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Comment by enw | Hacker News Reader

But they might lie on the deathbed wishing "oh, I wish I'd made more money so I could've bought a house by the beach, that convertible Mercedes 190 SL, travelled more, eat more fine food, and been less afraid of splurging on expensive marvels of art and engineering".

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And someone else might have told them:

And you think those things would make you happy? A "convertible Mercedes 190 SL" and "expensive marvels of art and engineering"? You trully didn't learn much your first time around...

I have a non-terminal, but life limiting illness. I've got an expensive and silly car, and it brings me great joy whenever I drive it (like when I drove to the office this morning!). I haven't sacrificed other things that would bring me deeper fulfilment to own it though, and I think if that's the case then yes, silly material things can bring you some happiness.

Without my illness I'd probably be saving the money instead, so that I could have silly material things in retirement. Because I know that my retirement is likely to be a struggle I do these things now while I can still enjoy them.

I am naturally a relatively frugal person, and I don't like to waste resources. I like to reuse and repair things of value. I don't like to buy new things unless I really need or want them. My wife says I am the hardest person to buy gifts for.

I don't regret buying a new Mustang within a week of starting my first job out of school. I'm still driving it 12 years later, and my 3 year old loves it. In 2020 the nerves on my heart failed, and on night 4 in the ICU I promised myself I would waste a bunch of money on building a Zen 3 desktop when it came out. I finally just got a proper GPU for it last week. Playing Titanfall 2 on max graphics settings at 80FPS made my evening.

I have every intention of living well into retirement age. All my doctors seem optimistic that I will, although I'm up to 5 specialists and was just today reading about how my latest medication inadvertently alters DNA to be significantly less UV-A tolerant... As long as I can afford it, I'm not going to sweat wasting money on hobbies or overpriced cups of coffee.

I think what people value is subjective. You might not care for cars, real estate, fine foods, art, or engineering - and that’s ok - but it seems perfectly reasonable to me that someone else might derive a lot of happy memories from those things. Especially when shared with people you love. They certainly wouldn’t make me less happy, that’s for sure!

Food is essentially an experience, and everyone tells you time and again, to pay for experiences not things. If you've enjoyed it, especially with others as you said, there's no way you've wasted that money.

>I think what people value is subjective.

Yes. Like taste. But not all subjective choices are good. McDonalds will harm you more than healthy food.

I think that McDonald’s is also fine in moderation.

There’s life-affirming value in those things, in fact.

Or, a person could be old and broke, and regret all the money he blew on toys when he was younger instead of saving it for a more comfortable old age. No easy answers, because nobody knows how long he will live.

Or just I wish I made more money so I could afford to have a wife, a house, and kids.

If those are important life goals, you sort of just have to trudge ahead and make it work without thinking about it too much. Otherwise it will never happen. Buying a house perhaps less so, although paying a mortgage rather than rent means you're getting slightly wealthier each month rather than poorer.

99% of everyone can afford a wife and kids as long as you don’t insist on the luxury version.

It's hard to find a wife who has any interest marrying someone who makes $1,000-1,500/month when you're in your later 30's, 40's or 50's. It's also hard to support a family on that income.

I know several guys in their late thirties to early fifties who make that much money, would love to get married and have kids, but haven't been able to.

I also know someone who made 65k a year but his wife didn't feel like that was enough to raise children on. I really think a lot more than 1% of the population where they feel like money is an obstacle that keeps them from having a family.

The old man lost his horse, but it all turned out for the best [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_old_man_lost_his_horse

The trouble with that horse story is that its message negates free will, and it's used to dismiss and short-circuit the entire history of the scientific endeavor to discern cause and effect. It's the perfect story for an age stooped under the weight of brutality, suffering and ignorance. Voltaire skewered its European version with his mockery, not coincidentally right when Western civilization truly began to emerge from mystical superstition. "All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds," says Pangloss.

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