One of the biggest blessings in disguise for me was not having much money as a child[1]. From the moment we left college, I've made more money than all of my c

One of the biggest blessings in disguise for me was not having much money as a child[1]. From the moment we left college, I've made more money than all of my close friends, and I somehow spend the least as well. We've talked pretty openly about income and budgeting as we all entered adulthood and learned our way around personal finance, and it's been fascinating to me to see how wanting to purchase unnecessary things is this vice that my friends consistently struggle with, to varying degrees. I don't have especially good willpower: I just seem to be missing that urge almost entirely. My lifestyle is far from ascetic, but the value bar for making something tempting to buy is just set way higher for me for some reason. I buy everything I feel like; I just don't tend to feel like things unless I think I'll get a lot of enjoyment/value out of them relative to their price. In retrospect, a couple years of disappointment before getting used to my mom saying "no" to most purchase requests was a pretty small price to pay for not constantly struggling against urges to spend irresponsibly.