Comment by LandR | Hacker News Reader

Comment by LandR | Hacker News Reader

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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.

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?

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).

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