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Comment by jaden | Hacker News Reader

> Brown didn’t have a bed, just a foam bedroll tucked into the corner of one bedroom and a military duffel containing an old uniform and medals.

I understand being frugal and admire it, but this level of frugality is harder to understand. I would hope he was at least comfortable on his bedroll. Based on what I could gather from the article, he seemed like a wonderful man.

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FWIW, I have serious health issues and simply feel better sleeping on a wood floor with a couple of blankets than in a bed.

I'm actually given a very hard time by a lot of people for being willing to talk about such choices. So I think it is understandable that most frugal people don't bother to try to justify it. Most of the world isn't interested in understanding. They are only interested in treating people who aren't "like" them as freaks so as to protect their right to live "normally."

I slept on the floor like this too. I read about why we invented beds and it was to lift ourselves up away from insects on the ground.

Then we invented floors. Then carpet and only poor people had wood floors. Now rich people have wood floors and carpet is cheaper so "less high class."

Point is: A lot of our style/design choices are made with the explicit intention of costing more money as a way to separate the financial classes.

Thus, it's not just to protect their right to live normally, but to protect their status in society.

I think your overall point makes sense, but most people I talk with prefer wooden flooring due to carpet's links with allergies, respiratory conditions, dust/mould/bacteria etc.

I'm sure some people link it with a rustic, wealthy style or so, but I would hazard a guess to say most people are choosing it due to health reasons. I certainly always have been.

Another datapoint checking in for choosing wood floors for the health and easy cleaning.

I find polished/varnished concrete floors really nice too but with those I'd be worried about hitting my head if I fell over - even wood is relatively softer.

I wouldn't be too sure about that. Maybe that's your reason for preferring wooden flooring, but I know me and most of my circle prefer it because it's seen as higher quality and more sophisticated than carpet. It's like the exposed brick of suburbia. I've also got no allergies.

you have nearly all the benefits of wood, without the costs, from lvp/lvt. wood is still about status.

With hard floors, you need to sweep/vacuum pretty much every day, otherwise settled dust just gets re-circulated back into the air. Meanwhile, carpet holds the dust in place, and it stays there until it's sucked up with a vacuum cleaner.

No health issues here, but have been sleeping on the floor since my teens and now whenever I sleep on a bed or anything similarly compliant I wake up with back pains.

The only time it's an issue is when it comes to dating, since practically noone here (CA) wants to sleep on the floor and I have no interest in sleeping on someone's bed.

The other benefit to using the floor is it preserves one's ability to get up and down from the floor into old age. The Japanese got this right, and it's actually had me considering learning Japanese and relocating there multiple times. I presume the aforementioned dating issues would be far less of a problem there.

Well, Japan differs from the ex-British Empire areas in many other ways in addition to sleeping habits. Some might appeal to you but some might not. :)

I also like a really firm sleeping surface — I don't have any particular health problems, I just feel stiff and sore if my bed is too soft — and right now I sleep on a typical raised bed but with a very firm futon. It satisfies me, and if my date doesn't especially like it, she at least perceives it as an odd preference, rather than as a sign of poverty or despair.

Tatami is quite a nice surface to take a nap on. Cool and breathable.

I think there is honestly very little difference between a bedroll and a bed. As soon as you have any kind of separation between you and the floor you’re pretty much good.

>>> I would hope he was at least comfortable on his bedroll.

Most humans on this planet don't sleep in the big fluffy beds that are the norm in the USA. Many, myself included, find them too hot and generally too soft to be comfortable. An inch or two of dense foam over a hard floor is fine for me.

He experienced the Great Depression. That's why, if you read about the Great Depression, you will be hard pressed to spend a dollar.

Most people in USA have read about the Great Depressed and are not hard pressed to spend a dollar.

Reading about something and experiencing it firsthand are not really the same. But I think it is safe to say that he probably had more going on that just that.

The difference is in living through it vs just reading about it in the past tense. For example, my grandmother grew up in it and had all sorts of money-related neuroses for the rest of her life. Maybe that was just her, but many Americans of her generation and background lived their lives as if it was going to happen again any day now, apropos of nothing. Just raw fear from terrible memories.

Most people in the US today have no recollection or even second-hand awareness of it. If anything, people today seem far too willing to take on debt for non-necessities that they couldn’t afford otherwise, and far too unaware of how interest accumulates.

I think there's something more to it than that. I would think that knowing he had assets in excess of $1MM that he could rationalize that a mattress was affordable to him. Old habits die hard though.

I'm not even old, but a mat on the floor has given me the soundest sleep.

YMMV if you're not an on-the-back sleeper.

Probably just what he was comfy with.

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