Millennials who buy less are happier
cnbc.com
cnbc.com
I have a 10 year old car I drive 100 miles a month. It's a tool not a contest. Why would I need a new expensive vehicle with phone home capabilities so they can start blasting ads at me on startup or start charging me monthly for heated seats. When I'm gone, no one is going to remember of I drove a 14 year old Nissan or brand new Rivian.
Once we got off the train it became easy. We focus on long term upgrades to our house, paying down debt, and saving for the inevitable retirement. Even as someone making 4-5x the national average, I endeavor to be frugal because it doesn't last. We spend on stuff that will actually bring joy not stuff someone has blasted our brains into thinking we need and we buy quality which makes a huge difference.
You suggest that you are happier because you have cut down on your exposure to advertising and “inadequacy content”, and this has resulted in a drop in expenditures, rather than frugality directly being the thing that resulted in happiness.
It’s the same in my case - I decided, quite a few years ago, that chasing status was a sucker’s game, and stopped buying crap that signalled status. I drive a truck that’s older than me, live in a 45m2 log cabin I built myself, wear clothes that were barely fashionable 20 years ago, if I’m even bothering with clothes, and spend my days doing whatever the hell I choose, because it turns out that by not engaging in the consumer mill you suddenly have all this cash sitting around and not much to do with it, so you invest it, and suddenly spending your life working and chasing status in some career or another also seems a lot less appealing.
I’ve never been terribly happy with myself, which is just a de facto part of my nature — but I’m certainly content with my existence, and knowing that I’ve got a war chest tucked away that would make Croesus blush amply fulfils any status desires, as if I chose to, I could buy a few thousand teslas and drive them into the sea, and just carry on as I am. I believe the term is “fuck you money”, and it beats the crap out of having some shiny bauble on hire-purchase. I don’t even think about it until I find myself on the receiving end of “oh, you must be so poor to live this way, why don’t you work harder or get a new car”, and I just smile and remind myself that I could probably buy their mortal soul.
It’s also eminently achievable for anyone on a halfway decent income, if they stop frittering it away on crap.
The only thing that I do from time to time spend cash on is the occasional adventure. People tell me I should do a YouTube channel, or an instagram, and I tell them that I’m not doing this for anyone but me and those I take along with me. I don’t give a tiny flying rat’s ass about “personal brand”.
Stuff doesn’t bring joy. Status, as it’s sold via the drip drip drip of planned obsolescence doesn’t either. Security and freedom and time, do.
I have no plans on any oracular conquests.
Meanwhile you still have to pay property taxes, and for at least some of your food, which means you need a job. And because you have a job you need childcare. So minimally you need to pay for the property taxes food and childcare, occasional medical bills, the upkeep of the truck (emissions testing needed to legally drive to get groceries etc, so even a check engine light means costly repair). Oh and don't forget, when I was looking for a truck "older than me" during covid I found the market was absolutely insane and they were practically the price of a new truck. All in that's a full working-class salary right there, and that's with spending on nothing but essentials.
As an extremely frugal person the only way I've ever been able to live the way you live was when I was single and basically squatting in the national forest. And even then I had LEO up my ass threatening to cite me for illegally existing in nature. Hopefully any American planning this life has the money to emigrate or the will and craftiness to do it illegally.
The property taxes are €40 a year for the house, the mill, the ruined medieval village, and the 15ha of land.
My passive income is seven figures, because rather than fritter away on crap, I invested in a diverse range of stuff, from equities to real estate to small businesses/startups. I’m noodling about with a few new ventures of my own as I have time on my hands.
And yes, emigration is useful. I draw an income from expensive economies and moved to a cheap country where quality of life is king.
To be clear, this is the current state - I worked my arse off for 15 years and lived a pretty monkish existence, and now reap the rewards.
Unfortunately my dumbass country banned the hilux. Always wanted one.
The golden visa was a much abused scheme largely for absentee landlords who want EU residency, and it has indeed jacked up property prices in the major population centres to an unsustainable degree - many properties have been priced to the visa threshold, and then sit vacant, unrented, often dilapidating. I’m glad to see the back of it, as it gives estrangeiros a bad rap.
I find it unsurprising that the care and attention of family requires different circumstances.
I don't really understand why whenever an alternative lifestyle is brought up there is always someone that says "Huh, yeah, well try doing that with a family, buddy!".
Some people live without family, and they shouldn't really feel the need to fit into a cookie-cutter existence that presupposes the future existence of a family unit -- they make it work.
>when I was looking for a truck "older than me" during covid I found the market was absolutely insane and they were practically the price of a new truck.
you were looking for a used vehicle during one of the very worst times in the used vehicle market for buyers ever (at least in the US; I didn't follow elsewhere).
May want to read again what I replied to ", buddy!"
I have friends who make over $200k in affordable areas that constantly complain about money but buy new cars every 2 years, spend $1000's on lego sets, buy expensive toys they sell for 2/3-1/2 value within two years (campers, digital home gyms, etc), need the latest TV, Monitor, Phone... it never ends. It's not filling a need or solving a problem. It's just high price branded junk that they can pose next to on Facebook or Instagram.
I cut all that off and I feel so much better. I have learned how to love the things I have instead of finding flaws for an excuse to buy the next thing.
Interesting. This is actually where the dopamine hit comes from for me -- being educated at the things I want to buy at the rest for whatever price-point and goal I'm trying to achieve, whether that's something for the house (TV) or something related to a hobby (bike, espresso machine, etc).
I bought some nice monitors for my PC setup 1-2 years ago after a bunch of research, but they were replacing 10+ year old monitors. I don't expect to replace the new ones any time soon, so it's not like I'm doing endless research on computer monitors. I stopped after I got these. Now I just enjoy them. I also got a TV and soundbar less than 6 months ago after lots of research; I no longer research those things at all. I'll probably keep both of them for many years too.
I think you are correct in a way. I do like the TV and sound bar. But also I'm wary of the addictiveness of reading reviews, upselling myself to higher specs and higher price than I'd originally intended. There does seem to be some sort of dopamine hit with researching options.
I have a workaround: I do the endless research part, then close the browser and don't buy aanything. Hell, the best part is doing your homework.
To be honest I would be much further ahead in life if I put that same level of energy towards bettering myself as a developer.
Also known as Diderot effect; https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diderot_effect
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”
― Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms: The Play
"poor man pays forever" (subscription)
The hard part is not scraping together the money to buy the superior product, but determining if it really matters to you.
Boots that you wear all day every day? Sure easy.
Furniture that ends up getting light use? Maybe not.
Which laptop does a college student really need, if at all? Does the family really need an SUV?
It's just as easy to overbuy.
When I had little responsibilities going for a weeklong hike and camp or whatever is liberating and costs almost nothing so can save a lot. With a shrieking toddler you'll be very lucky if they tolerate something like that for 2 miles and a few hours, so the unhappiness of being unable to fulfill your goals gets replaced by some meager slivers of efficiency from material goods and home-based hobbies that cost money in the form of the rent to house the hobby if nothing else.
I wonder how much of this is "I can no longer do the shit that I really enjoy for free, so I'm at least going to buy a nice lobster to eat in the 15 minutes I have before the next meltdown of the toddler or caretaking of the elderly parent."
It's much harder to just spontaneously go out and do stuff with friends. Even when the kids have been put to bed and are asleep you can't just leave the house so I end doing things at home like playing games.
I've definitely had my share two mile hikes that end in whining and complaints but as they get older (6 and 3 now) it's gotten better and more activities open up
The article doesn't really provide anything other that correlation, it doesn't show a causative link in either direction. It does however do that classic of providing just enough to fill people's preconceived notions (because the lack of causative link means that you can easily place your own personal causation).
(Badly translated from Italian: L’avere compensa per ma mancanza di essere)
On the other hand you can probably take it too far. I've got a 2013 HP laptop whose case is physically broken in multiple ways. Yet, I run linux on it, and I've replaced the battery once or twice and it meets my needs so I've yet to upgrade. When I do, I'll buy an ~2019-2020 vintage thinkpad or something and I'll be stoked.
I've been doing this with phones since forever. Every upgrade is really significant, and its cheap since it's a couple years out of date.
Also, sure, poor people in non-urbanized, less technologically advanced situations are happier but at what trade-offs?
Also, sure, poor people in non-urbanized, less technologically advanced situations are happier but at what trade-offs?
- Housing Down Turn
- Start Of Pandemic Downturn (not everything was a rocket ship)
- Post Pandemic Downturn
Not so once in a lifetime, it seems.
EDIT: if I include what I witnessed with my parents, I'd include the 90s / early 2000s tech bubble burst in this, which would make it 4
It's the same with all these natural disasters that apparently only happen once in a century every few years.
Plus it requires 3% gains each year forever - which is obviously impossible.
I'm just over the whole thing really.
You can buy 30 year Treasury bonds that pay well over 3% (the market rate was 3.88% yesterday). 30 years isnt forever, but its a substantial portion of a human lifetime.
For those worried about inflation, 30 year TIPS are paying 1.54% real (inflation + 1.54%).
"The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending we lay waste our powers; Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon, The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers, For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not. —Great God! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn."
When it comes down to it, I just want to have certainty when I go to bed at night that I'm not failing myself, my family, or my world. I desire a clean conscience and no regrets and no one can sell those to me.
So we take a generation that has been essentially subjected to the worst generational economic warfare in modern memory (from the boomers).
Where basic subsistence existence while saddled with bloated college loans, no job prospects, inflated housing costs, exhorbitant healthcare, high food and rising energy/fuel costs...
So basically, those who are "buying more" in the millenials aren't doing it by choice... basic living takes up that much more of their income, which is the definition of economic insecurity. They aren't ABLE to save. Another word for those people is "poor".
But those millenials that aren't "buying more" by some relative percentage of their income are probably... more economically secure. Yes, they are saving because the CAN save and they aren't "poor".
Millenials are definitively less consumerist than boomers. That isn't some pop sociology take, it is basic economics: THEY DON'T HAVE MONEY to be consumerists to the standards of the boomers. You don't need to ascribe it to some superior collective ethos, or arbitrary generational trend.
It's the result of boomer economic warfare on all the other generations. The boomers should have their medicare and social security yanked for what they did to this country.
Source: Gen X-ish, not a millenial.
In short, what I want out of life is largely not material things, but just a nice place to exist and pursue my interests.
I realize, of course, that nothing about this is particularly radical, I don't expect this comment to blow anyone's mind. By my estimate a cool 8-10 million would be more than sufficient for me to have basically everything I ever wanted - i.e. buy the aforementioned nice home and then live comfortably off the returns for the rest of my days.
If any recently minted tech billionaires reading this would like to donate to the cause of me fucking off from society to the woods, feel free to shoot me an email ;)
One article I really like from that blog is this one: https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2015/08/19/urban-tribe/
It's more than a little bit counter to the idea of "fucking off from society to the woods", though. Still, a man can dream of total independence :)
I'd bet that combination is rare. Especially old growth forest with fiber internet access, but with powerball money I'd bet I could find something.
What did they do to this country?
- when given the choice of oil vs the future of humanity, sided with oil for 5-7 decades
- shipping manufacturing overseas, destruction of the middle class, destruction of unions, free trade agreements. Let me emphasize how explicitly boomers destroyed unions. It was a common negotiation tactic of companies to basically pay the existing (boomer) union workers more and guarantee THEIR benefits, but the new people coming into the company (non-boomer) would get no union benefits
- privatization and deregulation of mass quantities of society and the economy leading to, most prominently in my view, a nonfunctional healthcare system and monopoly/cartel in practically every identifiable market
- deficit spending that essentially enriched their generation at the expense of future generations
- benefited from vast amounts of federally funded education, then underfunded and ruined higher education for future generations
- destabilized society at fundamental levels with the war on drugs when they were the generation that most pervasively used drugs in their formative years
- reaganomics led to the great wealth divide, and those formative economic years were driven by the boomers greed as they moved up the corporate ladder
- the vast expansion of military spending
- the suburbs, while invented by their parents, taken to absurd and destructive lengths
Basically, given the world on a platter from WWII postwar dominance and the greatest technological growth and development ever, they have saddled future generations with debt, a ruined environment, massive corruption, and vast entrenched social and racial problems.
Their final gifts will be bankrupting Medicare and Social Security after politically underfunding them or outright stealing from them for 50-70 years as part of runaway deficit spending and military spending. Which is why I advocate denying them those benefits.
It is a generation obsessed with materialism, hedonism, and selfishness. Now, I'm not going to say that other generations are some saints or won't be corrupted by the materialism of midlife like the 80s/90s of the boomers, but at least there is acknowledgement of global warming, racial strife, the drug war, and having to deal with them rather than push them to future generations.
Boomer will be a bad word here on out.
Shame that we'll probably end up with fientorue that's just built into the walls with padding replaced from time to time.
When I lived in California, I managed to furnish a good amount of my home with street finds. Solid wood furniture, tables, one time a color laser printer, and my personal favorite: an LCD tv where the previous owner forgot to sign out of the smart tv.
The rest i built with my father. Mostly pine, with ash for the more delicate stuff (like chairs).
We were paying well over $2,000/month for two kids part time. All the daycares have a waiting list that is months to years long and you can't get on it until you have a birth certificate. That's INSANE. No wonder no one my age is having kids.
We need to start enacting policies that support families with young kids like, NOW, before we are really feeling the demographics crunch because in 20 years it's going to be WAY too late.
If you want kids, move to a country where the government policies actually encourage this.
Also here's the study in question: https://experts.arizona.edu/en/publications/materialist-valu...
The article claims this:
> Millennials who implement “proactive financial strategies” tend to be happier and more satisfied with their lives, according to the new research.
This _can_ mean spending less, but can also mean creating a budget and sticking to it or even spending _more_, but more responsibly.
More seriously the article doesn't really provide compelling argument for causation in either direction.
I'll gladly spend money to eat healthy and have a nice bed.
What I find truly fulfilling to consume, are tools that get used often doing the work I enjoy doing. I also use a 2015 macbook air to write code when needed, so don't take my words the wrong way.
Get good at "Good Enough".
But this article is basically about how having a budget probably makes you less stressed than not having a budget, which is far less interesting in my mind that how and why people spend their money, and the generational differences.
And the resulting answer is fairly simple: They literally had more money, relatively speaking, for that sort of stuff.
Why? Well, that's complicated, and there's a lot of subjectivity in the judgment of it.
Some of it is that a higher "standard of living" means that while your housing today may be more expensive than the "same house" 70 years ago, it isn't the "same house". As a simple example, your wiring is a lot nicer, but that cost some money. (This comes to mind because of the horror stories my father is telling me about the renovating he is having to do to his parent's house to get it on the market.) One could write books on the ways your house is not actually the "same house", mostly in good ways.
Some of it some issues related to wealth disparity and the way more of our wealth generation isn't going into our pockets, for a wide variety of reasons, with a wide variety of subjective valuations attached to those reasons.
Some of it is that they simply didn't have the ability to spend money on what we do now; many goods and services we use today didn't even exist then.
I'm trying to avoid significant value judgments in this post, even though I have opinions all day long on these matters, because the simple answer to your question is just, they literally had a larger proportion of their income to spend on such things.
But even with that perspective, it still begs the question that, given a healthy dose of disposable income, why did so many people seem to choose a $1500 minor TV upgrade or a new $3000 couch instead of, I don't know, an extravagant European vacation? Eating at any restaurant you want whenever you want? It's really that divide that baffles me - the experience-spenders (me, hi) versus the stuff-buyers. But maybe that's more of an urban/suburban divide than a generational divide.
Also, if you were in the US in the 1960s, I can well understand why "eating in any restaurant you wanted" would not necessarily have appealed much... the food of the era was... adequate.
I think the experiences were not as readily available versus the stuff as you may be thinking. To the extent that they were available, they were taken. Piling your family into the station wagon and driving around for three weeks used to be a lot more common, I think. But that's not "an extravagent European vacation". The relative prices of things have changed a lot in the past century.
(And to be clear, I mean, relative to each other, e.g., "how many years in college is a trip to Europe", not in absolute inflation terms. A thing that has gone up a bit faster than inflation is still relatively cheaper than a thing that has gone up way faster than inflation.)
- Inherited furniture or gifted furniture from parents
- Recovered / restored furniture
- Deal finding, estate sales, neighbors moving
Aside from electronics this accounts for most of the furniture in my house. My wife and I have been home owners for about 15 years now and we bought our first chair set in a store this year.
Prior to that, we bought a bedroom set from Rooms to Go when we got our first house.
While I don't agree with much of what he says, some things I've heard Dave Ramsey say have really stuck with me. One is that setting a budget isn't about taking away your freedom, but rather, getting it back.
We've known for decades that buying material things does not make one happier long term, due to the headonic treadmill.
Stress makes one less happy. Financial security reduces stress. Spending less than you make and saving leads to financial security. Therefore, being fiscally responsible leads to increased happiness.
How is this news to anyone?
If anything, GPT3-written fluff articles will be an improvement.