The last one is key to my entire value system as a person. I have had some financial wins in life and try not to let it impact my day to day. I avoid, sometimes with great effort, flashy things (I’ve been tempted to by exotic cars as an example but have found if I just rent one for a day or two that urge goes away, it’s just a toy to me). I usually say I’m not materialistic, but I am at times, and what I strive to be is humble, modest, and invisible. I don’t want other people seeing me as flaunting wealth. It’s not who I want to be or how I want my kids to see me act.
That said, I do, like Buffet, live in a nice house. I’m not depriving myself. But it’s also very approachable by any successful employee of a company (maybe salary of a director or VP of any large company could afford it). It doesn’t represent what I could afford if I wanted to really get into the elite neighborhoods of my city. I don’t really enjoy people in those areas. They tend to always talk about money in one way or another (vacations, private schools, cars, houses, maids, nanny’s, etc). Nothing wrong with it I suppose, just not my jam and not how I want my children raised and not the people I want as my neighbors and peers. I’ve always been much more envious of those unsuspecting rich people that drive clunker cars or live in modest homes and mow their own lawns but then you find out they paid for 16 grand children to go to college or something random like that. That’s the kind of thing I’d rather be known for than the guy with the Ferrari or yacht (even if they weren’t mutually exclusive).
Modern society is too narrow minded about what wealth means. To most people it means fancy watches, cars, homes, etc. To me wealth is about time and freedom. I can pick up the tab at dinner for a group of 12. I can afford to keep my 1972 Schwinn bicycle in tip top shape or my grandfather's jacket mended when it breaks. I can afford to rent forever if I want. I'll never work a job I don't like, I can just quit. I feel more wealthy this way than if I owned 3 lambos and had to work to make ends meet.
Exotic cars are designed to be fast and fun to drive, for people that enjoy driving. You can still find them fun even if you dislike showing off. There are even some great exotic cars that look normal enough on the outside that a non car enthusiast won’t recognize them as anything unusual.
FWIW Nobody I know sees me rent these cars. I usually do it while on vacation. They’re fun to drive, so it’s closer to an occasional hobby than a complete change of my lifestyle
I dont judge, you are free to do however you please, but dont act like renting expensive car is a normal human thing to do and has nothing to do with bragging about how much money you have. Its a rich person hobby.
Still feels like you're blowing it out of proportion and are judging my hobby and reading into my post as braggadocios (which it was meant to be very matter of fact and kind of the opposite if you read any of it besides what I admitted to as my indulgence). Very average income/wealth people have hobbies that cost them a couple thousand dollars a year and we all choose our own hobbies. I don't golf and there are millions of golfers that spend the same or perhaps way more as an example. I don't drink alcohol and I would guess a large portion of US adults spend more annually on beverages than I do on that one "hobby". Damn near everyone travels and that's essentially a hobby. Plenty of people go deep sea fishing or whale watching on rented yachts. I could go on but are you judgmental on their "rich person hobby" like you are of mine?
Edit: I rarely do this with HN but I'm getting troll vibes from you and so I clicked on your comment history where you lay out your unfortunate financial situation in a comment ("I have 500€ in my bank account, 3k debt and 30 years of work left ahead of me") and it all makes sense that you are just resentful or jealous. My only constructive advise is you should try not to have this attitude on HN, there are plenty of wealthy or good-to-know people here and any chance conversation could turn into something that shifts your life's trajectory. If the breadcrumbs show that you're just a troll you're basically building a wall between you and those people.
HN is a shithole with tons of pretentious people so I'll avoid HN for any opportunities. I am resentful of people with a lot of money who use it for temporary amusement over making the world a better place. Far from jealous though, as I am content with my income. I couldn't care less about good-to-know tech bros.
People seem to dismiss the value of humility and frugality nowadays, but I see them as important virtues that lead to a more enjoyable life. Counter intuitively, wealth can allow someone the freedom and privilege to live a simpler and more frugal life, which can feel more rewarding and fun.
For one, I like to have a connection with the place I live and the physical objects I use like my car and home- the fact that they are old things I fixed up and maintain myself gives me a sense of place, connection, and pride- just buying something expensive that someone else prepared for me would feel infantalizing and unsatisfying. I enjoy deeply understanding and being part of the history of the objects and tools I use, in a way that can’t be purchased.
Also, I think a lot of consumerism and conspicuous consumption comes from a sad and depressing place of anxiety that you aren’t good enough to make friends or find romantic partners without doing this. Many people don’t directly want or enjoy conspicuously expensive things, but are hoping it leads to social status or approval. But this inevitably means resigning yourself to essentially buying the company of people that don’t actually like you. At the extreme end you see some famously wealthy people so anxious about not being perceived as wealthy enough that they glue tacky fake plastic gold on everything they own because they’re afraid of looking poorer than billionaires. That type of narcissism is not a happy way to live, and will turn off the kind of people that would have built a genuine emotional connection with you.
Well said! A large part of my ethos is not caring what people think of me. As in, random people that don’t know me or try to make guess of my social status based on what signals I’m putting out. I care about what some people think about me, but not my financial situation more so what they think of me as a human.
Avoiding scaling your lifestyle with tour current wealth seems like an extremely important lesson people could learn here. Very few people know what "enough" means to them.
Its probably worth noting that I mean "enough" in the context of consumption and physical goods. "Enough" wealth doesn't really matter, its only a number in a database or a piece of paper until you spend it.
Not only that, but it’s important. Needless to say I am not comparing net-worths :) My rent spend started increasing around 4-5th year (steeply) of starting my first job and I saw it and kinda stopped/curbed it at somewhere like 7th year. It has remained there (give or take) because it had reached a really good level (below luxury or ultra premium so to speak) wrt my city’s general rental trends and spends (of course inflation factored in). It’s been 8 years since and I have been without a job for last two years (a bit by choice, if certain things can really be called choice) and pretty much my other spending trends also kinda plateaued around those years (experience spends kept going up slowly but I find them easier to manage). I can’t explain how much it has helped me when I have been living on savings for straight 2 years now. Not just the specific relative smaller amount but more so the predictability of it.
To a certain extent this is true. You shouldn’t be going into debt just because your income level allows you to get more loans etc. But once you reach a certain income threshold it doesn’t really matter.
So what was the point of him living a frugal, simple lifestyle? I would argue that its just something he was used to and found joy in, and thats ok. Some people like that. Others might want to use their money to unlock new experiences that come with it. Thats ok too.
Sure, and of course the elephant in the room is overconsumption and planetary overload, which get unlocked too on a bigger scale as a result of similar thinking.
Which ends does unlocking potentially endless ”experiences” serve? Our personal disconnect from nature is not separate from our collective disconnect from nature.
>Very few people know what "enough" means to them.
Does this ultimately come down to Taste?
It is hard to judge what is enough. While a Civic is a perfectly good car, it certainly isn't the safest, nor does it have the best riding experience. Once you get into attention to details, what is "enough" often means mediocre.
I want "good enough" from a crazy perfectionist. Like Steve Jobs' Apple.
I don’t disagree, I just don’t think “living in the same house for decades” qualifies as a clear signal of living simply. It could just as easily be a front or compulsive frugality. Or a really nice house to begin with. For instance, there’s no way my family would fit in the first house my wife and I bought. And we couldn’t have afforded our current house back then, either. It’s also worth noting that 60+ years ago was a very different house-buying experience. So I don’t think there’s much to learn from the fact that Warren Buffett bought a house back then and still lives in it, other than that it worked out for him and he’s not flaunting his wealth for whatever reason makes sense to him.
His inspiration is a big reason why I still drive my 1993 Honda Civic after owning it for 15 years. I bought it for $1000 after graduating college. I say a little prayer every time I turn the key that it actually starts. I gave it its own github repo where I track the maintenance I do on it. It reminds me where I come from, and that I don't need shiny shit to be happy. I believe this to be a virtue.
My girlfriend years ago thought it was incredible and amusing that I was working a fancy tech job and drove this old car around. We are now happily married.
These days, I could buy a Bentley with cash. But I don't need one.
Warren Buffet's example is an inspiration that should be followed by more people who go into debt buying crap they can't afford with money they don't have in order to look rich.
Driving a car that old puts yourself and others on the road at greater risk due to lack of safety features compared to a modern car. One could argue being able to afford a new car and not buying one to extoll other virtues is neglecting your own and communal good.
If you’re afraid to carefully drive a high quality and well maintained older car that was designed from the ground up with safety and quality at the absolute forefront- say an 80s Mercedes or Volvo, you would benefit from relaxing a bit and being willing to take slightly more risk in life.
Besides, I am not wholly convinced that improved safety tech is a replacement for the type of safety first engineering used in every tiny detail of those old cars, that mitigate certain types of accidents and injury that won’t be addressed in crash testing.
Back-up cameras are really important for kids who can't be seen in a rearview mirror. Those can be retrofit into an older car, but after having a kid I can see why these became mandatory.
A well designed car and proper driving technique make a backup camera unnecessary.
Many old cars have excellent rewards visibility without needing any camera- no camera will compare to a first generation Porsche Boxster with the top down for example, where you can directly see behind you by looking back. Volvo wagons are great like that also.
I also, as a rule never back anywhere that I haven’t seen directly just a few seconds before. I always back into parking places so I can see them facing forwards and not back up when starting out, and if I do need to back up when starting out I walk behind the car and look around first and then immediately get in and back up.
How is a toddler going to get behind my car before I can get in it that I did not notice was nearby and start visually tracking from standing there? How is a backup camera going to help when I backed into the spot and am now pulling out forwards? That’s just not a realistic concern. Also, backup cameras cannot see much closer to the wheel than those cars I mentioned with good visibility.
Tech really won’t help you here- safe driving requires looking where your vehicle is going with your own eyes. The field of view of a backup camera is insufficient- even if you have one, it’s usually better to be looking directly behind you and not use it. I see cars with backup cameras and sonar hit each other in parking lots all the time, because they thought the camera was a replacement for looking and situational awareness.
No backup camera will let you observe the nail the wind blew close to your tire to puncture it soon as you move the car. Perhaps it is best if I just stay home.
I have not yet flattened a kid with my car, but I suppose there's still time. Also backup cameras are very important for today's vehicles which are gigantic monsters compared with cars of the 90s. My car is quite low to the ground.
Also, show me the stats on how many toddlers are pancaked by lack of backup cameras each year per capita. That will inform me about how truly "important" this problem supposedly is.
Safety features like tracking where you are, and requiring a subscription for seat heating ?
I just think the everything connected to cloud approach sucks, but Im communal danger now.
I was driving a 30 year old car for a while (Miata). I'd say I was pretty low risk as you tend to go slowly in classic ones so things don't blow up. Also the small size reduces the risk to other road users compared to driving a massive suv or some such.
I phrased it like this to a friend who was looking to buy an upgrade to a relatively new car: "What I paid you $1000 a month (his new car payment) to drive the old car?" When I put it in that perspective, he drove that car for quite a while longer.
Personally, I buy new, and keep putting my car payment into a savings account once it is paid off. If I can't afford to put that money into savings, I can't afford a new car payment. I'm only allowed to do non-routine repairs from those funds. It's amazing how much you don't want to crack into that for a car once it grows to a few thousand. It's the most powerful visual impact of savings I've come across.
Car payments have a way of disappearing into an upgraded lifestyle when you don't have to make them, and then they come out of savings when you take a loan for the car.
Honda Civic may be the ultimate car for that. I bought a pickup 8 years ago that I hope will be a 20 year car. Buy something with a reputation for 200k+ miles.
+1, I am by far the most financially successful of my circle, and I drive the cheapest car (a used Fiat Punto) and have sort of the cheapest house (albeit it's bigger it's not downtown).
Don't buy yourself a Bentley, but you really ought to buy yourself a newer car that supports comma.ai. You don't get points for making your own life worse unnecessarily. Necessarily, sure, but don't make a sport of it.
My life is better driving a car that is simple and fun, where I feel alert and connected to the road and every function is controlled by me deliberately and manually. Ideally something with no screens, a manual transmission, and no power steering. Being chaperoned by AI is infantalizing and boring.
Are they truly happier, in the sense of being more content? Or are they just deriving more temporary pleasure from the hedonic treadmill they're on?
You can probably tell which one it is, by how long their happiness with their house / car / TV / fill-in-the-blank lasts, before they start thinking about trading up to an even nicer fill-in-the-blank.
Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard wrote a great book on happiness, here's an excerpt I enjoy which talks about the difference between pleasure and happiness, in two parts. [1] [2]
Fair enough on the personal decision part. I'm less interested in telling people what to do and more interested in whether the premise ('nicer things = happier') actually tracks with how human satisfaction works. The research suggests it often doesn't, which seems worth knowing regardless of what you choose to do with that information. [1]
I would recommend the recently published book The Art of Spending Money by Morgan Housel, or check out the interviews he's done in recent months on it:
It's not about being frugal or cheap or spendy, but on recognizing human psychology and what actually brings most people happiness. See also the 85-year Harvard study on the topic:
Maslow's hierarchy of needs would assume that there is a point beyond which extra material comfort does not make you happy or content, but it also is quite clear that there is a point at up to which it does. Most books on happiness are written for people who are long past the point where increasing their monetary inputs will increase their happiness and contentment, but it is also clear those people exist and are perhaps even in the majority of humanity.
I really don't like this moralizing but more importantly there's increasing evidence that wealth does correlate with life satisfaction.
> The data showed the happiness gap between wealthy and middle-income participants was wider than between middle- and low-income participants.
And the apparent reason:
> He said: “A greater feeling of control over life can explain about 75% of the association between money and happiness. So I think a big part of what’s happening is that, when people have more money, they have more control over their lives. More freedom to live the life they want to live.”
Sure, but I’d argue that it’s largely reduced stress rather than raw materialism. For example being able not to worry about paying both the electric bill and a child’s dental work this month.
There’s many other research that corroborates this view. After some point increasing income didn’t increase life satisfaction. Usually somewhere in the low upper-middle class region.
> After some point increasing income didn’t increase life satisfaction. Usually somewhere in the low upper-middle class region.
That's the common assumption that this research repudiates.
> These findings are counter to a widely covered 2010 study that found happiness rises with income, but plateaus at around $75,000.
He studied much richer people:
> Killingsworth also used data from the ultra-wealthy (people with a median net worth between $3m and $7.9m), which is often lacking and difficult to obtain.
> The data showed the happiness gap between wealthy and middle-income participants was wider than between middle- and low-income participants.
> His study also found wealthy individuals were “substantially and statistically significantly happier than people earning over $500,000 each year”.
> Are they truly happier, in the sense of being more content?
The biggest thing anyone can do in their life is figure out exactly what makes them happy, and spend their money there. Don't let society tell you. People on this site likely care about computers and spend a disproportionate amount of their money on them, and that's ok. I don't care about cars or TVs, but I care about experiences and comfort so will spend money on travel and upgraded plane tickets.
I also care about agency, so tend to save money rather than spend. I want the freedom it provides more than what it can buy - typically.
Yeah but what is meaningfully "nicer" becomes and exponentially more expensive and ends up being mostly wasted value. And by time someone has to start actually worrying about such questions they have enough free capital to spend that they can have a high quality version of almost anything anyone would want to possess or use other than pure displays of wealth.
Maybe if the basic needs on the average person were taken care of then random displays of extravagant wealth would be acceptable. But when something as simple as getting a rotten tooth extracted or a filling on a front tooth is too much "luxury" for many working class citizens, it is a complete misallocation of society's resources.
I'm happy right after I eat ice cream too. Doesn't make it a good lifestyle.
Before you go on about how saying it's "good" or "not good" is a value judgement that I'm not entitled to make -- you're damn right it is, and I'll do what I want.
My 14" portable CRT I had when I was a teenager gave me joy every time I used it. My first car cost me less than 2k and gave me joy for 5 years.
You are now unable to get joy from a TV smaller than the largest one you've ever bought. Many people are unable to get joy from a car costing under 10k, let alone 2k.
It is actually the opposite. The less things you have, the less things you will want.
I even experience this with food. If I am on a strict diet for 2 weeks and then have a "cheat" meal, a previously normal meal feels like a satisfying feast.
If I splurge on food for 2 weeks, even 3/4th a pizza doesn't satisfy. I just want the other 1/4th.
It is really why we have so much wealth as a society but so much discontent. It is like believing there is some amount of alcohol that would satisfy the alcoholic. It just grows the desire for more while contentment is harder and harder to achieve.
I am pretty sure this is just a property of the dopaminergic system.
> You can buy a bigger and bigger house car tv stereo whatever
> But you can do that without any money.
Well...
Material things can contribute to happiness, or detract.
Balancing the things we spend our life on, relative to an understanding of what makes us happy, is going to be an idiosyncratic exercise. Assuming that X won't contribute to the happiness of person Y is some deep projection.
There seem to be many kinds of happiness too. Would I remain happy if I lost my house? Yes. I have gone through enough ups and downs to know that. But would I feel as fulfilled? No. I have gone through enough ups and downs to know that.
It's true (I live in Omaha). He is still in the same house.
I didn't grow up here—my wife did. Very early on, when I first visited Omaha, she drove me by his place. After three decades or so in California, I retired and we moved back to her hometown. Buffett is still there.
I went by it a few weeks ago. There's a gate on the driveway, and I assume some kind of security presence. Probably no different than anyone under constant public scrutiny.
I own several and have ridden thousands upon thousands of miles.
When I got my first bike as a kid, a cheap "mountain bike" with 24" wheels that probably weighed more than my current road bike, I was at maximum happiness. I was not at only 40% happiness because it didn't have a carbon frame or a Di2 groupset from the future. I was at 100.
Later when I got my first road bike I was at 100% happiness again. But nothing can make me happier than I was with that first, heavy bicycle-shaped object. It might equal it but it's impossible to surpass.
Nowhere did anybody say “moving house for any reason is bad”. Buffet could’ve moved if he wanted to, I presume. So, evidently, he didn’t have any of those ‘other reasons’. What we *can^ say is that he didn’t move, which shows that he didn’t allow lifestyle inflation to extend to his place of residence.
No they said we can all learn from it. I understood the implication, I just reject the stated idea that that lesson is to “live in one house for your entire adult life”.
> You can buy a bigger and bigger house car tv stereo whatever, but it will not make you happy.
Hard disagree here.
Ask a 4 person family stuffed into a one bedroom condo if buying a larger 3 bedroom home would make them happier, I'd imagine to 99.99999% of them the answer is yes.
I upgraded my road bike 2 years ago from an entry level one to a nice racing bike and each weekend I ride a 100km route, that sure as heck makes me happier than riding the old slower and heavier bike.
We just took our extended family on a vacation for a week. Money sure as heck made us happier in that instance.
It is true that cash can't fix all issues in life but any one who says money can't make you happy is either lying or doesn't have money.
Run a simple thought experiment in your head. If you woke up tomorrow under crushing credit card and medical debt and it was suddenly paid off, would that make you happier?
Meh. If you have the resources, buy whatever makes you happy.
If a bigger house makes you happy because you have space for your hobbies and you don't need to fight with your family members for space, buy a bigger house.
The whole "money doesn't bring happiness" thing is bullshit unless you are a Buddha.
A mansion in Malibu isn't going to make me happy, because I wouldn't know what the hell to do in Malibu. An upgrade from a 2-bedroom to a 4-bedroom home with a garage so I don't have to smell laser cutter fumes anymore and hack a ventilation system out a bedroom window? That very well might.
> An upgrade from a 2-bedroom to a 4-bedroom home with a garage so I don't have to smell laser cutter fumes anymore and hack a ventilation system out a bedroom window? That very well might.
As someone who upgraded from a 2 bedroom flat to a 3 bedroom house with a garage, I concur. Having a place to store my bikes and other “dirty” tools that’s not inside was such an improvement to my quality of life that I tell people to always look for a half decent garage when they buy. Especially if they also like cycling!
The key to a happy life is to learn how to reduce the amount of things you own and how to build strong relationships. Once you have enough to put a roof over your head and food on your table, more than that can only be used to purchase increasing amounts of comfort, which is not the same as increasing amounts of happiness.
YouTube has plenty of videos of people calling in with hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars a year in income and somehow they are still broke and in debt. Live below your means, save the excess income into an investment portfolio, keep doing that until you have enough money to live off the interest. Don't even think about buying a Rolex until you have so much money coming in from interest that you don't even know what else to do with it. Even then, remember that the Rolex, like anything else, requires maintenance, but that if you make someone else happy, they can take care of themselves.
