Hacker News Reader

Comment by cogman10 | Hacker News Reader

What I've learned with my in-laws is to stop worrying about it. Some people are going to be jealous/angry anytime you spend money.

For example, whenever we go to visit them we get a hotel or rent a car. Perfectly normal right? Well to some of my in-laws that's "Throwing money around and in our faces" Even though the alternative is sleeping on the floor in their home and begging them for rides.

And, I get it. They can't afford to grab a hotel and car like we can so it does look like a crazy luxury.

I'll grab tabs and pay for things, I don't really care. I never have. But I was somewhat surprised to find people just generally upset when I do things for myself.

View on HN

This is one of several standard reactions to people spending money. Jealousy, Envy, Disgust, Pity, Ambivalence. It's why people of the same social class tend to gravitate toward one another. While everyone is different regarding money, people of the same social class who have been in that position for a while seem to have similar reactions.

There's also a weird thing of like adjacent class envy more than large gaps. Kind of a Narcissism of small differences thing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_difference...)

At the extreme- Few people are personally envious of Jeff Bezos having a nicer house/car/boat/vacation. But the way some people in my small middle class hometown react to someone who lives in the same town/hood, kids going to same school driving a $40k car when they drive a $25k car is kind of comically deranged.

This makes sense to me. I came from the service industry to tech. I tripled my income in a couple years and was very satisfied. Then a coworker got a promotion that I felt I deserved, and started making more than me. This coworker came from a different background and had always been "ahead" of me financially. But suddenly, there was a very tangible gap between us. It could have been me, I thought. I could have that so easily. And I was not satisfied with my pay. I found a new job. (I no longer care that much. I know that wages are essentially more unfair than fair.)

Going from $25k to $40k for a car seems within reach and they don't see how that person that they see does anything different that makes the difference justified, and they might even have personal knowledge of the person to make them think that person definitely isn't as smart/working as hard/being as deserving as them. But with Bezos they don't have a yardstick to go by.

Cars are wholly other kind of funny. Get 15 years old sports car, especially "looking" sporty, and people will look at you like you're trying to show off your wealth when they are driving SUV 3x as more expensive as your car...

Yeah car stuff is very funny.

In the grand scheme of things past a certain income level as a lump sum cost, they are not a large expense compared to housing. Nor is their monthly cost if financed particularly expensive next to the ongoing forever cost of insuring, fueling/charging, maintaining and garaging them. Nor is driving around in a relatively decent & recent model vs trying to keep an old model in working order with all the maintenance costs.

If you make 6 figures / live in a HCOL area, then the difference in a $25k or $40k or $50k car over the course of a 10 year life is kind of whatever. The insurance, maintenance and gas/charge over that 10 years probably adds up to $30k at a bare minimum. Your house probably cost $1M.

Even if you trade-in every 4~5 years at the end of the warranty period to minimize random maintenance costs, then maybe you eat like $3-4k/year of depreciation during ownership.. again not a huge number to have a reliable, safe, modern car at all times.

The real outsized car costs are incurred with car nerds who max out on having more cars than drivers, and/or "upgrading" every year, constantly eating max depreciation.

I’ve heard this from so many people, and I just do not see how it matters in practical terms. A car has four wheels and an engine. Other than that, as long as it’s safe and functional, why care what it costs?

humans are irrational, emotional, illogical beings.. what does practical terms have to do with it?

It's signalling.

It's a waste of money that could be helping people.

I never really thought of this seriously (or why) until reading that "Some Things I Think" post[0] was on here yesterday and a few were along the lines of that. Three that resonated with me about money:

“People like you more when you are working towards something, not when you have it.” - Drake

Net worth goes from $0 to $1 million: Ecstasy. Net worth goes from $10 million to $1 million: Despondency. Can we agree that all wealth is relative?

A lot of people like making money more than they enjoy having money. The change, not the accumulated amount, is the thrill.

The last one is the biggest mindfuck to me because I can relate to it so much. Every single online MMO I play I'm happy making tiny amounts of money and watching the balance go up. I don't care much for upgrading to bigger and better things or end-game content. I played this game called Tibia pretty seriously for a period of time and then got bored and was going to stop. There were a few months where the only thing I would do is log in, do about 6 daily quests I enjoyed doing that were dead easy, collect my 1000gp or however much it was and walk around town for a bit debating if I want to level up before quitting.

[0] https://collabfund.com/blog/thoughts/

> Net worth goes from $0 to $1 million: Ecstasy. Net worth goes from $10 million to $1 million: Despondency. Can we agree that all wealth is relative?

I think that's more because when going down on income (regardless of the starting amount and difference), that usually comes with having to resign from some luxuries on that way. While earning more means experiencing luxuries you couldn't afford before.

Like, moving from public transport to nice car vs the other way around. Or living in cramped apartment vs nice house.

> A lot of people like making money more than they enjoy having money. The change, not the accumulated amount, is the thrill.

I would not say a lot; I think there might be some self-selection when people focus on making money that might just become their hobby and so have higher motivation to earn more and more vs focusing on other areas in life.

The few well-off people I know don't exactly feel like ones making money for money sake

> The last one is the biggest mindfuck to me because I can relate to it so much. Every single online MMO I play I'm happy making tiny amounts of money and watching the balance go up. I don't care much for upgrading to bigger and better things or end-game content. I played this game called Tibia pretty seriously for a period of time and then got bored and was going to stop. There were a few months where the only thing I would do is log in, do about 6 daily quests I enjoyed doing that were dead easy, collect my 1000gp or however much it was and walk around town for a bit debating if I want to level up before quitting.

I am complete opposite. When I was seriously raiding in WoW (we were usually somewhere in top 5 guilds on our server) I still did just enough to have money for any gear/consumables I needed.

Same in other areas, I need to have some end goal, else I don't have all that much motivation for work or getting better pay. Else I'd just burn money on random crap (I got better with that over the years)

> Net worth goes from $0 to $1 million: Ecstasy. Net worth goes from $10 million to $1 million: Despondency. Can we agree that all wealth is relative?

> A lot of people like making money more than they enjoy having money. The change, not the accumulated amount, is the thrill.

Dunno, to me it looks more like people just want to have enough to not need to work 40 hours/week anymore. "Thrill" is probably about billionaires like Musk, not people getting towards a million in saving.

There's a name for this: loss aversion.

> Loss aversion in behavioral economics refers to a phenomenon where a real or potential loss is perceived by individuals as psychologically or emotionally more severe than an equivalent gain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion

Thanks for the flashbacks.

Haven't heard anybody mention Tibia since I was in grade school. Grade 8, probably.

Wow this is exactly how it is for us that it's uncanny. We try to say we got a deep discount because we used a "website." But we haven't got the courage to try separate lodgings yet, it would cause so much trouble heh.

One trick that works with some is "oh I have lots of hotel points from work travel and they were going to expire" kind of games. It may even have a shred of truth to it.

For the frugal family members offended by he spending flex, they may be happy to see this instead.

I do this- I just tell my parents I have a lot of frequent flyer points (which I do), but then depending on the cost and availability of flights I book whatever is most convenient for me.

It's generous, but not cash in your face.

don't forget airline points! Also don't forget credit card points. I'm not treating you to dinner, I got his gift card through my discover card and now I got to use it

You spend so much money that 3-5% back pays for luxuries?!

That's besides the point. This is in the context of spending money on people when they get all weird about it. Saying that I got these points that are expiring so we have to go to dinner at a moderately upscale restaurant turns the table on "I'm buying you dinner because I want to spend time with you, I don't want to cook, and I know dinner at this restaurant is half your whole food budget for the month." into them doing you the favor of not leaving points/money on the table.

Still though, $200 for (half) of dinner, on a card giving 5% Cashback is $4,000, and that doesn't have to be spent in one month.

That isn't my in-laws. That is the way my mother feels about me and my family.

Everything is a luxury. Everything is a waste of money. Nobody should have fun or enjoy something.

Sorry life didn't work out for you, but I didn't work hard to stare at walls and be bitter.

Well now it’s like if I spend my money it’s almost necessarily creating carbon and fucking the world more. So it’s like I don’t even feel like I can spend my money if that makes any sense. What is the point of all this money when you can’t use it ethically?

My usual response to these types of concerns is "touch grass", but if one has the means & concern, theres many organizations to fund, green improvements one can make to their home (solar, energy storage, heat pumps, efficient appliances, insulation, better windows, etc), transport (switch to an EV, take trains, stop flying places), plant a tree, etc.

I do find in my circles though that the loudest voices are also the ones who scoffed at my switch to an EV, but fly on vacations 3x/year, so some of it is clearly fashion & posturing.

And some of it is counterintuitive as we see Germany shut down nuclear plants for "green" reasons, only to have to spin back up some coal.

> counterintuitive as we see Germany shut down nuclear plants for "green" reasons, only to have to spin back up some coal

I've read that Poland is having issues where the grid will only support so much, so they need to disable or dial back the renewable energy sources because it's impossible to turn down or off a coal firing plant.

Yeah, you have to exactly match electric output to demand or things get very bad. Until we have a few more breakthroughs in battery technology, we're going to be stuck with fossil fuels to make up the gap for variable demand. Nuclear can't be ramped up and down quickly, and solar and wind just do whatever they want.

As I understand it, a typical strategy for a power company is:

- nuclear or similar for the base load that's always required

- solar and wind as available

- weather forecasting to determine how much solar and wind will be available

- demand forecasting to determine how much power will be required at any given time

- natural gas to meet predicted solar and wind shortfalls

- RICE engines and battery storage to handle unexpected fluctuations

- contracts to buy and sell power with other nearby power companies

> Until we have a few more breakthroughs in battery technology, we're going to be stuck with fossil fuels to make up the gap for variable demand.

I think we are there. We don't need new breakthroughs we need more manufacturing capacity.

LFPs are both cheap and work great for a grid storage and now CATL is announcing new sodium batteries which are pretty ideal for grid storage (cheap and long life).

It does sound like that, honestly, just needs more investment and maybe engineering into mode distributed storage for the whole renewable stuff.

I'm guessing sweet spot would be something like "big, economically efficient battery per street of houses + solar on every house", but as it would be shared it needs investment and power company have very little incentive for it

In the states a lot of left-coded "environmental review" stuff gets used by NIMBYs to block grid improvements / new transmission lines.. which ends up being a bigger blocker of renewables than the permits for the generation itself.

So you end up with multi-year backlogs just to get grid connected with new clean energy generation.

Right, everybody wants the change, but nobody wants it to affect them. As is tradition.

Your existence, and mine, is intrinsically harmful to the world. But you have the opportunity to also do good, to heal systems. What you can do with your time, money, and energy is to shift the balance more toward healing than harm. So don't waste your money on plastic or flights, but try to purchase more ethical/sustainable goods (which quickly becomes very expensive). Donate to well regarded charities. Etc.

We are a part of the world, not a foreign entity. From the point of view of evolution, if our existence eliminates a bunch of other species, that's how natural selection works. This misanthropic view of us as intruders in nature is just a throwback to weird ancient cults, it is just basically religion, not reason.

What is the point of saying that? Are you trying to get people to give up and accept ecological collapse?

Nowhere did I say humans are a foreign entity. I said our existence does harm to ecosystems all over the globe. That is a fact. We also, uniquely, have the ability to choose* whether or not we do that harm, which oxygenating bacteria did not. So here I am, advising someone to do less harm because doing harm causes them pain, and you're saying... what? That choosing to counteract the harm we've done is foolish and illogical? That makes no sense.

Buying better, more durable things that won't break after a year or two is one way to spend more money for less environmental impact. Tho the maths on that is kinda iffy, as it is hard to tell how much of the "more expensive" is "longer, harder production process that generates more emissions" and how much is "we put actual good engineering into it".

Why not just buy carbon offsets?

Because they are mostly a scam. If offsetting the carbon was so cheap we wouldn’t need to fret about it much.

More & more I find that with money theres growth mindset & scarcity mindset and few who have both. Some people are great at making more money, some people are great at spending as little of their money as possible. Few thread the needle on a little bit of both.

So if you come from a scarcity mindset family, it's incredibly hard to do anything with them with money if you yourself ended up in more of a growth mindset.

It is what it is.

Money can replace dependency and attachment, and some people get very offended by it. Other people appreciate you not burdening them. People are hard to parse.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com