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Comment by dkasper | Hacker News Reader

It’s not even that, if I could save $1000 but I don’t care about $1000 I wouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t sit on hold for $10. A billionaire isn’t gonna sit on hold for $1000 unless they have an axe to grind.

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I'd quibble with that, depending on what you mean by "axe to grind". I'm not a billionaire, but I'm fairly well off. My billing rate is $300/hr. Still, I don't like to feel ripped off. Spending my time not being ripped off does add some ineffable value beyond the monetary. Maybe this puts me in an unusual category of people who love having axes to grind, but I feel like I didn't amass my savings by letting things slide. If it's $10, I might let it go. But I'm currently taking a company to small claims court over $800 for breach of contract. So I guess I'm contradicting myself... but there also is another element which is that you can't become wealthy if you make a habit of allowing people to chisel you.

[edit] I don't think this contradicts the OP at all, because taking this company to court is the alternative to wasting my time talking to their robots.

> you can't become wealthy if you make a habit of allowing people to chisel you.

I remember a guy rudely criticizing my younger brother, who was a quiet, well-behaved little kid, for being wasteful because he took two napkins instead of one. Our family were guests on his $5 million yacht.

First generation wealth often have a quirky relationship with money. They're mulishly stubborn penny pinchers with some things, but spend money foolishly on other things. Some are completely allergic to all debt, even when it makes objective financial sense to finance a thing instead of paying cash.

I think it's just really hard to shake old habits that they worked hard to build and that served them so well in the past before they built their wealth, even if those habits are actually hurting them now.

Hah. I'm one of those who's allergic to all debt. What I've observed around me is that second- and third-generations almost inevitably slide into financial degeneracy and lose their wealth, because they don't have the habits you're talking about. "A penny saved is a penny earned" is something you can only really grok if you had to earn pennies. Even if that is a psychological kink... it's the kink that generates fortunes, rather than dissolving them.

See also Warren Buffett's breakfast menu... https://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/warren-buffett-gets-a-mcmuffi...

"When I'm not feeling quite so prosperous, I might go with the $2.61: two sausage patties I put together. $3.17 is a bacon, egg, and cheese ... but the market's down this morning, so I think I'll pass up the $3.17 and go with the $2.95."

If uber billionaires like Warren Buffet thinks having a McMuffin for breakfast is being frugal, oh boy do I have some advice for them.

1/2 cup oats

1 cup water

a pinch of salt.

Put it in a microwave, turn on the microwave and let it do its magic. Add som jam(but not too much) on top.

For the cost of his cheapest breakfast meal, I can buy at least a kilo of oats. Having a McMuffin for breakfast every day is squandering almost a thousand dollars every year.

I bet he also has coffee to go with it, another small fortune wasted.

I mean, I don't even eat breakfast or lunch, so it's all a bit silly to me. But I say spend money on things that make you happy, as long as you feel it's a fair value.

> I think it's just really hard to shake old habits

Excellently explained in this article: The 5 Stupidest Habits You Develop Growing Up Poor (January 19, 2012) <https://web.archive.org/web/20220607063905/https://www.crack...>

I know exactly what you mean. Recently I was on vacation in a country where a cab would take you through town for a price which would not be enough to get a taxi driver in my country to even start the engine.

Of course some would charge you twice as much as others, which would still be very cheap compared to home, but that's not the comparison you make. You compare it to what the last taxi driver charged you and now you feel ripped off and disrespected by this particular taxi driver, even though now you are haggling about what is peanuts to me.

This is a great example because it shows just how relative "wealth" is, and makes the thought experiment accessible to anyone in a first-world country. It's just my conjecture, but I don't think most billionaires "don't care about $1000". The few people I've met with a net worth over $100M are sharp bargainers. I think the view that "they won't miss $1000" or "why would they care" is a fundamental misapprehension of the psychological make-up of wealthy people that's commonly held among people who don't have a lot of money. (And so when the wealthy do notice and care, the explanation would be that they must have an axe to grind).

The thing I hear again and again is that once money is no longer an issue, people realize time is the real asset, and people look to spend their time how they want to spend it, as it is the only thing they can’t buy more of.

Some battles need to be fought, as writing a check to solve all the problems can lead to people taking advantage of a person who has that reputation. But I’d wager billionaires are sending their lawyers to deal with those small legal issues and aren’t showing up themselves, unless they really have to.

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