> Some people are really good at making more money. Some people are really good at pinching every penny. It is a very rare creature to actually be great at both

> Some people are really good at making more money. Some people are really good at pinching every penny. It is a very rare creature to actually be great at both. Almost everyone I know, myself included, I can box into A or B pretty easily. There's no reason you can't be both and if you were it would be a super power.. but very few are! There is a reason: time. Making a lot of money usually means either long days (exhausting) or high-intensity days (also exhausting). Pinching pennies is quite easy when your strict 9-5 work day is mostly filled with low stress tasks. But when you're exhausted at the end of the day (or simply do not have time), it's much more difficult to turn down opportunities to trade time for money. In the extreme, I'm reminded of a friend who lives on $25K/yr or so of passive income. He scoffs at things like dishwashing machines and thinks people should treat housework like a form of meditation. Dirty dishes are in all earnestness a relief from his unrelenting boredom, while for me they are one more thing standing in the way of getting 8 hours of sleep :) (My favorite example of this is the "stretched thin on 500K/yr" meme. Some of the examples are extravagant and silly (nice cars, lots of vacations) but others actually make perfect sense if you assume both earners are in high-stress+long-hour careers (childcare, newer cars, more expensive vacations). If both parents are working 70 hour weeks then it makes sense that you're going to end up spending a ton on activities for your kids, over-paying to make the most of the little time you get together, and paying a premium to avoid time-consuming issues like a car breaking down.)