It depends on where you want to put your financial priorities.
Some people like to spend a fortune on a house and then spend nothing on furniture/upgrades.
Others rather buy an expensive car and not own a house.
Others rather spend money on their kids instead of buy a new car…
Others just like to be cheap and hoard everything. Nothing wrong with that either.
I often hear people say “I don’t understand why someone would want to buy XYZ or ABC new…” Well, my answer is maybe they like it and can afford it because they don’t spend somewhere else and don’t like to live like a hermit.
Maybe some folks realize that even if you try to live like a miser, the government will do a pretty bang up job trying to either kill your savings through it’s dollar policy or try to tax you the hell out the rest of it.
So, it’s all about what you like what your financial priorities are, and where you want to allocate your dollars. And depending on how much income one has, the allocation can be more or less. Folks with less have to allocate less, and folks with more have more parameters to work with.
Where I think people get into trouble is a lot of folks try to eat their cake and have it too. They see other folks do/have X, and they want the same thing, despite the fact that either they really can’t afford it or if they could have, already spent their financial freedom elsewhere…
Complicated is the fact that is if you have kids, you have kids peer pressure.. Hey, my friend just got X, can I get X? Some parents have an issue with saying “no”. Some parents are the problem and are the ones the other parents hate because they are the ones that spoil their kids rotten. Don’t have an answer to this issue, except that saying “no and too damn bad” works most of the time.
I have no problem buying a new top of the line car seat for my kid, but at the same time have no qualm trying to put the shittiest new tires on my beater car, with the emphasis that I would never put my kid in my beater car or anyone else for that matter.
So it’s all about priorities.
We sort of covered this on the Mira Mesa house thread. I live in the slums of CV, with no AC, no front or backyard, wear $5 tshirts, and I’m so cheap that if I get a hole in my pants, I cut shear the pants, and use them as work shorts. And my car has pleather, and my poor underprivileged kid needs to attend a lowly public school…AN, on the other hand lives in a frickin MM palace with AC, and front and backyard, and cars with real leather, and probably can send his/her kids to a private school.I can’t keep up with the Jones in MM, so I don’t bother to 🙂
