Maladaptive Frugality

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 finance vacations, appliances, kitchen remodels, smartphones - mostly to keep up with friends and coworkers who finance their lifestyles too. A lot of people are in non-stop debt from the age of 18 to 55, if not longer. By most estimates, only about 10-20% of US households are debt-free.

Spending and getting into debt are useful tools. But I don't have any friends in tech who need to be told "hey dude, you should be spending more". I have quite a few friends who would be better off spending less.

For years I did this with the thermostat - something I learned from my father who always kept the house under 65F (18C) in Winter. I'm somewhat ashamed to admit it even led to arguments with my spouse early in our marriage when I would enter a room and find the thermostat set to a balmy 70F.

Eventually I just sat down, looked at how much it costs keep the house a few degrees warmer in winter, and realized we could afford to be comfortable. And if I were really hell bent on saving money, there were other lower-priority expenses I could cut back on first. But I don't even think it was even necessarily about the money - it was more that saving energy and toughing it out felt virtuous to me. Which is all fine, but not something that should be imposed on your partner if they don't share the same beliefs (or if they just get cold easier than you).

A wife is a useful thing to have in this respect, not because they tend to profligacy, but because this kind of thing is much easier to detect and fix in someone close to you than in yourself. Both my wife and I have lived frugal lives at various times[0] and I feel much happier with the degree of spending we have now.

I'm reminded of the intelligent corvids in Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Memory where the sum of the two birds forms a being with intelligence in a way that the individual segments do not. The frugality is a deeply embedded piece of our being and undoing it seems hard, but together we financially operate in a place that leaves us both feeling comfortable.

0: In the US sense of the term, not in the sense of the term as known in Taiwan or India.

I struggle with this. I feel so guilty for replacing my four year old phone this week, even though my old phone has had hardware issues for more than a year. There wasn't really a puritanical element for me, it seems to be just from growing below the poverty line.

The flip side of it is I've accidentally joined the FIRE movement. Making a moderate tech salary for most of my time since graduating college but feeling guilty about spending means I'm now in my early 40s and don't really have to work anymore, or at least, could comfortably take any job I want without worrying about what the pay rate is. I don't really know how to feel about that. After my last job in tech I took about a half a year off before realizing I also felt guilty about not working, and took a job I wanted. But there are also weird feelings from working because you want to at a workplace where most everyone else is working because they have to.

I do something kinda similar, I guess it counts as maladaptive frugality?

Whenever I have something a little extra in my fridge, most often Italian prosciutto, I refrain from eating it, instead saving it for a "special occasion" even though it is, like, my favourite thing in the whole world. Eventually I have to throw the mouldy prosciutto away because I was too frugal to eat it.

I'm practicing though, learning to eat it. I don't know why it's so hard, I mean it's delicious! Should be easy!

For some, I think there’s that satisfaction that comes with saving money (like you’re somehow “cheating the system”, even when it’s just a coupon that gets you to buy something you wouldn’t otherwise). In some cases, that satisfaction grows with the amount of time or effort expended to save the money in the first place, which is ironic because that money-value-of-time probably far exceeds the actual amount saved. Practically every engineer here probably has a story about spending a ton of time or effort to optimize something by a tiny amount; saving money can be like that too. It’s a little joy in life, and so long as it doesn’t outright prevent you from spending money when you should (or impose excessive optimization costs), I think it’s fine.

The maladaptive part is when you start regretting not saving money, because it has two knock-on effects: it makes the decision to spend much more emotional (which negatively impacts rational decision-making) and it can negatively impact the enjoyment of the thing itself. For example, the maladaptive part might take the form of being reminded of the cost every time you look at the repaired phone.

This is very culture-specific. I've seen this in Poland. Under USSR rule frugality has been necessary to survive, but it left a lot of people forever stuck in that mindset, long after things got better. I know people who have a fortune in the bank, but live like they're broke, because they're afraid to spend anything from a "rainy day fund" even on rainy days.

This is one of the reasons I like YNAB (both their app and their method). One of their core principles is to align your spending -- including future spending, aka saving -- with your values. Spending on the wrong things isn't good, but neither is saving without clear purpose.

My wife and I both came from fairly frugal households growing up, so frugality is often our default. It's been a helpful exercise to periodically ask ourselves "what do we actually value, and what tradeoffs should we make", then update our plan to match.

In this subject area, I recommend Jacob Lund Fisker[0]'s Early Retirement Extreme book [1]. Don't let the title fool you. The man has a surprisingly level-headed and refreshing approach to spending.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Lund_Fisker [1] https://archive.org/details/earlyretiremente0000fisk

> What I took away: eating at a good restaurant was bad, taking out cheap food was good because it saved money.

Any sort of morality like framing around it is likely to lead to issues imo.

The closer you can get to an analytical approach the better I think - can I afford it, is it good value for money, is it useful/furthers my goals etc

Maladaptive frugality is just one of many "maladaptive X" where X is something that we overgeneralized in childhood.

I think it is especially easy to overgeneralize frugality because, either because it is taboo or conventionally boring, parents don't always share the situational details that prompt their behavior.

In my life I internalized "everyone should rule the thermostat with an iron fist always" when the more complete picture would have been "because we're cash-strapped in the 2008 recession and our house is old and leaky we're ruling the thermostat with an iron fist for now".

Agree wholeheartedly but I worry some will read this and go all in the opposite. The key point is that humility helps make you free. Couple that with not being a slave to frugality and you can live without as much guilt and without a much restraint.

May I suggest you read, "Scarcity: Why having too little means so much" (https://www.amazon.com/Scarcity-Having-Little-Means-Much-ebo...) it is a really interesting book which explores maladaptive frugality. We often talk about money and how people don't have enough, but these principles apply to any resource, in my own case I found cases where 'never having enough time' would push me to make bad choices about how I spent time. The author is talking about spending money but consider the adage "If its worth doing over then its worth doing right the first time."

A similar term (often found as a reaction to Amazon LPs) is frupidity.

I was so frugal that I didn't refinance my (admittedly already low) interest rate during Covid because "we were planning on selling the house in a year or so". Oh well :)

To me this is so much about where you focus your attention. Even from a purely financial perspective. Mental space dedicated to watching your expenses is space you aren't using to improve your top-line. Some people are very proud of being frugal, spending time optimizing expenses - while earning far less than they could otherwise because they don't spend any mental energy on how to earn more. Meanwhile others are spendthrifts, but allocate a lot more energy to earning more - and do earn more.

Stay focused on earning more money and don't spend any more time than you need to watching expenses - just so long as you save/ivnest plenty. You'll enjoy life a lot more.

I see this with my dad as he approaches retirement. I try to remind him that if he doesn't pay with money, he's going to pay with his time... and right now he's saving money he doesn't need for time he doesn't have.

I read this article 10 years ago by a guy named Ricky Yean who went to Stanford as an economically disadvantaged admit and couldn’t shake his poverty mindset and it cost him when he was running a startup.

Why “few successful startup founders grew up desperately poor”

https://rickyyean.com/2016/01/22/privilege-and-inequality-in...

Poverty mindset is maladaptive because it teaches you only money is worth anything, so you hoard it. But in truth time is also worth a lot and sometimes it’s wise to use money to buy time.

Spending money sparingly is like reducing weight in an automobile. A car will get better gas mileage, go faster, break less often, and be more responsive with less weight.

So it is with spending. When you spend less, you can retire earlier, your finances are more secure, you feel less pressure and stress, etc. You have more flexibility in the kinds of jobs you can take. Perhaps best of all, you end up accumulating less stuff, and less complicated things, which makes your life simpler.

Frugality doesn’t get the flashy press that consumerism does, but it’s a winning life strategy.

You can be frugal without spending a lot of mental energy on your expenses. It seems contradictory but it is possible to 'live' frugally without thinking about money all that much (assuming you aren't broke and have positive cash flow). The real challenge is escaping consumerism as a means of (superficial) fulfillment.

> When you default to the lowest cost option without considering the drawbacks, procrastinating or hesitating on spending[...]

This is terrible advice, one of the easiest ways to be frugal is not to be overly attached and to defer spending.

Frugality

I've been feeling guilty for buying 2 red bulls (sugar free) at work everday and my salad... a salad that costs $5 (although I can put many toppings eg. meat on it) vs. buying a $3 bag of leaves and make my own salad. I should put every dollar I have towards debt that would be ideal... but it's that time thing too, don't have to prep my lunch/carry an extra bag. Also can just make more money.

Like my car, should I not have bought an $800 RD and $1K on tires or just put that towards the car loan... idk. I enjoy a fast car though.

There is frugality and there is taking inflation into account when deciding on save vs loan. For the last many years it was net profit to take loans, spend and pay them back later because inflation meant you got more goods/services that way. On the other hand keeping cash/savings over some smallish buffer where opportunity costs dominate is/was always net loss. That not touching US-specific stuff like insane student loans, credit card terms or healthcare.

>> I have a hard time spending, to the point where I would often procrastinate on buying things that I know I’ll need in the future.

Well, what I noticed is that I go to great efforts to avoid buying me some stuff that would make my life easier (say an electric bike or a better computer). Month starts, I get my paycheck and every day I fend off the desire to buy the stuff I want/need. And then come the bills. Like some surprise "regularization" gas or electricity bill that costs more than the item I didn't buy. If it's not that, some darn thing breaks and needs repairs. And if it's not that, kid has to go in some school trip, there's some birthday or wedding we have to attend, someone asks me to lend them some money (coze they know I save) or some other event happens and requires a ca$h infusion.

By the end of the month, money's gone and I haven't got nothing. At some point working just to pay bills and expenses makes Jack a dull boy. So funk it, I buy that stuff AT THE BEGINNING OF THE MONTH. And when shit arrives demanding money I can truthfully say: "I don't have any money left". But at least I got the thing, opposed to neither money, nor item.

My spouse and I both grew up in this kind of household. Interesting to see how we & our siblings all responded, some followed suit and others had opposite reaction. I think some people are good at frugality and some are good at income maximizing, and few are good at both.

I turned into an income maximizer.. started working at 14.. post college left home, took a high stakes career and hopped to new opportunities proactively. Response to not wanting anyone to be able to control me via money.

For my spouse & I it was a reaction to 1) having a lot of childhood of consequences/regrets of over-frugality like frozen pipes bursting, parents lamenting not going back home for 10 years during which their own parents died, asking for a single $10 toy for birthday and having them buy a knock-off instead, etc.

2) a reaction to teenage parental control via money like when I was moving to the big city for my job and the housing deposit was due before the hiring company was going to wire me my housing stipend, and my parents refused to float me $1k for a month (and then gifted me more than this as a graduation gift a few months later).

So I think you want to instill a respect for money in your children but not a fear.

Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much is a pretty good book about the psychology of this. The stronger your the necessity for saving (whether from poverty or external influence like here), the deeper it gets embedded in your psyche as well, and can start to feel like "this is just who I am" as in habits around this becoming something you see as intrinsic to your personality.

> I plan to have fun spending my money in the future, so it’s time to start practicing now.

The most optimal thing to do in our world is to pick an age, say, 60, and until your 60th birthday, maximize your suffering via frugality to just under the tolerable limit so as to maximize your potential for compound interest. This leaves you with the most freedom and opportunity during the most fun part of your life, when you no longer have to sell your labor and can do whatever you want.

Within our current model, trying to slip in bits of fun through spending money before that age is getting a poor return: you're trading vacation time, which you could instead barter for more money on retirement, and you're carrying with you a bit of suffering because you have to worry about going back to work. The best thing to do is just push it all until retirement.

The limit of human suffering before suicide frequently happens is apparently quite high, so, you can really stretch yourself out here. Live in your car in the Walmart parking lot, eat beans and rice. You maybe trade a bit of the compound earnings to establish certain time constrained things you want to cash in on at 60 like having a partner or kids, but beyond that, maximize that compound interest!

I hope it's obvious that this is a criticism. It's just, the more I think about it, the more this seems the selective pressure and incentives in our society are set up. Mostly I think it's insane that we both have an idea of "retirement" and also that we set it at an age where a significant portion of the population won't make it, and for those that do, a significant portion will get to enjoy five years of it, and for the remainder, health is bad enough that maximum enjoyment isn't possible anyway.

Frugality is a state of mind, feeling guilty about it is not a frugality problem more than a labeling one.

It's the same for climate change, a lot of people want to feel good about themselves labeling them ecological when they're not capable to act on it (eating less meat, avoiding to take an airplane to travel, ..etc). They feel guilty not because of 'it' but because they don't want to act about something they reason is the morally good choice. It's performative virtue signalling.

As a general rule I don't think you can label yourself as anything (eg. a liberal, an anarchist, a frugal, a skeptic, a believer, a punk, ..etc). You either are or you aren't. Chasing a label and an identity is the best way to never be it like a perfume wearing you rather than you wearing it.

I am a consulting engineer serving small communities in Central New York.

Ostensibly my job is to design construction projects to fix a problem, but most of my job is actually helping the community figure out how to pay for the fix.

My greatest frustration is Maladaptive Frugality. There are whole communities with this mindset, and it takes a lot of effort to communicate the reality to the town/village board that they're losing money by trying to save money. I've invested a lot of work into projects which come to naught because the decision makers can't imagine a future where spending money saves them money.

"Tripping over dimes to pick up pennies" observed one old farmer.

"I'm too poor to afford cheap tools" say the wiser tradesmen.

I had a very similar experience and still catch myself on occasion. Even with my "higher" spending, it's still lower than most. I hadn't realized, but I had associated the act of not spending money as righteous, and spending money as bad.

I think it was Ramit Sethi who said something along the lines of "spending money isn't inherently moral or immoral", and that was something that resonated with me. I had to pull myself out of the implicit mindset of "spending money should cause guilt". It's been very nice.

And to clarify examples of this: I no longer hesitate purchasing a drip coffee on Saturday afternoon, or on getting a beer with some friends at the brewery.

The most helpful tool here, I've found, is maintaining a personal finances spreadsheet.

It's one thing, without a spreadsheet, to have the emotion of "I'm not going to have enough and I need to save more to make sure I have enough." I'd argue it's even evolutionary; we want to make sure we have enough to get through the winter we know is coming.

It's quite another when your spreadsheet shows you saved X, your monthly cost of living is Y, and therefore you have enough money saved, even if your income went to zero and you made no changes to your lifestyle, to last you for Z years. Being able to take YouTube University rule-of-thumb advice like "of your take-home pay, use 65% for necessities, 15% for long-term savings, 20% for enjoyment" and seeing how much money that is per month for you in your personal circumstances, along with rules of thumb on things like what ratio you should have achieved by which age on net worth-to-income ratio (1x by 30, 2x by 35, 3x by 40, etc.) and seeing what your personal actual ratio is, to get a sense of benchmarking yourself.

I mean, the influencers could be totally full of shit, but it doesn't matter. Getting actual numbers for where you are, plus getting "generic" advice that you know wasn't directed at you personally, and seeing how those numbers make you feel, can do a lot to either tell you "you don't need to be so frugal anymore" or "yep, your emotions are totally justified, keep saving".

Agreed - I find I spend almost the same time on small decisions as large, and let the default (subscriptions, extra cars, storage) ride. That's turning the decision into a drama that befalls you (and avoiding those that don't). Or you find yourself down or up become cheap or profligate.

So, what big spending is adaptive? Better to drive decisions objectively based on future value.

Some scenarios:

- It lasts a long time, and you'll need to do it anyway. Best to get it early and enjoy it longer - for iPhones, cars, houses, marriage...

- It lasts a long time and you use it daily. Always pay for what you'll be glad to have: good socks, a powerful computer, a nice view.

- Your beloveds needs to know if you care more about money or them. Choose them.

- Something expresses your values: you appreciate an artist's work, so you pay good money for it. Some panhandler is stoic, so you give him a hand. (Just be careful about posturing.)

Another mindset is to think of your money as family (writ large) money, and invest in the future of family or friends. It's as much a vote of confidence as an injection of cash, and it helps you detach from the needy instrumentality of the money to consider what's best for their future. That's the weirder phenomenon: trillions held by baby boomers until they die (just in case), while their progeny waste time in terrible jobs and narrow circumstances for lack of investment. That's maladaptive hoarding.

The internet is amazing, I like to watch videos from developing nations, where people live on a fraction of western budgets... what strikes me is the happy, free people I see. That's hard to fake.

Fellow frugalite here, and man, is it hard to break the habit of agonising over every purchase. Took me nearly 20 years in tech before I convinced myself I could justify just buying a new laptop every 5 years, and not sit around waiting for things to compile on the old one - and thats an item that is both essential to my work and also tax deductible. The agonising is even worse with items that are technically non-essential (but would make life better)

I see this with devs all the time, devs that want to pitch their startup and use a subdomain like .vercel.app that gets blocked after 2 weeks

I think Jimmy Yang summarizes this essay more effectively: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/9wJ6B7z3Hyk

100% agree. My wife is doing her best to change this habit haha.