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Personally, I find everything related to personal finances among the least interesting and most repulsive things to waste my precious spare time. My solution?

Personally, I find everything related to personal finances among the least interesting and most repulsive things to waste my precious spare time. My solution? My regular expenses are significantly smaller than my income, which lets me basically ignore my personal finances. (This does not mean I do not consider whether a gadget is worth the price. I just typically do not need to think whether I can afford it or not) How do I do that? By making relevant choices in the biggest expense classes, i.e. housing and car. My accommodation and car choices are _well_ below my typical peer standards. Easy? Depends on your character. Personally I enjoy the freedom and control I have on my own life much more than I dislike the laughs[1] I get from my old friends when I pop up into meeting them with a crappy old bicycle. [1] Obviously this is much easier when both I and my friends know that I could "afford"[2] to buy a similar car than they, I just have chosen not to. [2]In the normal sense of being able to finance it. My personal definition for affording something is that I do not have to care financially whether the purchase gets stolen the following day or not

Swizec 10y ago
This is accounting and personal finance. Unless I am completely mistaken about what either of those terms mean. Your approach follows amdahl's law by the way. Optimize for big wins instead of doing micro optimizations. Accounting is how you know which are which.
- infinite8s 10y ago
  That's an interesting way of thinking about it. Accounting is the programming equivalent to profiling (money flows in this case instead of time/memory flows).
edent 10y ago
> My regular expenses are significantly smaller than my income How do you know this? By what method do you account for your spending? > when I pop up into meeting them with a crappy old bicycle. How much do you spend on repairing your bike (either time or cash)? Does that work out as being more cost effective than buying a new bike / taking the bus / etc? If only there were a simple way to keep track of spending to see if it really were cost effective...
- beefield 10y ago
  > How do you know this? When I check my bank account, there typically is more money than before. > Does that work out as being more cost effective than buying a new bike I don't know and I don't care. I don't claim that I don't do _any_ budgeting/planning/accounting/whatever, I just try to minimize the mental effort needed for that. Obviously one effect is that my consumption bucket is not economically optimal. I have no clue, nor interest to find out, how expensive these choices are for me. For some people it is worth putting money to luxury items. For me it is a luxury that I can afford not to worry how optimized my consumption is. (One more thing. I do have above average salary in my country. Obviously that makes things a bit easier.)
  - JustSomeNobody 10y ago
    > (One more thing. I do have above average salary in my country. Obviously that makes things a bit easier.) Most of us here can easily say the same thing. Most of us could also say that we are above average intelligence and we, too, could just as easily have a sense of our finances. However, we choose to keep track of everything a little more accurately than that.
    - beefield 10y ago
      > However, we choose to keep track of everything a little more accurately than that. Precisely. And there is nothing wrong with that. I just have made a different choice based on my preferences, and I see nothing wrong with that, either.
JustSomeNobody 10y ago
>...and most repulsive things to waste my precious spare time. Really? Repulsive? > [1] Obviously this is much easier when both I and my friends know that I could "afford"[2] to buy a similar car than they, I just have chosen not to. So, you ... care ... what people think of you.
- beefield 10y ago
  > Really? Repulsive? Sorry, I am not a native English speaker, so there may be some connotation with the word repulsive that I am not aware of. What I tried to say is that I dislike very much planning, budgeting and figuring out exactly where and how much I have spent money. > So, you ... care ... what people think of you. But of course. Did I imply something else somewhere?

Swizec 10y ago

This is accounting and personal finance. Unless I am completely mistaken about what either of those terms mean. Your approach follows amdahl's law by the way. Optimize for big wins instead of doing micro optimizations. Accounting is how you know which are which.

infinite8s 10y ago
That's an interesting way of thinking about it. Accounting is the programming equivalent to profiling (money flows in this case instead of time/memory flows).

edent 10y ago

> My regular expenses are significantly smaller than my income How do you know this? By what method do you account for your spending? > when I pop up into meeting them with a crappy old bicycle. How much do you spend on repairing your bike (either time or cash)? Does that work out as being more cost effective than buying a new bike / taking the bus / etc? If only there were a simple way to keep track of spending to see if it really were cost effective...

beefield 10y ago
> How do you know this? When I check my bank account, there typically is more money than before. > Does that work out as being more cost effective than buying a new bike I don't know and I don't care. I don't claim that I don't do _any_ budgeting/planning/accounting/whatever, I just try to minimize the mental effort needed for that. Obviously one effect is that my consumption bucket is not economically optimal. I have no clue, nor interest to find out, how expensive these choices are for me. For some people it is worth putting money to luxury items. For me it is a luxury that I can afford not to worry how optimized my consumption is. (One more thing. I do have above average salary in my country. Obviously that makes things a bit easier.)
- JustSomeNobody 10y ago
  > (One more thing. I do have above average salary in my country. Obviously that makes things a bit easier.) Most of us here can easily say the same thing. Most of us could also say that we are above average intelligence and we, too, could just as easily have a sense of our finances. However, we choose to keep track of everything a little more accurately than that.
  - beefield 10y ago
    > However, we choose to keep track of everything a little more accurately than that. Precisely. And there is nothing wrong with that. I just have made a different choice based on my preferences, and I see nothing wrong with that, either.

JustSomeNobody 10y ago

>...and most repulsive things to waste my precious spare time. Really? Repulsive? > [1] Obviously this is much easier when both I and my friends know that I could "afford"[2] to buy a similar car than they, I just have chosen not to. So, you ... care ... what people think of you.

beefield 10y ago
> Really? Repulsive? Sorry, I am not a native English speaker, so there may be some connotation with the word repulsive that I am not aware of. What I tried to say is that I dislike very much planning, budgeting and figuring out exactly where and how much I have spent money. > So, you ... care ... what people think of you. But of course. Did I imply something else somewhere?