I grew up in a poor background - to the point that I regularly went around collecting cans to scrape together enough cash to buy used clothes at a thrift store because spending even $5 on a new t-shirt wasn't affordable. This gave me an excellent sense of frugality and an incredible work-ethic because I'd gladly work 3 jobs to put food on the table. I spent years either working, skilling up, applying for jobs, or frantically hoarding diversified assets. Boomers destroying the first several companies I worked at only reinforced the pervasive sense that winter is coming, all the food's going to be gone, and tomorrow there's going to be no income for months or years so you better save like it's 1402 and the flipping plague is rolling through the countryside.
I'm not poor anymore. I'll never be poor again. I'm wealthy now by any standard and even a Dickens-novel level financial disaster would pan out as a worst case of "Oh noez, I have to slum it and fly coach with the plebes".
Here's the catch: that poverty mindset that kept me from starving and made me wealthy? It still gives me fucking anxiety spending money I will never need and wouldn't notice if it was gone. Even if it's something trivial like $5 for a new shirt, I still get the skin-crawling sensation because I feel like I should be:
1) Hoarding that cash for a rainy day.
2) Investing it for a future rainy day.
3) Buying more ammo than I can carry incase of a Mad Max style apocalypse.
4) Buying more crypto or precious metals incase I need to bug out to another country on five minutes notice because the commies started stringing people up.
I know this is irrational. If that new shirt was $500, it still wouldn't matter because I have the resources and you can only wear so many shirts. But there's still that ohmagerd-Im-gonna-starve-if-I-dont-super-frugal-ARRRRRGHH emotion going on. How do I put a stake in the heart of this mentality that served me well for decades, but is no longer useful and is now straight up counter-productive?
I grew up in a poor background - to the point that I regularly went around collecting cans to scrape together enough cash to buy used clothes at a thrift store because spending even $5 on a new t-shirt wasn't affordable. This gave me an excellent sense of frugality and an incredible work-ethic because I'd gladly work 3 jobs to put food on the table. I spent years either working, skilling up, applying for jobs, or frantically hoarding diversified assets. Boomers destroying the first several companies I worked at only reinforced the pervasive sense that winter is coming, all the food's going to be gone, and tomorrow there's going to be no income for months or years so you better save like it's 1402 and the flipping plague is rolling through the countryside.
I'm not poor anymore. I'll never be poor again. I'm wealthy now by any standard and even a Dickens-novel level financial disaster would pan out as a worst case of "Oh noez, I have to slum it and fly *coach* with the plebes".
Here's the catch: that poverty mindset that kept me from starving and made me wealthy? It still gives me fucking anxiety spending money *I will never need and wouldn't notice if it was gone.* Even if it's something trivial like $5 for a new shirt, I still get the skin-crawling sensation because I feel like I should be:
1) Hoarding that cash for a rainy day.
2) Investing it for a future rainy day.
3) Buying more ammo than I can carry incase of a Mad Max style apocalypse.
4) Buying more crypto or precious metals incase I need to bug out to another country on five minutes notice because the commies started stringing people up.
I know this is irrational. If that new shirt was $500, it still wouldn't matter because I have the resources and you can only wear so many shirts. But there's still that ohmagerd-Im-gonna-starve-if-I-dont-super-frugal-ARRRRRGHH emotion going on. How do I put a stake in the heart of this mentality that served me well for decades, but is no longer useful and is now straight up counter-productive?
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