I am one of those "children of immigrants [sic] and can still feel the aftershocks of their austere upbringing". I have shifted my mindset a bit away from the extremes described in the article, and definitely can identify a bit with "that’s good; that’s noble" thought.

The thought and the behavior, for me, isn't to be noble for noble's sake. The article felt a bit short for me as often financial woes are not mostly in our heads. Our individual bank accounts might show that we as individuals are ahead but the financial woes are still quite real with many of our parents. (Western) Society, and this article, disconnects the financial situation of the financially successful immigrant children with that of their aging and often financially modest parents.

Spending and saving is wrapped in the guilt and the dreams of our the upbringing. I do go out, but I know my parent's are still cooking the proverbially ramen at home because they are behind on retirement. It is having room mates but still having rent in an average apartment costing more than my parents mortgage. It's having more money than your parents and siblings combined, while seeing that your parents worked twice as hard being limited by their lack of network and English skills. All while home ownership is getting harder so for our generation. Secure our own future feels like a zero sum game with sharing and give financially to our parents, and, as importantly, giving the luxuries society says we can afford to ourselves.

> David Fox has plenty of savings. He earns hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. Recently, he allocated $60,000 to buying a new car—but when he arrived at the dealership, he could bring himself to spend only $30,000 on a used model.

David Fox may be making the right decision here.

The question for me is whether I have enough saving to sustain a decent lifestyle in an adverse, yet possible, scenario (getting laid off, declining stock market, inflation, reaching an old age, high medical expense...). And incidentally, will the $60K car make me that much happier than the used one for half the price?

Even with a high salary, it may not be a very good decision to buy the expensive car.

These three observations from the OP are consistent with my own:

* Many people who spend well below their means experienced financial precariousness earlier in life.

* They may no longer be poor, but the stress of deprivation is never far from their memory.

* Concerns about spending are a preemptive response to make sure they never find themselves overspending.

This absolutely describes me..

I seriously can't find anything that is worth buying that actually makes me happier. Travel is great, and probably where the bulk of my money goes. But it's temporary, and the expense is limited by my vacation time and doesn't scale that much.

So I save.. and eventually I will be able to buy time. Maybe with more time I can figure out something to make me happier.

I have wealthy friends who:

- can't enjoy a meal if it is "overpriced"

- must get 30% discount at the grocery store

- will buy an inexpensive electronics with all kinds of spyware/crap/ads/interruptions even though they could afford 10% more for stuff that won't behave that way

- driving used cars guzzling gas even though a newer efficient car or ev would pay for itself in fuel (or safety)

I think people are in this inverse boil-the-frog situation where things are getting more comfortable, but they don't notice.

https://archive.is/WEX1n

Never assume the good times will last. Save. Live reasonably. If you get lucky and the good times do last, reap the benefits and retire early and comfortably.

Saving, investing, and living below your means is how many people get "well-off" in the first place. Obviously, there are extremes.

This hits close to home. Despite our household income approaching 200k I was still driving a 17 year old car until the repairs exceeded the scrap cost. I got lucky and snagged a starter home just before rates shot up and continue to live well below my means. I hate spending money and can only make bigger purchases after weeks of consideration and only pull the trigger on an impulse. My SO still sweats over $50 purchases.

This is pretty common for people who have struggled in the past and people who are uncertain about the future. There's a lot of uncertainty about the long term stability and sustainability of things right now.

It's why doomsday preppers are a growing market and a rising industry (https://www.newsweek.com/doomsday-prepping-246-billion-indus...), it's why rich people are building bunkers and securing citizenship in multiple countries so that they can jump ship if the one they're in starts sinking.

Once people's anxieties are alleviated by confidence in their security there should be fewer people with lots of money worried about spending it.

Why spend money just for the sake of it? Rich people don’t stay rich by spending their own money. I’ve always had a starving student mentality as wasting money on junk is just that. For any big purchase of more than three figures, wait a month. Do you really need it?

Sounds familiar to a book I was forced to read twenty years ago, "The Millionaire Next Door":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Millionaire_Next_Door

A "tightwad" here would be called a "Prodigious Accumulator of Wealth" in the book, a fancy name for a person who continually spends much less than their income.

Most of the rich didn't get there by spending money.

Being raised by a single mom, who tried to stay ahead of eviction, constantly had the power shut off, and often had bare shelves in the pantry, can 100% do a number on your psyche. You never feel far away from ending up back in that situation, short of being wildly successful financially.

Something interesting in the mix is that our emotions aren't calibrated to capitalism - we're turned to a sort of hunter-gatherer existence with maybe some farming. At a gut level most humans don't understand how to contextualise an offer of 2% compounding return on their capital.

I'd imagine evolution is (metaphorically) carefully monitoring the situation and working out what it needs to do to take advantage of these new options. It isn't actually crazy to expect people to develop twitchy panicked feelings at the though of spending money. The opportunity cost of being a spendthrift is very high, a lot of people came through the greatest wealth expansion in human history and had an opportunity to buy in to it and then spent the money on idle luxuries. Understandable but probably not optimal choices.

If anyone is old enough to have had parents or grandparents who went through The Depression (or The Holocaust), this sounds familiar.

> Irrational stinginess is a strange problem to have, akin to complaining about being too beautiful.

Just to add another anecdotal data point: I kinda have that problem, most likely out of growing up through family financial difficulties.

I did amass a significant amount of money out of caution, should anything bad happen. I had way more money than I was indebted for, and a nice enough paycheck.

And... Something bad happened. I won't go into the details (I don't really want to share) but my house was on the line and I had to spend pretty much all of my savings to save the house and many years of work and sacrifices.

Now I'm in debt again, but thankfully only by less than ten thousand euros over the balance in my bank account, so it's pretty reasonable and manageable.

Still, I feel vulnerable and it's not at all a nice position to be in.

So yeah, "irrational stinginess" isn't that bad after all. Somebody else in my position would have either lost the house or gone back into living paycheck to paycheck (or both).

So just because some articles paint it as a not-optimal condition, don't assume it's automatically "bad".

Did anyone actually pay to read the article?

Imagine trying to shame someone by calling them a tightwad because they spent 30k on a car, instead of 60.

And trying to paint living below your means in a negative light.

Here's the problem in buying "luxury" and enjoying life in 2024 - many things are just marketed as luxury, and impose a hefty markup for the seller. They aren't actually that much higher quality than something 1/3 or 1/4 the price.

These kinds of goods embody the worst parts of capitalism - withholding surplus value from the person producing the good in the maximum amount possible and also creating an item that isn't needed, this creating waste and putting pressure on already scarce resources.

Maybe these "tightwads" just don't care about this kind of negative signaling? Of course such a thought doesn't even occur to the author. Instead it's labeling and trying to somehow tie it to immigration.

Note: this doesn't mean complete aversion to spending money. I have no problem with people or myself spending thousands of dollars on their tools of the trade for a hobby they enjoy like woodworking/photography/sports, whatever.

Consumerism is a disease and so is op-ed journalism.

> Fox falls into a category of people that the University of Michigan marketing professor Scott Rick has spent years studying:

... people that resist marketing!

Oh, the horror.

they used to be called misers

Conspicuous consumption should be shamed, not the other way around as this article does.

I'm banking my profits to start a dyson sphere company. I am not joking. I'll seriously do it.

This is kind of ridiculous. Like there is something wrong with living within your means and being financially responsible. Guess it's bad for business. First time I'm glad for a walled off article on here. Saved me some time.