An astonishing amount of this list amounts to “spend money”, so while these things may play well here I think it’s worth pointing out that a large majority of the population is not allowed to do those things because they can’t afford to.
If you see this list only as "spend money" I think it's the perfect article for you.
The overarching point of the author is that most of his target audience (and those reading HN) are used to being thrifty and not spend money at all, even when they get older.
They fail to realize that at some point, it's worth your time to spend the X amount either because the value of investing X down the line is so great, or because the time saved by spending X is now so much greater than before, because of something changing in your life (career has progressed, valuation of free time has changed).
I definitely see this myself daily, ending up wasting few minutes each day on trivial things that add up, while it could be fixed by paying a small amount.
Or for example trying to wade through a free course to learn something, but ultimately just dropping it out of no motivation. Compared to paying for a course, which makes you more responsible s you paid for it and usually also offers more effective training.
I agree, and the spin that I would put on it is that I find the framing of this article to be particularly helpful. The sense of "wait, you can do that?" For me, it has often been the case that b I've encountered new concepts that I've never clearly thought about in my own head before, but that once I hear stated openly, are as clear as day.
For the longest time, I had not encountered a concept of "self-care" but then I started seeing that term pop up around the internet and it seemed quite obvious that it was an important thing. That might seem silly, but if your timeline for these things reaches back to the '90s, like mine does, a notion like self-care is relatively recent on the historical timeline as a familiar concept.
I've also seen this in writing, with how you handle plot and character development. Or even some things that are silly but obvious like the fact that you can just go out and go on hikes if you want, and there are tons and tons of places to do that.
I feel like there's all kinds of hidden mental blocks that you can go your whole life not knowing that you have, and I appreciate this idea of elevating the concept to its own genre and targeting it with articles such as the one posted here.
Yes, definitely. Unfortunately this all is usually buried behind heaps and heaps of people trying to sell you something that won't work (either because it just doesn't work for you or because it's a scam! Or maybe both!)
Quite a few in the list amount to "Hire someone to do some optional service for you." I mean, I know I can do all these things. Who doesn't know this? It's not that we don't know we can do these things, it just seems so wasteful to hire someone to do some thing that you (assuming you are able-bodied) can do yourself. Hire someone to "stand in line for you" or "run errands"? Are you kidding me? It's like the Anti-Frugal.
I'm a bit of a DIY obsessive, so maybe I'm just all the way on the other side of the spectrum, but I don't hire someone to do something unless I feel the task is so far outside of my comfort zone that it poses a danger to me. I usually only do it after I've tried the task myself and utterly failed. You'd be surprised what you can do yourself with just a few YouTube tutorials and a decent collection of tools. As a side effect, I've gotten pretty good at being handy around the house, managing the family's finances, repairing our cars, doing major home improvement projects including building barns and sheds, building furniture, lawn care, tree trimming, electrical, plumbing, etc. I consider developing these skills a better investment than the alternative which is perpetually needing to pay someone to do them.
DIY for its own sake is often a "penny wise, pound foolish" approach. I recently needed a new TV stand, but I didn't feel like paying even what a cheap ikea version would cost. thinking myself quite clever, I bought a bunch of cinder blocks and a piece of particle board from home depot instead. the total cost was about $12, mostly for the board. it makes a very stable platform for the TV, but it weighs at least five times as much as the cheap ikea stand. it takes four trips to move the damn thing and it leaves cinderblock dust everywhere. I regret that decision every time I move or even rearrange my room.
I also like to DIY so what you are saying makes sense to me. However I also realize that there are things I don't know how to make and I have no interest in (for me it's taxes, administrivia and co). Those things I am gladly paying somebody to do that for me as I am effectively buying free time. And someone who is not into DIY is also buying free time if they hire someone for trimming their trees.
Well my time is definitely not free; people pay lots of money for access to it.
The problem with "muh welcome to upper middle class prosperity" lists like this is it doesn't account for the management time and mental load involved in something like "Hire a researcher or expert consultant." For that matter "Cleaning services" or "Hire a graphic designer to turn your appalling sketches into ..." require significant cognitive overhead and time to hire and manage unless you or your spouse or close friends are already doing such things for your day job. If you're already doing such things for your day job you probably already thought of these things.
Some of them are pretty insane: people who need a maid to chuck their clothes into the washer and dryer, then put them away: if it takes you longer than 15 minutes a week to do this ... I have to wonder at your wardrobe. I mean, I understand some people deeply resent performing such menial tasks, or maybe they have large families, but it's not that big a job compared to feeding yourself and getting some exercise.
For myself, hiring experts to assist with my day to day life has been a fairly mixed bag, and my education, hobbies and lifestyle is such that DiY is usually the win.
> Well my time is definitely not free; people pay lots of money for access to it.
Your working time is worth money, but your free time is free. Your time is only worth money (opportunity cost) if you'd otherwise be working on some money-making opportunity.
If it's 1. Hiring someone for $25/hr to mow the lawn while I work on a contract that's making me $200/hr, I'd choose to hire the gardener. If it's 2. Hiring someone to mow the lawn while I play video games, I'm better off if I mow it myself.
I charge by the hour, so my "free time" is billable too. Focuses the mind knowing whatever you're doing when you're not working is billable hours (hence no vidya). I still mostly make my own food, coffee and wash my own clothes. Hell Paul Krugman washes his own clothes in his sink, while he's travelling, and I'm pretty sure he bills more than I do (I actually do use laundry service when I travel for work).
Anyway, maybe that's why I don't see a lot of those things on the list as desirable; if I have to spend two hours managing the graphic designer to make a chart/plot/figure, I may as well fiddle around in xfig or whatever to get it done myself.
> if it takes you longer than 15 minutes a week to do this ... I have to wonder at your wardrobe
Consider a large family with multiple children, a humid environment where towels have to be washed often or they smell, plus the safety precaution of washing outside clothes more often to eliminate any possible coronavirus, then you have the recipe for a full load of laundry almost every day. It easily adds up to way more than 15 minutes a week.
Definitely noticed that, and it is certainly a privilege to be able to trade time for money; but it is also something that many people don't stop to consider. It makes sense to be thrifty when you're younger and poorer but it can become a blind spot when things change and your time starts becoming more valuable.
Especially when it gets tangled up with moral judgments or self-image: "why order something at restaurant that you can make at home?" "what kind of cyclist can't change a flat" "only a loser has to pay to get dates" etc...
None of those things are absolute right or wrong, but it should be based on a honest assessment of the tradeoffs, not emotional associations or ingrained assumptions.
regarding: 'trading time and money'.
My simple rule has always been, if I can hire someone to do something by the hour less than what I get paid by the hour then I should do that. This is 'trading money for time'.
To offset the money spent, I should then reverse and 'trade time for money' either by increased work or training and education for an increased pay rate.
In my own experience, I've found that reasoning that way has some real downsides:
- Just because my hourly rate is $X, it doesn't follow that I can always work an additional hour to make an additional $X.
- After working 40+ hours/week doing paid work, working an additional hour at my day job to avoid doing something else does not make for a happy life. In fact, it makes life quite dull, and made me a very narrow person.
It also makes you dependent on other people. Finding the right people and matching schedules has a cost.
I can repair my motorcycle any day I choose. Delivering my motorcycle to a mechanic during office hours has a cost. Finding a good mechanic has a cost.
I also find that eating at restaurants is more time-consuming than cooking at home. I have to go there, order and wait, then head back home after.
> Just because my hourly rate is $X, it doesn't follow that I can always work an additional hour to make an additional $X.
this is a good point for salaried employees. in any case, your pre-tax hourly rate is sort of a meaningless figure for comparison. if you want to do this kind of comparison at all, you should probably think in terms of disposable income. for example, if you make $30/hr post-tax and half of your budget is fixed costs, a $30 discretionary purchase is two hours worth of work.
Your time is only worth money if you’d otherwise be working. You can’t just say, well, I make $100/hr so I will outsource any task I can that costs less!
I make a salary, not hourly, so it really doesn’t make sense for me to hire someone to do a task I can do myself. Just tossing $$$ away.
This is clearly directed at people with some amount of disposable income. Also many may value their time and money differently. I used fancyhands for a bit when I was on a grad student salary and I thought it was worth my time even then.
Last year I saw a C level exec in a mid size startup spend 20 min on hold with a credit card company to dispute some booking. I was wondering why they would not offload that.
More specifically, I think it's directed at people (like me and apparently the author) who grew up, and maybe even spent a while as an adult, without much or any disposable income, but now are lucky enough to have some. It is taking me years to unlearn habits that no longer make sense for my situation, simply because when you're poor, so much of your life revolves around optimizing for money that it takes many, many reminders that it's ok to place value on time as well.
I have a bunch of friends that grew up working class, and they still, consistently, value their own time at 0. Regardless of their actual adult income. Which means they often spend ridiculous amounts of time and effort to save tiny amounts of money.
I grew up lower middle class instead, so I have other stupid frugal habits. Growing up, my parents never, ever, ever replaced a thing that was working. The only time you were allowed to replace a thing was when it was irredeemably broken.
I know what you mean, but I've come to understand that some people subconsciously enjoy that kind of 'penny wise' behavior. My wife does a lot of things I consider to be a huge waste of time when it comes to saving small amounts of money (like making specific combinations of orders because they're a deal and so on) but they perceive it differently. It's like part hobby and part pathological addiction.
> "Growing up, my parents never, ever, ever replaced a thing that was working. The only time you were allowed to replace a thing was when it was irredeemably broken."
That just sounds like common sense to me. Why replace a washing machine that still works just fine? For some gimmicky features or a shiny modern industrial design?
I fall firmly in the camp of not replacing stuff that works, clothes that still fit and aren't worn out, anything that still serves its purpose. Obviously I will repair or modify things to the extent of my skills to keep them going, clothes and computers are what I'm best at.
My TV is a 42" LG LCD that I picked up for $20 ages ago when my company was moving to a new office building. It works perfectly, supports 1080p and the picture quality is good after the usual adjustments I would have to do on a new TV anyway. None of the new TVs I can buy offer any real tangible improvements that make them worth the additional cost.
Sure, when this TV eventually breaks, I'll probably replace it with one that's slightly larger, 50-55" would be ideal for the space I have on the wall. But there's no need to rush that upgrade.
Consumerism has broken people's brains, they're stuck in an eternal loop of trying to keep up with the Joneses, never happy with what they already have. It's unhealthy and wasteful.
Great example from yesterday for me: wife complained about our toaster oven and that it is a pain (burns food among other things) and misses an older one we had that died. Old one ~$100, current one $35. She said we will just have to wait for this one to die and then get a good one. This was a good mentality when we were pinching pennies but I make FAANG money and told her it is totally fine to toss the toaster oven. She is still chewing on that idea as it feels wasteful.
Edit: I fully agree with you on all your examples. Just wanted to give a counter example.
Just the fact that you're discussing it and not just buying a new one as a reflexive action is good. There's a good argument to be made that your current toaster oven is not fit for purpose.
My current laptop is an X220i (with upgraded RAM, SSD, WLAN and battery), which is a ~2012 vintage machine. It runs openSUSE with no issues and plays 60fps YouTube videos smoothly.
My desktop machine is 2011 vintage hardware (Phenom II X6 with 16GB RAM), upgraded piecemeal to an SSD and a Radeon RX560. It plays the games I like to play (currently GTA V and Mudrunner) in 1080p on max settings and it's obviously plenty powerful for ordinary desktop applications.
If a PC does eventually become too slow to be practical in daily use, then I would say it's no longer really fit for purpose. That happened with my old Chromebook, which couldn't even play Youtube videos smoothly after they changed the codecs. It happened with my old P4-based PC, but the person I gave it to kept using it for years for basic desktop stuff.
I just don't replace stuff for the sake of upgrading, so I buy very little new stuff and keep what I have for a long time. I prefer spending more up front for something I know will last, and based on how much use i expect out of it. I'm not going to buy a super fancy drill, since I only need to drill holes a couple of times per year, so a basic one is fine. On the other hand, I prefer walking to get around, so I buy good quality footwear that lasts and can be repaired.
while i agree on tv, switching from 8ms response time monitor to 1ms with 100% srgb coverage and proper contrast made me able to skim on text much faster.
> Growing up, my parents never, ever, ever replaced a thing that was working.
Same, but I think that's a good thing. The culture of throwing things away and buying new ones just for the fun of it is bad for the future of humanity. I only replace things that are working when I have certainty that the still-working thing can be useful to someone else.
just curious, but (how) would it be possible to offload this with a financial service like a bank or credit card company? don’t they check your identity? can you really authorize someone else to do it without sharing sensitive details with them??
(I guess the super rich can have very trusted employees with such access, or banks provide white glove service at some point, but that’s clearly different)
If you have a net worth of a few hundred thousand dollars you can engage in "private banking" services with many major banks. You will be paired with a banker who can work as your advocate, bend internal rules, and cut down the amount of time required to deal with disputes. If your card happens to be issued by that bank, I would imagine they could assist with aspects of that.
If you have substantially more money than that then you can enlist financial professionals to legally act on your behalf and settle disputes for you.
In theory the owner should have a better relationship with their bank so they don't deal with that sort of thing.
You can add a signatory to a bank account (and I'm guessing to a credit card as well). I don't know of any services that specialize in nit-picking through the use of an authorized signer however part of said hypothetical service could be to bond / insure that the secondary signer doesn't take some sort of negative action that leaves the account/owner in bad standing.
But again you're running into the ultimate question of why isn't your bank / credit card taking care of you...maybe it's because the bank / CC just make money off of the fiduciary mishaps of the owner when they don't have 20 minutes to wait on hold.
Yep. Rich people can hire experts to validate and spot check their ideas, even write articles and what not about it. I wonder how much money do I need to be able to do that. A few things in the list that cost money are worth it if done at the right time. Tutoring with the the right resource can be the best investment sometimes and of course rich people will afford more of that.
Yep, $1M is not going to attract people to do things for you just because. The $50M+ people will have people flock to do small things for you for free.
I saw it with my old boss. People would always be asking if they needed help or would just offer free stuff in hopes of getting something later.
Correlation may not be causation though. Do people flock to him because he's rich, or is he rich because people flock to him? (or ... something in between?)
I grew up not poor by world standards, but somewhat poor by Western standards. What really resonated with me was the point about buying a comfortable mattress. It wasn't the mattress in my case, but the bed I slept on. I bought it used 8 years ago. I fixed it twice. It was creaking again. It's not that I couldn't buy a new one, it's just that I was used to not buying furniture. After all it's only comfort.
Last year I bought a new bed and it improved a lot of things for me. It's simple, but if you grow up thinking about every penny you spend you get weird habits.
I relate to 100% of this. I guess I should clarify that I’m not saying it’s bad advice to people with means to say “you’re allowed to spend money to [achieve some life comfort or progress]”. And owning a nice bed is definitely one I can relate to (and when I have the disposable income again I intend to get a better mattress than the one I currently have).
I guess my objection to the article, as presented, is it’s kind of tone deaf particularly at a time when many people are financially struggling to just assert that you’re “allowed” to hire people for a long list of tasks, at a cost that many people wouldn’t even dream of being able to afford or justify.
Yes, there are certainly a few core areas where spending money can greatly improve quality of life. A solid bed and chair (if you work a desk job) are two of them.
There is an absolutely massive marketing industry out there contending for discretionary income. It is worth pointing out options which may have high utility for the buyer, but where the sell side doesn't spend billions on pumping awareness into the culture.
Not sure what Median Mortgage payment tells you without looking at health insurance payment, retirement savings, college saving for kids, college debt, auto payments etc.
I would expect a median family with median mortgage to have little money left over if they have children.
> I haven’t tried everything on this list, mainly due to cost. But you’d be surprised how cheap most of the things on this list are (especially the free ones).
It's true money can buy a lot of them, but you can barter too. E.g. make a deal with your housemate to clean the house if they'll do a few hours research for you.
So you have to spend/trade something, but (for me) it's harder to think of what's worth spending/trading for. Hence the post.
So they can just ignore the advice in the article if it doesn't apply to them. What's your point? People should only write articles from the perspective of extreme poverty?
