I've done this for 20 years. In fact, when I was out of college, I was a SDE at a top technology company. My personal motto was that I should never own a car th

I've done this for 20 years. In fact, when I was out of college, I was a SDE at a top technology company. My personal motto was that I should never own a car that costs more than two months of my salary. All my other young counterparts were doing dumb things, like buying really fancy cars when our first tranche of stock options vested Even today, I think about the cost of money in my time, since I value doing thinks over owning things. I typically justify buying nice laptops with a three year amortiziation, but cell phones, I buy cheaper ones because I've broken so many.... (And that mechanical keyboard, surely a $100 for something that will last several years while performing your job 10 hours/day is a worthy investment, if you're into that.)