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Comment by andirk | Hacker News Reader

Reminds me of how my friend, who has a mogul of a father, and his now wife, who has a mogul of a father, are looking to buy a house. The moguls put a cap on the amount the house can cost, and my friend said to me about how the ones they want are out of that range, "I don't care about money, man. You know that."

I don't think he understands exactly what the sentiment behind "I don't care about money" is.

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When we were young in our marriage, my wife and I would argue constructively about money things, and when I would tell her that we can't afford something (I am the accountant in the relationship) and try to talk to her about being content within our means, she would take offense saying something like, "I feel like you're trying to say I'm greedy, but it's not about the money to me!"

And I wasn't trying to imply that she was greedy, and I very much believe it wasn't about the money. The thing was she just grew up the youngest child (and a daughter at that) in an upper-middle-class family and she was pretty sheltered from cost, while I grew up in a working class family where money was tight. It was an odd disconnect.

The opposite is also weird when one person in the relationship came from nothing, and now you share comfortable finances: Conversations like "yes plane tickets will cost $500 more than bus tickets but we'll also have two more days of vacation", or "we don't have to shop around for the very best deal".

Yep, we've been there too. It's taken me a while to come around to spending more on things now that we have comfortable finances. That said, I'm pretty proud that we rigorously optimize our spending for the things that make us the happiest, and we save a lot for early retirement.

"It may not be about money to you, but it's definitely about money to the bank."

I grew up with fairly frugal parents. I mean, my dad had a great job as a software engineer, but we still wouldn't spend money we didn't have to. My mom often made our clothes (to our horror), we didn't waste any food, reused everything, and my favourite stuffed toy came from the trash.

I'm trying to instil similar frugal values on my kids, but it doesn't stick. My wife and I both have excellent jobs, and we really can afford to waste a lot of money, but I just don't think that's a healthy way to raise our kids. Unfortunately, our kids don't care. It's hard to instil these sort of values when money isn't tight.

Yeah, I didn't learn money management from my parents, I learned financial anxiety from our parents. I learned to fear scarcity. I didn't learn how to use money efficiently, I learned that I needed to figure out how to use money efficiently[^1]. If you are financially secure, I think the best bet for financially-secure parents who are trying to raise frugal kids is to teach gratitude and contentment. Teach them to look with compassion at people who are lower on the social ladder rather than looking up with envy. Maybe try to help them understand how precarious and insecure you feel when you're poor, but also how happiness is divorced from wealth--deep joy comes from relationships, the natural world, etc. The happiness from purchased things is fleeting and superficial. To summarize, before parents can teach kids how to manage money, I think parents need to build the emotional connection around "why they should manage money". At least that's sort of how it worked for me.

[^1]: This sort of contextualizes how I feel about student loan forgiveness--it's ostensibly there to help people in need, but I lived frugally and worked my way through my engineering degree to minimize the amount of loan money I needed to take out, while the overwhelming majority of my peers partied, skipped class, lived in the dorms, paid for meal plans and then ate out at restaurants all the time, and majored in unmarketable programs. They didn't work and they got money from their parents every week. I never resented them for being able to afford their lifestyle or anything, but loan forgiveness feels like it's mostly bailing out those spoiled kids in the name of helping poor kids (although I'm sure there are some poor kids who will benefit). Lots of poor kids didn't even go to school in the first place, and many who did were frugal. If this really were about helping poor kids, there are so many significantly better approaches.

And mind you, I benefit from loan forgiveness because frankly my wife was one of those spoiled kids (with lots of debt and an unmarketable degree) and we didn't pay off her loans because the interest rates were so low it was better to use the money for other investments, especially during deferment (which is why it also irks me when people refer to student loan interest rates as "predatory"--there's lots of predation in higher education, but it's not interest rates). But (and seems to blow a lot of minds) just because it benefits me doesn't make it right.

> I don't care about money

I’ve heard this statement used frequently in business. I think this statement is incomplete… what if instead you said something like “I don’t care about money as long as you get it done before the deadline”, wouldn’t that sound as reasonable? Think of money as a tool, when used responsibly could do good things. I see a lot of people being cuffed not spend money just because it sounds “expensive” but really if you 2x’d that spend then it’s money well spent.

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