My wife and I budget and save over 50% of our salaries. Sometimes our friends think we’re crazy because we “limit our options” by being frugal. I always have to explain back that it’s exactly why we’re saving money because it gives us new options that aren’t available otherwise like buying a home last summer. That only happened through budgeting and saving.
Life past 60 seems has always been a very strange priority to sacrifice for to me, at least if you can only afford to either live today or subsist today and save for life past 60, which has basically become the choice for most here in the US as most wages don’t allow for both, and many for either.
Let’s assume you make it there having not gotten hit by a bus or killed by cancer or your healthcare insurance confidence scheme provider.
You’ve literally saved up so you could enjoy life when your senses are failing you, your mind is growing dull and confused, your own frail body is betraying you in new ways constantly, and your time is largely spent managing the ever growing list of symptoms building up to your impending death.
Sure there are exceptions, people who remain verile and sharp into their seventies, but they are not the rule. That’s like planning your life around a future lottery win.
Live for today, especially if you’re into your 30s or beyond. Better to have memories of living when you could in the shitty home with bad food then having memories of working and saving in the good home with the decent food your failing taste buds can’t really even appreciate anymore.
Oh gee I hope I get to live long enough to piss myself involuntarily again! Maybe I’ll finally take that cruise so I can soil myself in style and stay in my cabin because my body can’t regulate it’s own heat efficiently anymore!
The key is moderation between enjoying life today and saving for the future. What’s your plan for the future if you do live to your 60s and 70s but your body fails you, you can’t work, and don’t have any money banked?
I have real life examples of this in my life and it is not pretty. Most state and federal programs won’t help you until you’re literally at rock bottom broke living alone and disabled in your home, which they will take from you after you die to recoup the money they’re spending just to barely meet your basic necessities and maybe have a nurse come and check on you a few hours a week.
Exit, which is still preferable to what we do with most elderly in the states. I used to deliver to nursing homes for 10 years all day every day, educating patients on medical devices. I have seen and been informed first hand by too many to count, death is better. The happiest people in them have lost too many faculties to hold a conversation.
You don’t want to live in even a “nice” home with any marbles still rolling around. The garbage to nice ratio is 10 to 1, and even most of the studious savers who didn’t actually live don’t get the nice ones with tapestries and French chefs, those are for the elder exploiters.
There are almost no happy people in those places, the best you see are some quivering brave faces that break 5 minutes into someone from the outside engaging with them. I came to think of them as living mausoleums as I went through their halls.
Yeah I didn’t even refer to nursing homes in my comment because those aren’t obtainable for people that didn’t save up enough to spend $5k-$10k per month on them. I’ve also visited them and witnessed all the same things you mention. What I was referring to was living in your own house that you can barely still afford while being unable to really care for yourself.
To that I would say it’s just inhuman that we largely insist suffering people continue until the body they’re trapped in literally gives out. It’s a sad, pathetic, demeaning way to go, regardless of whether you can also afford groceries and meds.
I think any adult should be able to have a painless opt out option with a 30 day waiting period. We treat people’s lives as if they don’t own them to do with what they will. I don’t think it’s right to encourage or insist people who are breaking down to cling to their misery when there are painless options we refuse to implement.
It’s a bit of a bad joke really, we don’t care enough about one another to support one another materially tragically, but we also don’t want those people to offend the rules of our imaginary sky daddies. It’s perverse. We literally have more compassion for our pets living in pain.
Because sometimes one might actually need money for a necessity that breaks or is stolen or medical emergency.
Did COVID make everyone forget about the uncertainty of the future ?
Or perhaps remember the transience of the present.
You save money so that you can stop working for it later on life. But you gotta use some of it, not worth saving if you’re gonna be depressed the whole time until retirement
Honestly, saving money is great. You spend money and it’s good for a short while, but you save money and you get so much comfort from that safety net, from not worrying each time an envelope comes through your door that it’s going to be some bill you can’t afford.
TBF, that’s a pretty rad looking thing she bought. I kinda want one, too.
CONSUME.
See the problem is that if you run out of money, you die shortly thereafter.
Your lack of money ceases to be a problem after you’re dead so maybe that’s a benefit.
One of the weirder of votes I’ve done. Technically correct but… Gahh staying alive is a primary goal.
My primary directive is failing, Captain…
There’s something really disturbing about a human body with Muppet-like facial features.
I guess that would be like that to someone who didn’t play just a ton of Animal Crossing. I didn’t even notice!
Are muppets disturbed by us, and think we’re muppets with skin and flesh?
I used to have anxiety like this, keeping a good budget that pays me “fun money” helped a lot with this.
Actual Budget is good for anyone looking for budget apps.
Buckets is also good and runs on the same “envelope” model. I find the UX of buckets much better, personally.
Not actual FOSS, but its a free unlimited trial that you pay for when you want to.
Follow up question: why spend money if it doesnt make you happy?
Money doesn’t buy happiness, but it does buy time. Time to do the things that make you happy.
Edit: I’ve gone from living in my car with no hope to 3600 square foot house and a realistic goal to retire early. I know have my groceries delivered, my too big of a house cleaned by a house cleaning service, my car maintained by the dealership. These are all things I can do myself, but I have enough resources to have someone else do it while I enjoy my time off.
Money also buys things that enable you to explore things.
Like if you buy an instrument you’re usually out $100-200 at a minumum especially if you add on books and accessories. but learning it can be super rewarding for years.
as long as you dont have adhd and think this time you will invest in that hobby and thats the one thats going to keep you hooked for years to come
Looking at my guitar, 3d printer, drawing notebooks, balls of yarn, flute and god knows what else I have buried in my many junk drawers…
Every one of them came with that feeling….
I feel like having a little cry right now 😭You can draw a 3d printable guitar then knit a gigbag for it.
Finding a way to make my hobbies collide helped me a bit.Combining my hobbies is how I get the feds at my house.
Honestly, and I think this is part of what the comic is getting at, spending money to buy a new shiny can deliver a hit of dopamine at the moment. But once that hit fades, a variety of other feelings about that purchase can set in.
So it’s not as simple as whether buying something makes you happy, it’s whether the act of purchasing the thing, experiencing the newness, actually owning and using the thing, all bring you happiness. And on top of that, whether the things you could have bought instead would bring you more happiness.
I actually relate pretty hard to this, if it’s not obvious lol
You actually summed it up pretty well! The few things I buy for myself are mostly “tools” to do/learn something that indeed fit your comment.
I mean if you dont actually need it or get long term enjoyment out of it, then yeah dont buy it. But if you do, then whats the issue?
American capitalists would tell you if you don’t spend your life eating cat food in a van to save for retirement on a peasant’s wage then you’re “irresponsible.”
You know, the whole "you had a latte?! You ate avacado toast?! Of course you deserve to burn in the fires of elder poverty!"blame their own victims thing, as they spend 6k on a bottle of wine.
Couldn’t be me 💅
