> But the idea that saving everything you can instead of buying some things you value has never made sense to me. It only really makes a difference if you expec

> But the idea that saving everything you can instead of buying some things you value has never made sense to me. It only really makes a difference if you expect that you will one day need all of that money in order to pay for the essentials, and short of catastrophic bad luck it seems unlikely that anyone with the ability to set aside significant savings in the first place will ever be in that position. I've seen catastrophic bad luck happen to enough people who thought it couldn't happen to them and then destroy their marriages/careers/etc pretty thoroughly that I just have no faith that is correct. > That is an entirely subjective personal preference. If your goal is to be able to retire early and live off your savings, go ahead. However, if your goal is to also live before you retire and you understand that the only value of money is in the things you value that you can obtain with it, you might make entirely different financial choices. The US savings rate is consistently in the 4-6% range with few outliers. You may want to consider I was assuming people would interpret my statement reasonably and that I was implying spending money instead of saving it when you were saving at an average rate was a bad idea. And yes, 4-6% is too small if you want to sustain your standard of living in retirement as a middle income member of society. "Toys" implies frivolity that doesn't involve something people feel are truly necessary to make themselves happy. Given on HN we know most mid-level devs make ~$70-100k [adjusted for cost of living], saving 20% isn't some extreme world view [which is what it'd take to save 5 figures/year].