I feel that I, an older millennial, was raised by a generation that by and large forgot life is not guaranteed and death is always looming. I felt an overwhelming push from my elders to find a safe, stable job (and be grateful for the honor!) and to save as much as humanly possible for old age, even if it meant significant sacrifices for the here and now. Part of it was the glorification of "retirement", a concept I still can't wrap my head around, yet it seemed to be the only reason a lot of Boomers even bothered waking up for work in the morning.
Add to that the massive fear-based campaign against drugs and sex that we were all subject to, and it paints a picture of a generation hiding from their actual lives in the hope that they would be healthy and wealthy and alive and enough to enjoy a quiet decade or two at the very end.
My father in law is one of those. He has more money than he can spend until he dies even if he raised his standard of living 10 times. Yet he refuses to spend it, and would rather be cold during winter than turning up the heater.
I don't get it. But again, I also don't get living a life of pure pleasure, and not thinking at all about tomorrow.
I'd rather think about tomorrow, and spend today getting satisfaction from the work I do, so tomorrow I can say I did my best. But also putting in a few guilty pleasures from time to time. Not too much, because if they're scarce, there's more pleasure.
This is not all that surprising if you flip it around: Your father-in-law has a habit of frugality which led to accumulating far more than he can ever spend.
> He has more money than he can spend until he dies even if he raised his standard of living 10 times
For him the high standards of living is to look at the bank account and seeing his millions and thus feeling like a somebody in a hood of nonodies.
That’s the reasoning that propmts hoarders to hoard.
Me approaching the problem from a completely different angle I realized that if you live in Usa or Western Europe you are basically at the frontier of progress so if you are after a consequential jump in standard of living it will only come from society wide discoveries and inventions, not personal spending no matter how many millions you have. You’d be pushing on a string.
Maybe your father in law refuses to push on a string out of principle?
Your father in law sounds like a virtuous man. If he has earned his money, he must have provided goods and services for others. If he does not spend the money, that means he asked for nothing in return. Is that not virtuous?
He is not hoarding wealth, he is hoarding money. And money is essentially IOUs, claims on the labour of other people and on other resources.
So as I said, if he earned the money, that means he provided for others, and in exchange he got these pieces of paper, which say that later, if he wants to, he can get others to provide for him in return.
Not spending the money means that he never claims anything for himself in return for what he did for others. How is that not virtuous?
He's not spending it, but he invested it. So the money is still growing.
Virtuous would be to just give the money away to those he loved or needed that money (I'm not saying he should do that, I'm just following your logic).
As things go, he will have lived his last years like a poor man, and his family will inherit his money. He will have suffered for nothing, because he doesn't have enough money to make the rest of his family rich, just enough that he wouldn't need to suffer not having anything now.
Even better that he invested it. I see it this way - he is perfectly entitled to use the claims on others' labour and resources for his own pleasure. Instead, by investing, he uses the claims to get others to work on projects that create more real wealth for others to enjoy! That seems like virtuous behaviour to me. Very unselfish.
Sure, giving the money away may or may not be more virtuous (depends on who gets it and what they do with it). But surely you would agree with me that spending it on one's own pleasures is less virtuous than either of not spending it, investing it productively or giving it to loved ones?
Spending with urgency when you are in the twilight of your life makes it so that the claim on other people labor is very weak, because the person spending has essentially no time to waste to haggle or complain about poor service
It sounds like he realizes there is much more to life than physical comfort, and he has the strength and perspective to live accordingly. Excessive physical comfort is often addictive, ultimately unsatisfying, and leads to sadness and weakness. Per the ancient stoics, avoiding it (the virtue of temperance) helps build the strength that makes it possible to escape suffering, and actually enjoy life more.
Two of the most famous stoics Seneca and Marcus Aurelius were among the wealthiest and most powerful men in Ancient Rome yet intentionally lived like you describe because they saw it as virtuous, but also helping make them personally happy people.
I am personally prone to chronic depression and have found that living simply and embracing discomfort helps me to be less depressed. I can afford to live in extreme comfort but I wouldn’t be happy like that, I would feel lethargic and weak… like a pampered pet and not a person with strength and purpose.
What you have described is living your life where you satisfaction comes only from purchasing comfort. Doesn’t that feel a bit empty and pointless? What is important to you in life? Couldn’t you do better at things that were really important, and thus be happier and more satisfied if you had cultivated the strength to not need those comforts?
> What you have described is living your life where you satisfaction comes only from purchasing comfort.
I think there's a difference between having absolute comfort, and not turning up the heater in winter time, enduring cold inside your own house. Besides, it's not like he lives alone, his wife lives with him, and she has to endure that whether she likes it or not (they're old and there's no way for her to leave him, so let's not go there).
So, being a stoic is ok if that's what you like. But dragging others with you by force I think is not ok, and if you apply stoicism on things like not warming up your house, or not buying good food when you invite your family to gather in your house once a year having all the resources to be a good host, is not stoicism. It's being cheap for the sake of being cheap.
Also, my wife told me he's been like that his entire life. It's not like he turned cheap in his old age.
On my part, I'm not going to have dinner for Christmas at his house ever again.
You’re right, the situation is different than I assumed, he just sounds cheap. The point of temperance to me is to be able to better focus my energy and resources on what is important, like doing well as a father and a partner. That won’t involve forcing physical discomfort on other people.
You can generate a lot of wealth through viciousness and exploitation too. Do you think rich people are necessarily virtuous? Because extremely uhhhhhhhhh
You can but, say, on HN, I believe most people have generated their wealth by providing a services for others.
I do not think rich people are necessarily virtuous. I do think that there is virtue in a wealthy person that does not spend their wealth on personal consumption.
I do not think it’s virtuous to pointlessly hurt yourself, nor to allow other people to do so.
Though I guess he doesn’t see it like that. If he just likes the experience of seeing his bank account number go up in the cold, then he should probably continue doing so.
The key thing, is he happy? I don't think how much he saved or spends matters that much. The thing is to have the things that give you satisfaction or comfort.
Come on it's not that hard !!! Slave away your best years and buy a small house when your physical and mental energy are too depleted to be useful as a wage slave
PS: if you're in the poorest class you might only get 0-5 years of ill health retirement
PPS: the house is not contractual
PPPS: the payment neither
You can still work in retirement, as long as you don't make any money from it, you'll generally still be considered retired. The advantage is that you can work on what you think is worth doing, instead of being bossed around by an employer or the market.
That’s an interesting chain of thought considering that prior generations emphasized savings and prudence even more than baby boomers did, and were undoubtedly better acquainted with death than millennials. Indeed, in 1960, when baby boomers were children, the US had an under 5 mortality rate of over 3%, comparable to India today and high enough where nearly everyone knew children who had died.
> prior generations emphasized savings and prudence
Even though I'm a native English speaker, I discovered right now that I didn't know what prudence meant. I knew the word prude so I naturally assumed that prudence meant being concerned with morality and sexual behavior.
It turns out that the words are unrelated. Prudence means the ability to govern and discipline oneself by the use of reason. So unlike prude, prudence is actually a positive trait.
Though I'll add that "in modern English, the word prudence has become increasingly synonymous with cautiousness; in this sense, prudence names a reluctance to take risks." (Wikipedia)
One could argue that sex and drugs are also the opposite of “discipline” and “reason.” Certainly, they stand in contrast to “reluctance to take risks.”
It is interesting. Boomers came of age in one of the most prosperous societies ever. And while we can't talk about all those tens of millions of people as one unit, there are major and obvious trends from that generation where they emphasized fear of crime and drugs and sex (just look at the politics), and focused on job and retirement security over most other aspects of life.
I'd have expected them to be a lot more decadent and care free. Maybe it has to do with being raised by a generation that could not be decadent or care free (by and large).
Fear of crime and drugs and sex compared to whom? Not the generation before. It seems the correlation goes in the opposite direction from what you posit.
Indeed, as at least the perception of prosperity goes down, it’s worth observing that millennials have fewer sexual partners than boomers and use less drugs.
Hm didn't the boomers famously not save nearly enough for their own retirements? Maybe they were just trying to help you avoid mistakes that they made.
Also weren't they the generation of 'sex, drugs, and rock and roll?'
Add to that the massive fear-based campaign against drugs and sex that we were all subject to, and it paints a picture of a generation hiding from their actual lives in the hope that they would be healthy and wealthy and alive and enough to enjoy a quiet decade or two at the very end.
Hard pass.