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Comment by TulliusCicero | Hacker News Reader

> I know plenty of people who are in serious debt (primarily student and credit card) and still blow tons of money on Amazon.

I don't think this is specific to Amazon. As a whole, Americans seem to be too lax about taking on consumer debt.

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Yup. I've never really had a problem with debt, but i feel likewise to debt, Americans (myself included) spend without forethought.

A few months back i decided to sign up for Simple.com Bank _(a Bank, not CU unfortunately)_, as they let me preallocate all my purchases.

Every single bill, and every single purchase i pre-plan by several weeks. Want a new game? Mark it on the goals, and save $1/d for it. I don't limit myself on what i can buy, just when. This little mental change means that 3 weeks from now i likely won't care about what i was so excited for 3 weeks prior. It's worked wonders for me, especially with large purchases.

I wanted an Amp, to which i was aiming for around $600 for. Now, weirdly enough i can easily afford this and am willing to draw from my buffer to spend this $600. However i preallocated the money a while ago, and now i'm sitting at this special $600 which i could spend, but something is urging me not to spend it. Part of me feels like i could _gain_ $600 if i just simply don't spend it.

It's quite the bizarre assertions i feel like. The number of pre-saved goals i've later removed because i wanted the money more than the item.. it's weird.

Anyway, i'm deviated like hell. Apologies.

> Anyway, i'm deviated like hell.

Yeah you are. Don't you know you're supposed to spend everything you make every paycheck and then some?

Spend the money on experiences! Travel, go to shows, hit the road...

$600 is worthless in and of itself.

Meh, you can enjoy things. If anything, i dislike travel. I like my guitar, i heavily enjoy playing it, and frankly i do need a new Amp.

Though i think this is a great example of how mentally, how it's working for me. I actually need an Amp, but by saving the money ahead of time, suddenly i get a chance to mentually "unspend it".. it's bizarre, but it's how i feel. I literally have $600 sitting in my account right now that i'm having a hard time spending, because it's more real than the Amp.

Quite interesting.

For a lot of Americans, $600 is life-changing.

Of course when you spend it, it is valuable. But OP had mentioned enjoying the feeling of simply collecting the money, a notion which I can't help but challenge.

Assuming the OP you're referring to is me, i may have mislead you a bit. It's not joy in saving money exactly, but building good habits/etc. I've got a lot to save up for, retirement, investments, dental work, etcetc. So it's not that i enjoy the dollars exactly, but i want to have security in finance, for the long and short term. Building good habits is really crucial to being happy there, imo.

Because some believe this country won't last the next 10 years

On that note, where is safe to put your money i wonder? Is there more and less stable mediums to hold your money?

If you're 40 you've probably experienced 2 to 3 boom/bust cycles (depending on the industry) as an earner. I think that kind of volatility and hope for the next windfall leads people to believe debt will work itself out. Or as is oft misattributed to Steinbeck: "... in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."

As an engineer, boom/bust cycles like this remind me of system instability with insufficient damping. It doesn't work itself out; the oscillations get larger and larger, and then something breaks. Remember the Tacoma Narrows Bridge?

But the oscillations aren't getting larger. The great recession sucked, but it was nowhere near as bad as the great depression.

They are getting larger. You're looking too far back. After the Great Depression, policies were enacted which served as dampers to improve system stability. They worked for quite a while. But eventually these policies were eroded or repealed, and other societal factors came along which degraded stability, so the oscillations picked up again, and grew larger and larger (think 80s S&L crisis, '00 dot-com crash), culminating in the '08 recession. Now we're going to have a much bigger one with Trump and the GOP in office. If this one doesn't cause a collapse, the next one will.

The dot com crash was big for the stock market and for the tech industry, but it wasn't a really big recession; it barely touched economic fundamentals, just look at GDP.

Personally I doubt the next recession/slowdown will be anywhere near as big as 08, but I guess we'll see.

We always have recessions when there's Republicans in power (I'm not sure why voters haven't figured this one out yet); there was one with Reagan, one with Bush I, one with Bush II, etc. Trump and the current crop of Republicans are advocating very extreme changes (namely trade restrictions), so I think we're likely to have a more extreme recession because of this.

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