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Comment by Nimitz14 | Hacker News Reader

But you're also getting something for it in perpetuity.

People, I find, are simply irrational when it comes to monthly subscriptions. I'm a student with <1000E income and a monthly cost <20E doesn't even register; as long as I get something from it I want. If it's not big enough to induce a lifestyle change, what's the problem? So often I see people use Spotify and complain about the commercials, and I'm just like 'What is wrong with you? Literally nothing would change if you spent that money and clearly you would benefit from it. Why do you not do it?'

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Let's turn it around. If you invest 120 dollars into your retirement fund every year for the next 40 years, you'll end up with 33.5k. Instead, you spent 4.8k. The person who listened to a few commercials is up 40k on you at retirement.

This is an extreme example (after all, you're not going to spend 10 dollars on Spotify for the rest of your life), but the principle of the matter stands: Money saved now will be worth more later thanks to compounding interest. In a sense, the dollars you earn today are the most valuable dollars you'll ever earn.

It's up to you to make the judgment call on a case by case basis whether you'd like to live in the moment, or whether you'd prefer to save. Everybody draws the line somewhere (I personally have a Spotify subscription), but to call it irrational is... a bit irrational.

How does that play at the negative interest rates times?

Anyway, all that is true, and I did know that when younger. What nobody tells you is that there are a few times when your income grows faster than an exponential. Everything you save up before of one of those few times is basically worthless.

Anybody's main goal should be to have as many of those income growing events as possible. Not giving-up everything when young because of compounded interest.

Yet, this thing is not predictable, thus it's always good to save a bit. It's a balancing act, not a clear-cut good vs. bad situation.

Stock market isn't negative interest

People don't invest every single dollar they have into a fund. You're always going to have a bit of money laying around, why not put it to use?

And even if one went with it: I'll be up by a multiple of 33.5k because I spent money on things that put me in a better mood to work on myself and lead me to better jobs etc. etc.

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