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Comment by firefoxman1 | Hacker News Reader

I bike to school and work in 20 degrees because my dad wants me to learn the value of a dollar before I'm in the "real world" (he also started me investing pretty early). I have 0 resentment and complete respect for him because of it.

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I think it's questionable what knowing what a dollar is worth if you orient your life in a way to make as little of them as possible. I think you should value a dollar, but also work hard and apply yourself.

It's a strange combination... He got the investment income is the secret part, but then seemingly stopped at the earliest opportunity. It just seems lazy. I agree with him that spending more than you make is irresponsible, but I also think there's a happy medium where you can both have a coffee and a retirement account. You're not taking any of it with you anyways, might as well enjoy a few moments of it.

I completely agree with this. My grandfather is a millionaire...apparantly. I never would have guessed it. He drives a near-broken-down 1980-something honda. He takes frugality to the extreme. I love talking to him and hearing his investing advice, but it gets irritating hearing about how he saved $0.50 on a book or hitch-hiked to Colorado for a family event. I don't see him much, but I've hardly ever seen him smile.

I think we have to be very careful in a society that promotes living in such excess. It's a hard balance to find between casting off all expenses to the point that it becomes frugality for the sake of being frugal, and frivolous-spending yourself into debt.

My grandfather was a millionaire, on a high school teacher's salary When he died at the ripe old age of 95, he had a 35 year old car with 70k miles on it. His idea of diversification was CDs in a bunch of different banks, in case one failed. He did not spend money on himself. There was a big fight over spending money on a cordless phone for him at one point, because he had a corded one that was good enough. It was better for everyone if he could have a phone in the walker or next to him, rather than tethered to the wall on the other side of the room.

I think the great depression and the shortages of WW2 were hard on him in ways that I just can't know.

I think being extremely frugal is about as bad as frivolous spending (the frugal folks will hate me for this...). They're just two sides of the same coin, and the really frugal people tend to be VERY obsessive about it and stressed out from trying to not spend money. Case in point, this blog post:

http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/07/27/youll-never-be-nor...

Does being stressed out and anxious over driving a few miles and spending some money on ice cream really sound like a happy life? If you take spending to the extreme and don't live within your means, you'll be stressed about how to make ends meet and pay your bills. But at the same time, if you take frugality to the extreme, you're just trading that for being stressed over spending too much money.

Life is short. Be smart, keep a good balance and enjoy yourself.

Do you mean "do as little with them as possible"? It sounded to me as if you're saying he's trying to make the least amount of dollars he can.

That's a false dichotomy. I was never forced to bike to school in freezing temperatures, and yet I've managed to learn the value of a dollar quite well, if I do say so myself.

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