My hope is that everyone would have enough income to allow them to sufficiently treat themselves from time to time. I think there’s a lot of value sticking to the basics and not buying a bunch of stuff that doesn’t contribute to your life, but everybody is different and we all have non-essentials that really make us happy.
However, this can be taken too far. For example, I’m about 20 pounds overweight because I “treat myself” to food too often. Which sucks. But it would be funny to argue that life is a terrible deprivation because I’m not, say, eating donuts every morning. What control I do have over my eating is why I’m not 30 or 40 pounds overweight, but make no mistake, over-treating myself has produced short-term pleasures at the cost of long-term health. And the similarities between health and money are pretty powerful.
A similar thing happens when people constantly treat themselves to new purchases. It feels good for awhile – I think we all understand that excitement of buying something interesting and new, or waiting for a package to arrive in the mail – but it only gets us so far. And sometimes, the things we buy only bring us excitement in the early stages, only to spend their time in the basement thereafter. This is, in fact, why so many American garages, attics, closets, and basements are so full: we humans simply enjoy the thrill of the hunt, the act of spending and acquiring.
But this can really bite us in the long run. Acquiring things costs a lot of money, and the more things we buy that aren’t improving our lives, the more we are robbing ourselves of better uses for that money. Humans are excellent self-saboteurs.
Now, I think there is a time and place for luxuries, anyway. I spent about $600 on a metal detector and accessories for it. I’ve used it a whopping 3 times. Doesn’t this go against my principles of making sure to buy things I use often? It does, but this is a very rare case in which I don’t care. First of all, I’d wanted to try metal detecting for years, but I was always hesitant to buy a detector because I knew I probably wouldn’t use it very often. Second of all, I bought it so I could metal detect on my grandma’s farm. She’s pretty tough, but we still never know how much long she will be around, and I really didn’t want to miss the chance to find some sort of family artifact buried in the rubble of the old house. For what it’s worth, I found some really cool artifacts from before my grandparents moved to the farm, and that was super cool! Laws regarding metal detecting are pretty complex, which makes it difficult to just “go detecting” on a random Saturday without having done a lot of research beforehand, but there’s still something nerdy and awesome about waving this thing over the ground and knowing that something metallic is down there. As someone who enjoys history, it can be a lot of fun.
Only very rarely do I make these sorts of exceptions, and that other people make them too doesn’t bother me. I really don’t care. But I think it’s an important principle to seriously limit these sorts of purchases. A donut every now and then doesn’t do any harm. A donut every morning probably does.
What helps me is to think of the opportunity cost – what am I giving up by buying something? What other things could I buy for the same price? For example, sometimes I like to go to Qdoba, but this usually costs me around $8 for one meal, whereas $5 can buy me a pound of ground chicken, which can make 2 or 3 meals. This doesn’t mean I never buy Qdoba, but it gives me pause to ask whether spending $8 on one meal is really in my best interest.
Or, I’ve been picking on smart phones lately. Sure, I have the money to buy a new $800 Pixel 4, but this could buy me 2 or 3 used or refurbished Pixels. Quite frankly, I don’t have any idea what advantages a Pixel 4 would have over my current phone. Since I’m happy with my current phone, there’s no purpose to buying another one, and that money can be spent pretty much however I want. (And when I think about it, $400, half of that price tag, could be used to buy that ultralight backpacking tent I’ve been wanting!)
And I do get some jollies picking on certain things over others: sports cars, electronic gizmos, subscription services. But even I know that how I treat myself is different from how you treat yourself. But I do believe it’s important to understand how best to treat yourself: know what really matters to you. I like putting OEM parts in my car. It costs more, but I think most of the time it’s worth it. When I finally had the control arm out during my big project last week, I was SO thankful I had bought OEM, because I felt assured that I would probably never need to get in there again. Conceptually, it’s easy to change, but in reality, it’s no so easy. Cars are expensive to maintain, but if I’m going to own a car, I want to take great care of it, and that means something to me. So yes, I’d much rather put money into my car than some whoodad that will be obsolete in a year. But this doesn’t mean those whoodads can’t be fun. It really is different for everyone.
One of my friends is a hard-core gamer, but he was hesitant to buy a 4k TV. I didn’t think to say it at the time, but I should have said, “Dude, if anybody is going to get full use out of a 4k TV, it’s you. Just buy the TV”.
Anyway, this is a big subject, but that’s all I have to say on it right now.