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Comment by pgsimp | Hacker News Reader

Could you elaborate? I'd really like to understand why you don't have any spare money, despite of two good earners in the household?

"A joke" is also incorrect, the guy is trying to make money. Nevertheless, if you reframe it as "for fun", vacations presumably should count. I rather doubt you would be unable or unwilling to spend 1000$ on a vacation?

Nobody says that everybody should be willing to spend money on an emoji email project. That just happens to be that person's interest, so they spent money on it. Don't you have any interests at all that cost money? I personally wouldn't spend 1000$ on many things that other people spend it for, but that is not the same as not being able to afford it.

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$1000 is less than 1% of the money I have in savings sitting in the bank. After all my expenses this month I better have more than $1000 left over when I get paid or somethings gone horribly wrong!

Yet...

I still wouldn't spend $1000 on anything outside of essentials without having a really good reason. I'm not spending $1000 on a holiday, that seems mental to me but then I'm not big into traveling.

I like gaming but I can't bring myself to spend the $2-3k or whatever it would be to get a good gaming PC. SO I have a PS4 and I mostly get games on sale or "free" via PS+.

Hell, I'm even considering whether or not I want to spend <$1000 on a PS5 if they are ever available for sale again... The PS4 is fine and I don't really need it so it feels like too much money to spend on something I don't really need. I can definitely live without it.

I just feel $1000 is a LOT of money. There's an amount of money that is a lot and an amount of money that I don't consider a lot. I think that break off is actually around $400. More than that trips a mental switch for me.

Maybe "not a lot of money" was a bit misleading. It really depends on what you want to achieve. I agree that it feels like a lot of money for spending it on a gaming PC (I have the same debate with myself). But since you are a head of something, you probably know how much it costs to hire people to get anything done. So 1000$ does not seem like a lot for investing in a project, for example - even if you don't pay any money for anything, you'll rake up 1000$ in opportunity costs quickly.

If you want to achieve anything, you'll need a lot more than 1000$, so in relation to that 1000$ seems little. And I don't just mean for projects, but in general, if you want to change things in your life (get an education, have kids, whatever).

And it also is not a lot in terms of how much money people need and earn. I think most people will spend more than 1000$ on rent, food clothing and so on every month. Especially if you have children.

I wouldn't spend 1000$ every day just like that, but I would spend it for special occasions (like going on holidays).

Sounds like you might also be starving yourself and your family for no reason? If you have > $100k in the bank, and presumably a much larger multiple of that in investments and other assets - why not spend $1k sometimes on something that you could enjoy or that (in this case) could earn you more money?

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