6 ms·

I agree, however I don’t think the last two of your bullets are necessarily something to learn from on the surface.

• rhubarbtree 10mo ago
  Disagree. The last one is important. You can buy a bigger and bigger house car tv stereo whatever, but it will not make you happy.
  • twodave 10mo ago
    This is what I’m talking about. You’re assuming a lot about why and how people move.
    • UqWBcuFx6NV4r 10mo ago
      Nowhere did anybody say “moving house for any reason is bad”. Buffet could’ve moved if he wanted to, I presume. So, evidently, he didn’t have any of those ‘other reasons’. What we *can^ say is that he didn’t move, which shows that he didn’t allow lifestyle inflation to extend to his place of residence.
      • twodave 10mo ago
        No they said we can all learn from it. I understood the implication, I just reject the stated idea that that lesson is to “live in one house for your entire adult life”.
  • brk 10mo ago
    Though Buffet has kept that first house, he also bought several others along the way.
  • KPGv2 10mo ago
    It will if you have had four children after 28yo.
  • deleted 10mo ago
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  • JKCalhoun 10mo ago
    It's true (I live in Omaha). He is still in the same house. I didn't grow up here—my wife did. Very early on, when I first visited Omaha, she drove me by his place. After three decades or so in California, I retired and we moved back to her hometown. Buffett is still there.
    • theonething 10mo ago
      Like anyone can just drive up to his house? Doesn't seem safe for such a high profile billionaire's residence to be so accessible.
      • matthewbauer 10mo ago
        I went by it a few weeks ago. There's a gate on the driveway, and I assume some kind of security presence. Probably no different than anyone under constant public scrutiny.
      • tstrimple 10mo ago
        Wait until you learn about the Hollywood Hills! I'm so excited for you.
  • ronbenton 10mo ago
    >You can buy a bigger and bigger house car tv stereo whatever, but it will not make you happy. Well that seems like an assumption! Plenty of people are happier with nicer things. I don't think we need to tell people what should make them happy.
    • incanus77 10mo ago
      Sure, but wisdom can be shared about what is less likely to make you happy.
    • dorfsmay 10mo ago
      But commercialism keeps telling people that only nicer things can make them happy.
    • joquarky 10mo ago
      That happy feeling only lasts about six weeks. Happiness is unsustainable. However, contentment is an attainable goal.
      • artdigital 10mo ago
        I bought a bigger nicer TV (the biggest I ever bought) about 4 years ago and it still brings me joy to this day every time I use it So no, not only 6 weeks
        • globular-toast 10mo ago
          My 14" portable CRT I had when I was a teenager gave me joy every time I used it. My first car cost me less than 2k and gave me joy for 5 years. You are now unable to get joy from a TV smaller than the largest one you've ever bought. Many people are unable to get joy from a car costing under 10k, let alone 2k. The things you own end up owning you.
          • nl 10mo ago
            You are putting words in their mouth there. You seem very sure about what does and doesn't make other people happy!
  • inetknght 10mo ago
    > You can buy a bigger and bigger house car tv stereo whatever, but it will not make you happy. Speak for yourself. There are a lot of aspects to being happy, and having to not want for things certainly helps.
    • BuckRogers 10mo ago
      But you can do that without any money.
      • Nevermark 10mo ago
        > You can buy a bigger and bigger house car tv stereo whatever > But you can do that without any money. Well... Material things can contribute to happiness, or detract. Balancing the things we spend our life on, relative to an understanding of what makes us happy, is going to be an idiosyncratic exercise. Assuming that X won't contribute to the happiness of person Y is some deep projection. There seem to be many kinds of happiness too. Would I remain happy if I lost my house? Yes. I have gone through enough ups and downs to know that. But would I feel as fulfilled? No. I have gone through enough ups and downs to know that.
        • BuckRogers 9mo ago
          Very disingenuous answer. That's not what I was responding to. I was responding to this- There are a lot of aspects to being happy, and having to not want for things certainly helps. I would give you a better answer here but it appears you thought misquoting the conversation was clever so I'll simply leave you corrected.
    • _heimdall 10mo ago
      You will never not want for things, no matter how much you have.
      • spectralista 10mo ago
        It is actually the opposite. The less things you have, the less things you will want. I even experience this with food. If I am on a strict diet for 2 weeks and then have a "cheat" meal, a previously normal meal feels like a satisfying feast. If I splurge on food for 2 weeks, even 3/4th a pizza doesn't satisfy. I just want the other 1/4th. It is really why we have so much wealth as a society but so much discontent. It is like believing there is some amount of alcohol that would satisfy the alcoholic. It just grows the desire for more while contentment is harder and harder to achieve. I am pretty sure this is just a property of the dopaminergic system.
  • dheera 10mo ago
    Meh. If you have the resources, buy whatever makes you happy. If a bigger house makes you happy because you have space for your hobbies and you don't need to fight with your family members for space, buy a bigger house. The whole "money doesn't bring happiness" thing is bullshit unless you are a Buddha. A mansion in Malibu isn't going to make me happy, because I wouldn't know what the hell to do in Malibu. An upgrade from a 2-bedroom to a 4-bedroom home with a garage so I don't have to smell laser cutter fumes anymore and hack a ventilation system out a bedroom window? That very well might.
    • scott_w 10mo ago
      > An upgrade from a 2-bedroom to a 4-bedroom home with a garage so I don't have to smell laser cutter fumes anymore and hack a ventilation system out a bedroom window? That very well might. As someone who upgraded from a 2 bedroom flat to a 3 bedroom house with a garage, I concur. Having a place to store my bikes and other “dirty” tools that’s not inside was such an improvement to my quality of life that I tell people to always look for a half decent garage when they buy. Especially if they also like cycling!
  • dilawar 10mo ago
    "Happiness can't buy me money" -- Some actor
  • cortesoft 10mo ago
    Yeah, but if the first house you buy is a two bedroom at 28 when you are single, it isn't bad to buy a bigger house when you have a family and 3 kids.
  • scott_w 10mo ago
    That’s because you haven’t tried buying better bicycles. I assure you that every new bike I buy makes me happier.
    • globular-toast 10mo ago
      It doesn't make you happier, it's just that you became unhappy and the new bike was necessary to temporarily make you happy again. Happiness is binary. You're either happy with where you are or where you're heading or you're not.
      • scott_w 10mo ago
        > It doesn't make you happier It sounds to me like you haven’t rode a bike in a long time. I recommend you try it and get back to me.
        • globular-toast 10mo ago
          I own several and have ridden thousands upon thousands of miles. When I got my first bike as a kid, a cheap "mountain bike" with 24" wheels that probably weighed more than my current road bike, I was at maximum happiness. I was not at only 40% happiness because it didn't have a carbon frame or a Di2 groupset from the future. I was at 100. Later when I got my first road bike I was at 100% happiness again. But nothing can make me happier than I was with that first, heavy bicycle-shaped object. It might equal it but it's impossible to surpass.
  • Jare 10mo ago
    Kinda depends on the size of your current one.
  • chollida1 10mo ago
    > You can buy a bigger and bigger house car tv stereo whatever, but it will not make you happy. Hard disagree here. Ask a 4 person family stuffed into a one bedroom condo if buying a larger 3 bedroom home would make them happier, I'd imagine to 99.99999% of them the answer is yes. I upgraded my road bike 2 years ago from an entry level one to a nice racing bike and each weekend I ride a 100km route, that sure as heck makes me happier than riding the old slower and heavier bike. We just took our extended family on a vacation for a week. Money sure as heck made us happier in that instance. It is true that cash can't fix all issues in life but any one who says money can't make you happy is either lying or doesn't have money. Run a simple thought experiment in your head. If you woke up tomorrow under crushing credit card and medical debt and it was suddenly paid off, would that make you happier?
• _heimdall 10mo ago
  Avoiding scaling your lifestyle with tour current wealth seems like an extremely important lesson people could learn here. Very few people know what "enough" means to them. Its probably worth noting that I mean "enough" in the context of consumption and physical goods. "Enough" wealth doesn't really matter, its only a number in a database or a piece of paper until you spend it.
  • pm90 10mo ago
    To a certain extent this is true. You shouldn’t be going into debt just because your income level allows you to get more loans etc. But once you reach a certain income threshold it doesn’t really matter. So what was the point of him living a frugal, simple lifestyle? I would argue that its just something he was used to and found joy in, and thats ok. Some people like that. Others might want to use their money to unlock new experiences that come with it. Thats ok too.
    • deleted 10mo ago
      [deleted]
    • throwmeoutplzdo 10mo ago
      Sure, and of course the elephant in the room is overconsumption and planetary overload, which get unlocked too on a bigger scale as a result of similar thinking. Which ends does unlocking potentially endless ”experiences” serve? Our personal disconnect from nature is not separate from our collective disconnect from nature.
  • crossroadsguy 10mo ago
    Not only that, but it’s important. Needless to say I am not comparing net-worths :) My rent spend started increasing around 4-5th year (steeply) of starting my first job and I saw it and kinda stopped/curbed it at somewhere like 7th year. It has remained there (give or take) because it had reached a really good level (below luxury or ultra premium so to speak) wrt my city’s general rental trends and spends (of course inflation factored in). It’s been 8 years since and I have been without a job for last two years (a bit by choice, if certain things can really be called choice) and pretty much my other spending trends also kinda plateaued around those years (experience spends kept going up slowly but I find them easier to manage). I can’t explain how much it has helped me when I have been living on savings for straight 2 years now. Not just the specific relative smaller amount but more so the predictability of it.
• conductr 10mo ago
  The last one is key to my entire value system as a person. I have had some financial wins in life and try not to let it impact my day to day. I avoid, sometimes with great effort, flashy things (I’ve been tempted to by exotic cars as an example but have found if I just rent one for a day or two that urge goes away, it’s just a toy to me). I usually say I’m not materialistic, but I am at times, and what I strive to be is humble, modest, and invisible. I don’t want other people seeing me as flaunting wealth. It’s not who I want to be or how I want my kids to see me act. That said, I do, like Buffet, live in a nice house. I’m not depriving myself. But it’s also very approachable by any successful employee of a company (maybe salary of a director or VP of any large company could afford it). It doesn’t represent what I could afford if I wanted to really get into the elite neighborhoods of my city. I don’t really enjoy people in those areas. They tend to always talk about money in one way or another (vacations, private schools, cars, houses, maids, nanny’s, etc). Nothing wrong with it I suppose, just not my jam and not how I want my children raised and not the people I want as my neighbors and peers. I’ve always been much more envious of those unsuspecting rich people that drive clunker cars or live in modest homes and mow their own lawns but then you find out they paid for 16 grand children to go to college or something random like that. That’s the kind of thing I’d rather be known for than the guy with the Ferrari or yacht (even if they weren’t mutually exclusive).
  • etrautmann 10mo ago
    +1. I’ve always looked up to the hedge fund manager driving a civic and those who sneakily donate enormous amounts anonymously.
    • Teknomadix 10mo ago
      Life goals!
  • deleted 10mo ago
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  • zwnow 10mo ago
    > I’ve been tempted to by exotic cars as an example but have found if I just rent one for a day or two that urge goes away, it’s just a toy to me > I don’t want other people seeing me as flaunting wealth Lmao.
• tjwebbnorfolk 10mo ago
  His inspiration is a big reason why I still drive my 1993 Honda Civic after owning it for 15 years. I bought it for $1000 after graduating college. I say a little prayer every time I turn the key that it actually starts. I gave it its own github repo where I track the maintenance I do on it. It reminds me where I come from, and that I don't need shiny shit to be happy. I believe this to be a virtue. My girlfriend years ago thought it was incredible and amusing that I was working a fancy tech job and drove this old car around. We are now happily married. These days, I could buy a Bentley with cash. But I don't need one. Warren Buffet's example is an inspiration that should be followed by more people who go into debt buying crap they can't afford with money they don't have in order to look rich.
  • beegeezuz 10mo ago
    [dead]
  • ymyms 10mo ago
    Driving a car that old puts yourself and others on the road at greater risk due to lack of safety features compared to a modern car. One could argue being able to afford a new car and not buying one to extoll other virtues is neglecting your own and communal good.
    • tonis2 10mo ago
      Safety features like tracking where you are, and requiring a subscription for seat heating ? I just think the everything connected to cloud approach sucks, but Im communal danger now.
    • _yb2s 10mo ago
      If you’re afraid to carefully drive a high quality and well maintained older car that was designed from the ground up with safety and quality at the absolute forefront- say an 80s Mercedes or Volvo, you would benefit from relaxing a bit and being willing to take slightly more risk in life. Besides, I am not wholly convinced that improved safety tech is a replacement for the type of safety first engineering used in every tiny detail of those old cars, that mitigate certain types of accidents and injury that won’t be addressed in crash testing.
• solatic 10mo ago
  The key to a happy life is to learn how to reduce the amount of things you own and how to build strong relationships. Once you have enough to put a roof over your head and food on your table, more than that can only be used to purchase increasing amounts of comfort, which is not the same as increasing amounts of happiness. YouTube has plenty of videos of people calling in with hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars a year in income and somehow they are still broke and in debt. Live below your means, save the excess income into an investment portfolio, keep doing that until you have enough money to live off the interest. Don't even think about buying a Rolex until you have so much money coming in from interest that you don't even know what else to do with it. Even then, remember that the Rolex, like anything else, requires maintenance, but that if you make someone else happy, they can take care of themselves.