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It goes way beyond frugality - it is usually accompanied by a touch of hoarding (bought a new phone? Let's keep the old one even if it has a cracked screen, jus

It goes way beyond frugality - it is usually accompanied by a touch of hoarding (bought a new phone? Let's keep the old one even if it has a cracked screen, just in case... <throws phone into drawer full of hopelessly unusable and outdated electronic doodads>.) A term I've seen bandied about for the collective symptoms is having a Scarcity mindset and it's based on insecurity/fear of unexpectedly running out of money (which was a frequent event in childhood) John Scalzi's classic "Being Poor" blog post[1] details the effects of poverty in detail. 1. https://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being-poor/ https://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being-poor/

jlawson 4y ago
>(bought a new phone? Let's keep the old one even if it has a cracked screen, just in case... <throws phone into drawer full of hopelessly unusable and outdated electronic doodads>.) Never been poor; me and my whole family have always done this. I just forced them to get rid of their standalone DVD player. They have remote controls for devices going back to the 90's. The cellphone example is even better; you'd be a fool to immediately dump your old phone. It's small and easy to store, and if your new phone craps out or gets lost or stolen you may very well have a use for another phone that works right now. I have phones going back 2 generations. This is just frugality and contingency planning. Scarcity mindset is more like, "I have $300, I need to spend it before it goes away". That's what keeps people poor.
- wolverine876 4y ago
  > Never been poor So what basis do you have for commenting on the experience of it? > me and my whole family have always done this. I'm sure there are other things that both your family and poor families have done, but that doesn't have explanatory value.
  - jlawson 4y ago
    I'm not commenting on the experience of being poor; I'm saying that the mentioned behavior isn't "part of being poor", it's part of being frugal.
- sangnoir 4y ago
  A -> B =/= B -> A You don't have to be/(have been) poor to be a hoarder. On the old cellphone, my emphasis was a drawer full of backup-to-a-backup-to-a-backup devices that are now 10 years old and is running Android 2 and are potentially a fire hazard while charging and are not fit for use - they are emotional support devices. Keeping one generation of backup device is rational, 3+ means there's something to unpack. I'm curious about how your family tradition came to be: a high number of people who experienced the great depressions in their formative years are/were compulsive hoarders in latter years. Being poor is what keeps poor people poor; costs of necessities go down the richer you get; being poor is expensive
  - fomine3 4y ago
    Different view: sell your old phone soon so you can get better second hand price.
SoftTalker 4y ago
With electronics specifically, it's often just more convenient to toss the old device in a drawer. You're not supposed to put them in the trash, and e-waste disposal often incurs a fee. This is why refrigerators end up dumped on the side of a road in a ravine, because municipalities make it harder to dispose of them responsibly than to just dump them.

jlawson 4y ago

>(bought a new phone? Let's keep the old one even if it has a cracked screen, just in case... <throws phone into drawer full of hopelessly unusable and outdated electronic doodads>.) Never been poor; me and my whole family have always done this. I just forced them to get rid of their standalone DVD player. They have remote controls for devices going back to the 90's. The cellphone example is even better; you'd be a fool to immediately dump your old phone. It's small and easy to store, and if your new phone craps out or gets lost or stolen you may very well have a use for another phone that works right now. I have phones going back 2 generations. This is just frugality and contingency planning. Scarcity mindset is more like, "I have $300, I need to spend it before it goes away". That's what keeps people poor.

wolverine876 4y ago
> Never been poor So what basis do you have for commenting on the experience of it? > me and my whole family have always done this. I'm sure there are other things that both your family and poor families have done, but that doesn't have explanatory value.
- jlawson 4y ago
  I'm not commenting on the experience of being poor; I'm saying that the mentioned behavior isn't "part of being poor", it's part of being frugal.
sangnoir 4y ago
A -> B =/= B -> A You don't have to be/(have been) poor to be a hoarder. On the old cellphone, my emphasis was a drawer full of backup-to-a-backup-to-a-backup devices that are now 10 years old and is running Android 2 and are potentially a fire hazard while charging and are not fit for use - they are emotional support devices. Keeping one generation of backup device is rational, 3+ means there's something to unpack. I'm curious about how your family tradition came to be: a high number of people who experienced the great depressions in their formative years are/were compulsive hoarders in latter years. Being poor is what keeps poor people poor; costs of necessities go down the richer you get; being poor is expensive
- fomine3 4y ago
  Different view: sell your old phone soon so you can get better second hand price.

SoftTalker 4y ago

With electronics specifically, it's often just more convenient to toss the old device in a drawer. You're not supposed to put them in the trash, and e-waste disposal often incurs a fee. This is why refrigerators end up dumped on the side of a road in a ravine, because municipalities make it harder to dispose of them responsibly than to just dump them.