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Comment by therandomguy | Hacker News Reader

Here is an almost bizarre theory. When your salary crosses the average number your enjoyment of things that you can buy with money goes down drastically. You have much more appreciation of the used car that you bought out of college as the monthly payments pinched you a little. A good way for you to maintain that effect is to keep stepping up your lifestyle as your salary increases. Constantly buying a little more than you can afford. You can easily afford a Honda now? Buy BMW. Goes against conventional wisdom, but food for thought.

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One could envision a business built on providing a convenient wrapper for this strategy, where you sell young professionals functionally equivalent copies of the goods they purchased as college students, but charge three times as much for them. This would let you signal to the young professionals that they have "made it. (They'd probably also tsk-tsk about college kids buying things which cost X. I mean, sure, college kids don't have 3X, but isn't 2X the absolute minimum to know that it is safe for human consumption? Oh, college kids...)

I hate to say this, simply because I spend so much there, but you pretty much just described http://fab.com/ Much of what's there is just high quality versions of minimalist furniture and decorations you'd see in Ikea or any dorm room in America.

You're willing to pay 20-30k more to very slightly prolong the "ooh shiny!" luster? Ridiculous. Keeping up with the Joneses is an exercise in hating yourself.

Debt is financial slavery. Assume it only when you must.

My question is, what are you doing 'enjoy[ing] things that you can buy with money'? Hasn't it been well enough established that things don't make you happy? The Greeks figured that out two thousand years ago, guy!

Let me tell you, I bought a used car just this year and I appreciate it way more because I didn't bankrupt myself to do so.

"Have you seen anyone sad on a jet ski?"

That's one of the things I do. Not generally with large purchases, but the $300 difference between a nice Dell panel and a Thunderbolt display is small and easily pays off in the "oh sweet, a beautiful new toy!" feeling that I get from it.

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