and social security yanked for what they did to this country.
I was recently fantasizing about winning the lottery and had the somewhat funny realization that I really couldn't think of what _things_ I'd want to buy. I'd buy a nice but not extravagant house, on a nice but not huge piece of land, and just enjoy having the free time to do things like spending time with my family and playing guitar.
In short, what I want out of life is largely not material things, but just a nice place to exist and pursue my interests.
I realize, of course, that nothing about this is particularly radical, I don't expect this comment to blow anyone's mind. By my estimate a cool 8-10 million would be more than sufficient for me to have basically everything I ever wanted - i.e. buy the aforementioned nice home and then live comfortably off the returns for the rest of my days.
If any recently minted tech billionaires reading this would like to donate to the cause of me fucking off from society to the woods, feel free to shoot me an email ;)
If I won powerball lotto money, I'd want a big plot of old growth timber with a decent sized creek running through it. I'd build a small cabin, run fiber internet to it, and I'd be good.
I'd bet that combination is rare. Especially old growth forest with fiber internet access, but with powerball money I'd bet I could find something.
If you haven't yet, I'd recommend to check out the FIRE movement (Financial Independence, Retire Early). You probably need much less than 8-10 million to exist and pursue your interests indefinitely. I'd recommend the blog by Mr. Money Mustache as a good entry-point.
Also, re: the amount of money - you're absolutely right. 5m at the 4% safe withdrawal rate is 200k a year which would be way more than enough. I'll start the bidding at 2.5m for those aformementioned tech billionaires (what a steal! this deal won't last! act fast!)
I won't get too much into this, but the basics of it are that they are the dominant voting bloc for the last 50 years in America, and in such a time they presided over / voted for:
- when given the choice of oil vs the future of humanity, sided with oil for 5-7 decades
- shipping manufacturing overseas, destruction of the middle class, destruction of unions, free trade agreements. Let me emphasize how explicitly boomers destroyed unions. It was a common negotiation tactic of companies to basically pay the existing (boomer) union workers more and guarantee THEIR benefits, but the new people coming into the company (non-boomer) would get no union benefits
- privatization and deregulation of mass quantities of society and the economy leading to, most prominently in my view, a nonfunctional healthcare system and monopoly/cartel in practically every identifiable market
- deficit spending that essentially enriched their generation at the expense of future generations
- benefited from vast amounts of federally funded education, then underfunded and ruined higher education for future generations
- destabilized society at fundamental levels with the war on drugs when they were the generation that most pervasively used drugs in their formative years
- reaganomics led to the great wealth divide, and those formative economic years were driven by the boomers greed as they moved up the corporate ladder
- the vast expansion of military spending
- the suburbs, while invented by their parents, taken to absurd and destructive lengths
Basically, given the world on a platter from WWII postwar dominance and the greatest technological growth and development ever, they have saddled future generations with debt, a ruined environment, massive corruption, and vast entrenched social and racial problems.
Their final gifts will be bankrupting Medicare and Social Security after politically underfunding them or outright stealing from them for 50-70 years as part of runaway deficit spending and military spending. Which is why I advocate denying them those benefits.
It is a generation obsessed with materialism, hedonism, and selfishness. Now, I'm not going to say that other generations are some saints or won't be corrupted by the materialism of midlife like the 80s/90s of the boomers, but at least there is acknowledgement of global warming, racial strife, the drug war, and having to deal with them rather than push them to future generations.
I'm a big fan of 2nd hand, goodwill, and garage sales. I've gotten so fed up with Ikea tier furniture that a good garage sale will net me things that are cheaper and far more reliable than anything I'd buy in a store.
I'm an estate sale hound too, but at some point somebody has to make/buy new stuff for people to buy at swap meets in 50 years. I'm wondering if it will be possible to buy affordable, non-trash-tier furniture in another 50 years? Presumably 80%+ of the antiques that exist now will still exist, but I'm guessing effectively none of the Ikea-grade (and crappier) stuff will.
There's still good wooden furniture made out there but it's incredibly pricy. I presume this is what will be in antique shops.
Shame that we'll probably end up with fientorue that's just built into the walls with padding replaced from time to time.
When I lived in California, I managed to furnish a good amount of my home with street finds. Solid wood furniture, tables, one time a color laser printer, and my personal favorite: an LCD tv where the previous owner forgot to sign out of the smart tv.
It may also be an effect of happiness (in the "contentedness" sense), which means that if someone is unhappy, telling them "Just buy less" may be a worthless remedy for them.
We were paying well over $2,000/month for two kids part time. All the daycares have a waiting list that is months to years long and you can't get on it until you have a birth certificate. That's INSANE. No wonder no one my age is having kids.
We need to start enacting policies that support families with young kids like, NOW, before we are really feeling the demographics crunch because in 20 years it's going to be WAY too late.
It truly is obscene how anti-children the US is. We paid $13,000 out of pocket WITH healthcare insurance for each our births (since we never get close to hitting the deductible). My wife didn't get a single day of paid maternity leave (either legally through the state, or from her work). Then, once they were ready to go to daycare that's $2,300/month per child.
This is why Americans shouldn't have children. The government doesn't want you to (as proven by its policies), and those policies are presumably the will of the electorate.
If you want kids, move to a country where the government policies actually encourage this.
Well, how could they be happy? The government is turning the frogs gay and trans trendergenderererds are the antichrist come to ruin our lovely homeless-free society!!!111
I was curious about the first author, and apparently she is the "Petsmart Associate Professor, Retailing and Consumer Sciences" at the Norton School of Human Ecology at UArizona. Do other companies have sponsored professorships?
Not at all like consumption as defined in the pre digital world. For example, if I create a digital comic and publish it to one website and all 8 billion people alive read that comic, UNIVERSAL consumption - I still just made one thing, one time and published it once. It also still exists for all future humans to consume and can be consumed repeatedly without limit.
I've moved from being a consumer to creating products that I want myself and sell them.
I'll gladly spend money to eat healthy and have a nice bed.
What I find truly fulfilling to consume, are tools that get used often doing the work I enjoy doing. I also use a 2015 macbook air to write code when needed, so don't take my words the wrong way.
"Lie of minimalism" - I've never encountered that belief before - you've obviously never tried it. Minimalism doesn't mean "going without" it means finding out what you need to be happy, and having only that stuff.
A motorboat is a silly example that most people don't want anyway. Minimalism is, like consumerism, still obsessed with things. Hop onto r/minimalism and you'll quickly find many people who stress over not having fewer material possessions, and who force themselves to forgo essentials like clothing and hygiene products. It's not the final answer.
the one without the motorboat that will be probably poorer than the first and cannot take his family on a motorboat trip every weekend. Also renting a motorboat is a stressor too in case you can afford it.
Is there anyone who truly believes that, or is it just something the WEF tries to convince people to believe? Not knowing if the landlord is going to "alter the deal" on a month-to-month basis is stress-inducing, not happiness-generating.
Not just millenials. I've noticed that people of all ages tend to be happier when they buy and own less, unless the reason they buy and own less is because they are poor.
As a young adult I was baffled by the way older generations seemed to have endless money for furniture and electronics and pricier household items. The "standard" method of furnishing a room costs like $5k per room. How were these middle class families furnishing these massive 4 bedroom houses in the burbs with dens and dining rooms and patios, etc? I suppose these are mostly one time purchases, but then there's the new stereo, new and bigger TV every few years, new speakers, and endless stream of seldom-used kitchen appliances. Sometimes it seemed like people were using their limited wealth to entomb themselves in their own home. Not that plenty of Millennials haven't done the same thing!
But this article is basically about how having a budget probably makes you less stressed than not having a budget, which is far less interesting in my mind that how and why people spend their money, and the generational differences.
Dig into inflation statistics for the past several decades and dig past the single unified number. That has its utility, but you have to remember it is a summary statistic, and in this case, it is obscuring the answer to your question. Dig into what it is summarizing to a higher level of detail.
And the resulting answer is fairly simple: They literally had more money, relatively speaking, for that sort of stuff.
Why? Well, that's complicated, and there's a lot of subjectivity in the judgment of it.
Some of it is that a higher "standard of living" means that while your housing today may be more expensive than the "same house" 70 years ago, it isn't the "same house". As a simple example, your wiring is a lot nicer, but that cost some money. (This comes to mind because of the horror stories my father is telling me about the renovating he is having to do to his parent's house to get it on the market.) One could write books on the ways your house is not actually the "same house", mostly in good ways.
Some of it some issues related to wealth disparity and the way more of our wealth generation isn't going into our pockets, for a wide variety of reasons, with a wide variety of subjective valuations attached to those reasons.
Some of it is that they simply didn't have the ability to spend money on what we do now; many goods and services we use today didn't even exist then.
I'm trying to avoid significant value judgments in this post, even though I have opinions all day long on these matters, because the simple answer to your question is just, they literally had a larger proportion of their income to spend on such things.
I've been around long enough to remember old school inflation, where a can of soda would got from $0.25 to $1.50 in a decade. So it makes sense that our extended era of super-low inflation created some breathing room for middle class families. I'd imagine equity for homeowners, especially the ability to refinance/borrow at rock bottom rates, was filling in some of the gaps. Well, that and credit card debt.
But even with that perspective, it still begs the question that, given a healthy dose of disposable income, why did so many people seem to choose a $1500 minor TV upgrade or a new $3000 couch instead of, I don't know, an extravagant European vacation? Eating at any restaurant you want whenever you want? It's really that divide that baffles me - the experience-spenders (me, hi) versus the stuff-buyers. But maybe that's more of an urban/suburban divide than a generational divide.
I think relative prices can answer a lot of your second paragraph. Air travel is relatively cheaper than it used to be in a lot of ways. It certainly isn't cheap today, but the middle class can do it sometimes. When I was young, it was an extravagance, especially to go to Europe.
Also, if you were in the US in the 1960s, I can well understand why "eating in any restaurant you wanted" would not necessarily have appealed much... the food of the era was... adequate.
I think the experiences were not as readily available versus the stuff as you may be thinking. To the extent that they were available, they were taken. Piling your family into the station wagon and driving around for three weeks used to be a lot more common, I think. But that's not "an extravagent European vacation". The relative prices of things have changed a lot in the past century.
(And to be clear, I mean, relative to each other, e.g., "how many years in college is a trip to Europe", not in absolute inflation terms. A thing that has gone up a bit faster than inflation is still relatively cheaper than a thing that has gone up way faster than inflation.)
- Inherited furniture or gifted furniture from parents
- Recovered / restored furniture
- Deal finding, estate sales, neighbors moving
Aside from electronics this accounts for most of the furniture in my house. My wife and I have been home owners for about 15 years now and we bought our first chair set in a store this year.
Prior to that, we bought a bedroom set from Rooms to Go when we got our first house.
> having a budget probably makes you less stressed than not having a budget
While I don't agree with much of what he says, some things I've heard Dave Ramsey say have really stuck with me. One is that setting a budget isn't about taking away your freedom, but rather, getting it back.
I'm beginning to wonder if cnbc is already using gpt3 to write fluff articles on nothing-burger studies.
We've known for decades that buying material things does not make one happier long term, due to the headonic treadmill.
Stress makes one less happy. Financial security reduces stress. Spending less than you make and saving leads to financial security. Therefore, being fiscally responsible leads to increased happiness.
It may not be news to you but a lot of people have truly dismal fiscal literacy and terrible habits. The sitcom credit card episode trope is real, which surprised me as I thought of it as contrived stupidity since I was a child. Hell, many regard /thinking with math and using it to make decisions/ as inhuman.
"Journalists" have been writing fluff articles for ages. I've been seeing these fluff articles on nothing-burger studies for many years now, long before GPT3.
If anything, GPT3-written fluff articles will be an improvement.
I have a 10 year old car I drive 100 miles a month. It's a tool not a contest. Why would I need a new expensive vehicle with phone home capabilities so they can start blasting ads at me on startup or start charging me monthly for heated seats. When I'm gone, no one is going to remember of I drove a 14 year old Nissan or brand new Rivian.
Once we got off the train it became easy. We focus on long term upgrades to our house, paying down debt, and saving for the inevitable retirement. Even as someone making 4-5x the national average, I endeavor to be frugal because it doesn't last. We spend on stuff that will actually bring joy not stuff someone has blasted our brains into thinking we need and we buy quality which makes a huge difference.