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I think it's ironic that so many of these "frugal living" gurus advocate cutting your expenses to the bone to avoid taking part in America's rampant consumer cu
by monkeyodeath 8y ago
I think it's ironic that so many of these "frugal living" gurus advocate cutting your expenses to the bone to avoid taking part in America's rampant consumer culture.
Then they advocate plowing those savings into home ownership, as if that itself isn't a consumerist decision. As if there isn't a multi-billion dollar real estate industry pushing the idea of home ownership as "the American dream".
Certainly, it's possible to err too much on the side of irresponsibility, but the author of this blog post has a point. Of all the joys we have in this short existence, "buying a house with cash" seems like a pretty lame one to build your whole life around.
- smacktoward 8y agoA comment on the article points out a related concept, the "paradox of thrift": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_thrift https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_thrift Summarized: modern capitalist economies are driven by consumer spending. If some people are thrifty but most are not, the thrifty ones can benefit from the general prosperity created by the spending of the rest while saving their own money. But if everyone is thrifty there's no demand to drive the economy, and everyone ends up worse off than they would have been otherwise.
- tonyedgecombe 8y ago>Then they advocate plowing those savings into home ownership, as if that itself isn't a consumerist decision. I can't say I've seen that very often, usually the advice is to stick every bit of spare cash into Vanguard.