Of course, fast cars and country clubs are all superficial, but being a miser just so you can die with millions isn't that much better...
And so on. You don't really have to eschew the pleasures of the flesh entirely to be a "miser" nowadays; you can eat well (cooking yourself), drive adequately, be entertained for a reasonable price, etc, and still save enough money to retire comfortably. You do have to avoid credit card debt, not overcommit on your housing, and there's some tricks and issues (can you psychologically deal with having $10K+ in the bank without spending it, without relenting on the discipline?), but the days of actually facing the choice you outline are gone for most of the people who would be on HN in the first place.
Oh, recently internalized "trick": Take all "monthly fees" and mentally multiply by 12 to get the yearly cost, then treat that as the real cost. $24.95 a month for a service may sound reasonable; does $300 a year sound just as reasonable? I've been using this as part of my cell-phone upgrade resistance; there's a lot of ways I'd personally rather spend $300 than on a cell plan upgrade, up to and including not spending it at all. My Netflix savings is ($70 - $9) x 12 yearly, or $732/yr. My only regret is that I didn't do it about a year earlier!
This approach may not scale, and may carry certain other disadvantages. (I like the Michigan part, honestly, but your mileage most assuredly may vary.)
You can belong to a country club and still live within your means.
You can certainly drive a fast car and live within your means. Fast cars can be bought for well under $10k, especially in California where a fast car can last for thirty years and more without rusting. Most of the stuff on more expensive cars is just bling, or comfort features that have nothing to do with high performance.
What you have to do is pay attention. Don't spend more money than you have. Don't spend at an unsustainable rate. That doesn't mean "spend no money at all". There's a happy medium there.
And you don't have to be a miser. Though, in fact, you probably do have to die with millions, or at least several tens of thousands, unless you plan your own suicide and stick to that plan. To ensure that you're living as comfortably on your last day as your first, you need a bunch of money in the bank. And you don't know which day will be your last. So, die with a million in the bank and endow an amusing trust fund in your will.
A $10K fast car you buy might cost you a good bit of money per year to drive and keep in shape. Especially when it's thirty years old.
That's mostly the reason it's only $10K to begin with (and the fact that the market for impractical cars is not too large).
sure if you buy some unreliable piece of crap...but there are plenty of fast cars that only require regular oil changes to keep in shape.
granted there are different definitions of fast, some people are fine with 14 second cars, others need 12s...and others don't consider anything fast that doesn't run 10s.
But overall, $10K is plenty to get yourself a reliable 6-7 year old car that's quick/fast.
It is marginally less fuel efficient than many cars, despite its tiny size, and one does go through tires when one is tearing off the starting line at the entrance ramp to 101. Fast cars are more expensive than regular cars. But not necessarily much so.
Of course, if your definition of a fast car includes the word "Chevy" or, god help you, "Porsche" I take back everything I said. ;)
People that drive those usually push them as far as they'll go (and further) whenever they get the chance.
MR2 is a great little car and about as reliable as sports cars come.
The average 2010 soul-less imported sedan will easily show its taillights to a 1986 MR2 in a stop-light grand prix (and most will give the MRS2 a good run).
I drove this little thingy for years: http://pics.ww.com/v/jacques/cars/copen/dscf1074.jpg.html , 700 cc, not even 80 HP and an absolute hoot to drive. On the straights not the fastest car (about 175 real km/h), but very quick of the mark because it's so light and absolutely unbeatable in corners.
It's also RHD which helped a lot in not having it stolen.
Most fun I've ever had driving a car.
Or you can live a little bit cheaper, still doing most of that stuff but maybe skipping out on the country club membership or something, and become a rich old guy who can leave a huge estate to his kids... and still not be a miser.
The key is to position yourself in that middle ground.
That's one very good reason why plenty of rich people are seen as 'misers', if they let it roll then they'd stop being rich pretty quickly.
The secret to that is to not make it plain what your financial situation is and to live well within your means.
There's a sense in which dollars saved are like tax-free income.