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Most people in the US are pulled into living on credit straight out of school. You get a student loan, then a car loan, then a credit card, then a mortgage. You

• vi_sextus_vi 5mo ago
  (EDITED) Otoh, have a few friends in tech (and high finance) who need to be told "dude, we'd be better off if you worked less hard" (Sorry.. I grew up deprived of data teaching me that "Schlep quickly compounds into Interesting Times")
• freetime2 5mo ago
  For sure it's more common for people not to save enough. But for people who are frugal and save diligently for most of their lives, there often comes a point where they cross a threshold where they have met all of their financial goals, and the "problem" is no longer how save money but to enjoy spending it. And this can be a real challenge for people who have built up deeply ingrained saving habits. My mother, for example, refuses to replace her iPhone SE with something with a larger screen despite 1) having failing vision and difficulty reading the screen, 2) using her iPhone every day, 3) easily being able to afford it. The idea of spending $1,000 on a phone is just something she is unable to bring herself to do, even though I think it would help alleviate a real source of frustration in her life. My father, when he started shopping for his most recent car (and probably his final car), set out with the intent to buy a luxury car. But again, despite being able to easily afford one, all he was able to bring himself to buy was a well-equipped Toyota. Don't get me wrong - it's a great car and has served him incredibly well. But it makes me a little sad that he wasn't able to bring himself to finally treat himself to a luxury car after a lifetime of hard work and saving. They did a lot of long road trips together in that car in retirement, and I think they would have enjoyed something a bit more luxurious (though on the other hand, the reliability of the Toyota is not to be discounted).
  • chromacity 5mo ago
    I think what you're attributing to frugality might be a more a matter of age? Many older folks are just wary of change. I'm not that old, but every time I upgrade my PC or phone, some of my workflows break and I need to pointlessly re-learn things I'd rather not re-learn. UI buttons get moved around, icons change, some settings are removed and others are added... this was exciting the first ten or twenty times, but it's just tiring now. Basically, I'm at this stage in life where my reaction to systemd wasn't "oh wow, this is progress" but "ugh, I need to learn how to start, stop, or modify services again". In another ten years, I'll probably just say "no, I'm not doing this again, just let me use my old computer for as long as possible".
    • skirmish 5mo ago
      > my reaction to systemd wasn't "oh wow, this is progress" but "ugh, I need to learn how to start, stop, or modify services again" I must be young at heart while >60 years old; my reaction was "why is everybody whining about it, it's pretty nice, I like it". Same with jj vs git, jj is amazing!
      • altruios 5mo ago
        Never heard of JJ, why is it better than git, and how did you learn about it?
        • skirmish 5mo ago
          Lots of discussions on HN about it recently [1], [2], I heard of it right here. It works on git repositories, so it's very easy to try. For me, the killer feature is updating some commit deep inside some feature branch, and all child commits and branches get auto-updated, no more faffing with endless rebases. Also conflict handling is so much more pleasant than git's. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47763759 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47763759 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45672280 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45672280
      • rurp 5mo ago
• jimbob45 5mo ago
  Having a credit card is like having a video game passive that makes everything permanently 2% cheaper. Everything should be put on a credit card for that discount as well as fraud protection provided you are disciplined enough to never ever ever ever ever ever carry a balance.
  • pjc50 5mo ago
    This is US-specific advice; EU capped merchant fees, and therefore you don't get a free 2% reward at their expense. The fraud protection and insurance can be useful though.
    • DonsDiscountGas 5mo ago
      You still get a 30 day interest free loan. Assuming you pay the full balance.
    • lxgr 5mo ago
      You get roughly the same level of fraud protection on both at this point. This is both due to converging legal protections in many places and due to market developments (both Visa and Mastercard require issuers to offer "zero liability" on debit cards just like on credit cards). One advantage of credit cards is that you don't have to wait until the dispute has been at least accepted to get your money back, though.
  • benj111 5mo ago
    I don't get the down voters, it is, or should be a tool. Although we are talking about it being an issue. Which you have already covered. Problem is, most people don't spend that much time thinking about it. So I suspect "don't get a credit card" or "only use it in emergencies" are generally good advice. Although perhaps we should just be better at teaching house hold type finance
  • rzzzt 5mo ago
    The "provided" part is the reason I'm staying away from credit cards.
  • 5mo ago
• 59percentmore 5mo ago
  Debt is also a way of normalizing, essentially, wage theft. You're encouraged to use credit to bridge gaps when what you're paid doesn't cover your necessities, let alone other expenses that you're expected to take on. When you can't pay back the debt you took out to live what is considered a normal or even frugal lifestyle, the justice system is used as a cudgel against you, often in the form of professional debt collectors and their attorneys suing you in small claims court (a venue which was established for laymen), where they abuse the lax rules to extricate full payment on a debt they bought for pennies on the dollar. Somewhat related, here is a video from a guy trying to avoid just this sort of scenario by refusing to put his company's business expenses on his personal credit; follow-ups show the price he's paying. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFZIxJyKgE8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFZIxJyKgE8 If society expects you to consume, you should be paid enough to support it. A system that leverages greater and greater amounts of its future to pay for the present eventually reaches a point where it is statistically unlikely that the debt will ever be paid back. That's when all hell breaks loose.
  • drakenot 5mo ago
    I have zero consumer debt and pay off any credit card at the end of the month. But I don’t mind work expenses on my personal card? I get reward benefits for a sizable chunk of expenses that I’m directly reimbursed for?
    • 59percentmore 5mo ago
      n=1 That's a personal choice. You alone should be able to decide if that's worth the complications it introduces to your taxes and your relationship with your employer. However, the cleanest and most dignified route is to pay for expenses incurred in the course of business. And employees should have the right to refuse to put up their own money for such expenses, without consequence.
• bachmeier 5mo ago
  Heavy debt is a part of the US culture. You can probably imagine the responses folks would have when they found out I was 40, a tenured professor with a family, and didn't own a house. Nobody had a heart attack but I'm sure some were close. I was just violating cultural norms too much by not going into debt to buy a house as anyone in my position was supposed to do. Then they'd find out I drove an old vehicle and didn't take expensive vacations...sometimes you have to go with the math rather than cultural norms.
  • ubermonkey 5mo ago
    Home debt has traditionally been seen as "good debt" for a bunch of reasons, but the big ones were that (a) Home loans meant you were accumulating equity in an appreciating asset; and (b) Mortgage interest was enough to allow most people to take a larger-than-standard deduction on income taxes; and (c) The relationship between home prices and the equivalent rental market meant you could probably have a nicer place for a lower monthly payment in many markets. These were generally slam-dunk truths for decades, but in the last 20 or so years they've stopped being true. Home ownership isn't the guaranteed rocket-ship to wealth it once was. Appreciation is spotty, and varies wildly by market. My own view of this is that a lot of the gains are now baked in, and we're unlikely to see the kind of rise in value (in real dollars) that characterized, say, 1990 to 2015. Last year I sold a townhouse in Houston that I'd owned since 2000; I made money, but not the kind of upside that you wanna write home about. Second, the tax law changes in Trump's first term dramatically raised the standard deduction -- enough so that we stopped itemizing. Part of this was that we were deep into the mortgage, so we were paying less in interest every year, but it's still a factor. Third, rents may be high now, but home prices and interest rates are higher. When I bought in 2000, I went from renting a place for $1200 a month to OWNING a place at a bit under $2k (including taxes and insurance). This was with 20% down. In my old neighborhood now, a nice rental is gonna be $2500-$3000, and housing is just unattainable. First, 20% now means probably $90K. Second, servicing the loan is going to be more than the rent, plus you've got another $450 a month in property taxes AND probably another $450 in insurance. And you've got to accumulate the $90K somehow while paying $2500 in rent. It's crazy. I have no idea how a young person who isn't making top-5% income can afford to buy without family help.
• wat10000 5mo ago
  This really struck me when I bought a new car and my mother asked me how much it cost. I told her what we'd paid, and she said, but how much is it per month? The idea of just buying a car didn't compute. At least I finally got her off the lease treadmill. Toyota helped a lot by not making anything she particularly liked. When I suggested she buy out her lease instead of getting a new one, it was a revelation.
• jandrewrogers 5mo ago
  > By most estimates, only about 10-20% of US households are debt-free. This needs to be qualified with the fact that it doesn't make sense for many people to be debt-free if they are financially literate. I know many people, myself included, who carry debt they could easily pay off because it would be irrational to do so. Being debt-free would actually make them poorer. This often holds true even when ignoring obvious cases like debt interest well below the Treasury rates.
  • wing-_-nuts 5mo ago
    *Cries in paid off 3.25% mortgage...
    • jumpconc 5mo ago
      Minmaxxing your finances is maladaptive frugality. You have something even better than 1% extra interest in your account: you have no mortgage. You can do whatever the fuck you want to your house and your bank doesn't stick its nose in your business to ensure the value of the house stays up. You can do whatever the fuck you want with your career and you don't have to worry the bank will come and take your house back.
      • sokoloff 5mo ago
        When does an existing mortgage lender get involved in a house remodel? (assuming you’re not trying to borrow more money for it) I’ve owned houses for 30 years and no bank has gotten review of contemplated projects or anything other than appraisals during origination of a mortgage or refinance (which are entirely optional for me, of course).
  • bdangubic 5mo ago
    being debt assumes appreciation on the asset you are holding under that debt which has been artificially inflated by the governments for yeeeeears now. you would never hold a debt on the house (even at 3.5%) if the house stayed the same price the day of the purchase and date of the sale. too many people are saying “some debt is good/great” which is only marginally true if you make certain assumptions which is exactly what they are - assumptions.