Discussion Do you find spending money therapeutic?

[mikeymikec]

View attachment 56149

I think this quote and an experience I had before watching the film comprises how I feel about possessions: I once had a IT job/career in the city and thanks to a chronic disease I had to give it up and go and live with my parents until I was diagnosed. I was packing up my stuff from my city flat and a friend was helping me move. We got something like 80% of what I owned into the boot of his fairly standard car. I liked that idea, not being tied down in my options and someday just being able to pack my essential stuff into the back of my car and go.

There are a few items that I gave up unnecessarily at that point which I wish I had been more careful about recognising my attachment to them (though to be fair I thought I was going to be dead within a year).

Since then, seeing my mother-in-law's hoarding habits (ie. to the level of the stuff you see on TV about hoarders) only cemented my feelings further about avoiding unnecessary possessions.

Lately I've been flirting with the idea of building a new PC for myself, but I feel on the same spectrum as this guy:

Opposite.
Spending money I dont need to spend means I have less money to save for emergency or retirement. This stresses me out.

I'm in my early forties and I've only been saving for retirement for a couple of years, and the idea of spending unnecessarily on a new PC (and being completely honest, my Haswell-era PC is sufficient for my needs and is working fine) when I need so be saving a few hundred quid every month for retirement just feels like complete recklessness to me.

Also, I'm clearing out my parents' house at the moment and my mum was the kind of person who liked to keep stuff in case it comes in handy. It just means that so much crap needs to be thrown out / given away / sold, and I'm becoming increasingly ruthless because I'm sick of the feeling of sadness when going into my parents' old house.

 

[pmv]

The thing is, I frequently hear it said that it's better to spend on "experiences" than on "things". That seems to be a standard trope of pop self-help advice from columnists and the like.

The trouble with that is first that having experiences usually requires buying "things" - e.g. to go on bike rides one needs a bike...and bike lights, and a bike pump...etc. And, secondly, if your health is crap, then the "experiential" options (like a long backpacking foreign trip or a hike or a bike ride) get more and more difficult. Then there's a tendency to instead spend more money on "things", as a kind of deferred gratification, with the idea that you'll one day be able to make proper use of them.

"Things" represent a kind of store of future consumption - buying and owning something is like a promise to oneself of eventually making use of it - eventually I'll read this book/watch that DVD etc.

Maybe that's just me.
But it irks me a bit when people condemn the accumulation of "stuff" as being "consumerism" and thus decadent and wrong. My experience is that it's the opposite of "consumerism", it's about owning stuff because you don't feel well enough to consume it right now.

Edit - or, for many people, it's about just not having the time to consume things. Which is closely related - more time and good health being two things that are very difficult, if not _quite_ impossible, to buy.

 

[mikeymikec]

This got posted on imgur today, felt relevant for this thread 🙂

 

[igor_kavinski]

This got posted on imgur today, felt relevant for this thread 🙂

Seriously, I can't imagine the hours I have lost doing that!

In the end, I dealt with it by setting an impossibly high bar for the specs:

17 inch mini-LED or OLED screen (120Hz would be awesome but not really a deal breaker)
Geekbench ST score of at least 2000
16 GB VRAM and GPU performance at least three times that of desktop 3050
128GB RAM minimum
3 M.2 NVMe slots
User upgradeable by just popping off the bottom (only removing keyboard for RAM upgrades)
Price must not exceed $2000

If something like this ever materializes, it might be an Acer/ASUS/Lenovo laptop using everything AMD.

 

[JEDI]

@mad

Not for fancy expensive stuff but I find myself vulnerable to buying the best steak I can find at the store, usually it's a ribeye..

my costco used to sell just the ribeye cap (prime) for $19.99/lb.
i bought it a few times when choice grade ribeye was $7.99/lb.

Not worth it for that price and apparently i wasnt the only one.
a year later, my costco stopped selling just the ribeye cap.

i always wondered why they didnt sell the ribeye cap at choice grade?

 

[brianmanahan]

i'm not allowed to buy a new laptop until my current one breaks

unfortunately, my 8 year old refurb MBP 15" shows no sign of ever breaking

 

[igor_kavinski]

i'm not allowed to buy a new laptop until my current one breaks

unfortunately, my 8 year old refurb MBP 15" shows no sign of ever breaking

Expect to wait much longer then. Two guys in my office are happy with their 2011-2012 Macbooks 😱 But I think it's also coz they remember how much they originally spent on them, so they don't abuse them as much and consequently, their Macbooks see only a fraction of the wear and tear of a typical x86 laptop.

Another thing: I can see AFFECTION in their eyes when they talk about their Macbooks. Damn it, what kind of voodoo is Apple into?!

 

[JEDI]

I'm in my early forties and I've only been saving for retirement for a couple of years, and the idea of spending unnecessarily on a new PC (and being completely honest, my Haswell-era PC is sufficient for my needs and is working fine) when I need so be saving a few hundred quid every month for retirement just feels like complete recklessness to me.

im still using an AMD Athlon Phenom II quad core desktop from 2010.
but it does have a Radeon 4850 (256 bit) video card, which apparently is still good enough for anything non-games in 2022. 😱

the only reason i bought a laptop 2 yrs ago (i5-6300U, $249 refurb) was because i'm too lazy to pull out the mouse from the laptop bag and plug it in. (then put it back)
so the laptop is touch screen.

my old laptop was an Intel Haswell. works fine. i still have it.
so $250 is the penalty for being mouse lazy 😱

 

[brianmanahan]

Another thing: I can see AFFECTION in their eyes when they talk about their Macbooks. Damn it, what kind of voodoo is Apple into?!

i'm not a mac fanboi, but 2 things i like about it are:

- since it's unix-based, much better for software dev
- also much better for sound devices and audio work

 

[igor_kavinski]

so $250 is the penalty for being mouse lazy 😱

Human laziness fuels so many industries. I see people using electric bikes and scooters even for distances as small as 5 to 10 minutes walk away and I think to myself, "boy, their body must hate them for depriving it of necessary exercise".

 

[igor_kavinski]

- since it's unix-based, much better for software dev

Yeah. The people at 42 (school) - Wikipedia forced me to use an iMac for 25 days for their C bootcamp. Honestly, it wasn't as bad as I had feared. It did take a lot of getting used to. Like the Mac analogue of notepad saves anything you type by default. Had to be conscious not to do that because I'm so used to typing crap in notepad and then closing and clicking No when it asks to save.

 

[Muse]

@Muse

You really should consider writing a book. Or an ebook at the very least. I think Amazon makes it pretty easy to self-publish.

Self Publishing | Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing

You have a LOT of stories to tell. I bet the few posts here don't even scratch the surface.

Thanks for that. I started that book, have searched a few times and can't find what I wrote. Doesn't matter, I can start over. The book I had in mind was how to live well on the proverbial shoestring. So many people don't know how to do that and I know stuff that most frugal people don't know. Not everything, obviously, there's plenty of stuff that people do I don't know. I'd probably benefit from reading some of "the literature" before embarking on the endeavor of writing my own!

I really do love to write but have never done it to publish or for a living, things I've thought I really should do. I've written a lot for myself (in my data) and in forums, newsgroups, etc.

 

[igor_kavinski]

The book I had in mind was how to live well on the proverbial shoestring.

I honestly believe that our existence in this world isn't a mere coincidence. We are here to serve a purpose. Your hard life may actually be a precursor to an important literary contribution for humanity. Countless people could be influenced by your book to save money and improve their lives.

 

[Muse]

It's not the spending of the money that is therapeutic, it's the toys I get from it that keep me busy and excited that does, lol.

It's all about the toys 😀 I like to tinker, what can I say? lol

I can see that.

For me, the therapeutic aspect of spending isn't the purchase, generally speaking, its the process of making the decision. Many many people do that too, do a lot of researching in determining if something is appropriate for them. I hate buyer's remorse. I'm sure that just about everybody experiences this, but it varies greatly.

I don't know what to call it, maybe "buyer's bias," being the attitude that people are apt to have that they must have made the right choice, and of course they very very often did NOT make the right choice. You are apt to see that in customer reviews. You see the opposite effect in reviews too because a lot of people only review a product when they are unhappy. You see a lot of 1 star reviews for products that don't deserve it and only because the customer is miffed because it was, say, damaged in shipment.

Reading between the lines is something you have to do to be an effective customer.

So, I'd say that the therapeutic aspect of spending money has a lot to do with educating yourself during the entire process. There's other stuff too. Spending sprees! I won't put that down, but gotta say that a proper spending spree is something I don't do! Uh, and I haven't been to Las Vegas since my parents took me there at age maybe 14 at the most. I don't gamble. Have never bought a lottery ticket. It's not worth it to me to pay a few bucks so I can fantasize about spending millions freely.

 

[Ajay]

i'm not allowed to buy a new laptop until my current one breaks

Yeah, that's m y wife's definition of 'need'. Where is the fun in that 🙁.

 

[brianmanahan]

Yeah, that's m y wife's definition of 'need'. Where is the fun in that 🙁.

it's not fun, but if i'm gonna retire in 6 years, i gotta live that like

 

[Muse]

A bit over two years ago (~2 months before the pandemic) I was posting here and people said I needed to get a better laptop to take advantage of my new GB fiber network feed (the machine I used most of the time was a 6lb Lenovo T61, that was actually on my lap, and connected by Wifi). A guy I didn't know at all in these forums found a lappy for cheap for me online that he figured I'd like (he was right!), open box, and I grabbed it. It's pretty high end (Lenovo Thinkpad P1, version 1). It had a 3 year warranty and an issue that I felt I should RMA it for and I eventually did, but before sending in the P1 version 1 for repairs I bought a new version 3 Lenovo P1 at a great price direct from Lenovo (bare basics machine and I later bought RAM and an extra main SSD for both machines saving a lot of bucks). I love these laptops, have one upstairs one downstairs. They make my old Thinkpads look and act like dinosaurs, the new ones are around 1/2 the weight, ... the old ones (T60 and T61) maxed out at 4GB and 8GB RAM and their network cards were way slow, didn't suit my more recent style of computing (I still have uses for my two T60s). I have 2 SSDs and 32GB RAM in both P1's. I can't think of more satisfying purchases I've made recently. These machines rock. I have a NAS and all my machines can see my data (which I occasionally back up offsite using external HDs).

 

[igor_kavinski]

My main lappy is also a Thinkpad (Ivy Bridge). It scares me because I don't know if I'll ever be able to move onto a more modern laptop and if I ever do, it will be an expensive purchase because it will HAVE to be a Thinkpad! The satisfaction index of this laptop is unlike any I've experienced before with other laptops.

 

[Muse]

My main lappy is also a Thinkpad (Ivy Bridge). It scares me because I don't know if I'll ever be able to move onto a more modern laptop and if I ever do, it will be an expensive purchase because it will HAVE to be a Thinkpad! The satisfaction index of this laptop is unlike any I've experienced before with other laptops.

If you do buy another Lenovo Thinkpad do what I did and buy a bare basics machine and upgrade the storage and RAM yourself and save yourself a bundle.

My first laptop was a Lenovo T60, bought for ~$1000 direct from Lenovo in late 2006. I still have it, it's in suspend, I have certain uses for it my Win10 machines aren't up to. All together I have 5 Lenovo laptops, have never lost one, they all work. I bought two other laptops, an Acer ~15" (damn thing didn't last 2 years, I'm guessing, a bargain that wasn't) and an HP 15" that I bought used from a member here that I keep at my volunteer gig. It's cracked, is limping along, does what I need it to. To me, Lenovo's are worth the money.

Oh, I forgot, I bought an LG Gram 15" laptop at Costco ~2.5 years ago and returned it within weeks. Super light, had the features but I hated the ergonomics. I was spoiled by my Thinkpads. I'll never buy another LG.

 

[Kaido]

Seriously, I can't imagine the hours I have lost doing that!

In the end, I dealt with it by setting an impossibly high bar for the specs:

17 inch mini-LED or OLED screen (120Hz would be awesome but not really a deal breaker)
Geekbench ST score of at least 2000
16 GB VRAM and GPU performance at least three times that of desktop 3050
128GB RAM minimum
3 M.2 NVMe slots
User upgradeable by just popping off the bottom (only removing keyboard for RAM upgrades)
Price must not exceed $2000

If something like this ever materializes, it might be an Acer/ASUS/Lenovo laptop using everything AMD.

Well, maybe in a few years:

EUROCOM Sky X9C Configure

EUROCOM Fully configurable and upgradeable Desktop Replacement Notebooks, mobile workstations, mobile servers and Portable LCD PC systems.

eurocom.com

I have DCC clients (mostly CAD users) who like to build these out to $10k or $20k. The configs can go above $30k lol.

 

[Red Squirrel]

This got posted on imgur today, felt relevant for this thread 🙂

That is totally the mental gymnastics I go through when I want to upgrade something that I already have.

I keep getting the itch to upgrade my VM server setup and do a cluster with shared storage but then my current setup still works fine and when I start pricing out the hardware I just can't justify it. Not to mention hardware is hard to get these days anyway. Practically everything is out of stock. If my existing hardware dies I'll probably just end up downsizing to a bunch of Raspberry Pis lol.

 

[igor_kavinski]

I was spoiled by my Thinkpads.

Is there a word to describe us? Thinkpaders? Lenovers?

 

[igor_kavinski]

Well, maybe in a few years:

EUROCOM Sky X9C Configure

EUROCOM Fully configurable and upgradeable Desktop Replacement Notebooks, mobile workstations, mobile servers and Portable LCD PC systems.

eurocom.com

I have DCC clients (mostly CAD users) who like to build these out to $10k or $20k. The configs can go above $30k lol.

What is the BOM on a $30k DTR?

 

[igor_kavinski]

If my existing hardware dies I'll probably just end up downsizing to a bunch of Raspberry Pis lol.

That's quite the downsize!

 

[Kaido]

What is the BOM on a $30k DTR?

iirc the highest one I've ever spec'd was around $22k. These days, the cost is mostly due to large, high-speed storage in a portable package. I have one client in particular who works in the video field (filmmaking) & needs a TON of fast storage. These days, 16TB 2.5" SSD's go for $3,800:

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8TB NVMe drives go for just under $1,400: (the catch with the NVMe drives is the HEAT!)

https://www.amazon.com/Corsair-MP400-8TB-NVMe-PCIe/dp/B08JSMKW3J/

For NAS purposes, Amazon has 20TB single drives for under $700:

https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-IronWolf-20TB-Internal-Drive/dp/B09MKK1YCK/

It really depends on what you want to do. Not many people need portable DTR systems. I have a few customers who just travel with their HP mini's between works sites & home for WFH (HP RGS is also pretty awesome for remote work on regular home computers!). My go-to config is the model below. $1,850 for an 8-core i7 with a 4GB Quadro T2000, then I upgrade it to 64GB RAM & drop in more storage if needed: (dual NVMe slots)

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I have one client who does heavy CGI modeling & always needs more horsepower. His last GPU was like 16 or 24 gigs of VRAM; the next upgrade is 48 gigs, which actually isn't that bad (under $6k) compared to historical pricing:

Amazon.com: PNY NVIDIA Quadro RTX 8000, Black, Green, Silver (VCQRTX8000-PB): Computers & Accessories

Buy PNY NVIDIA Quadro RTX 8000, Black, Green, Silver (VCQRTX8000-PB): Graphics Cards - Amazon.com ✓ FREE DELIVERY possible on eligible purchases

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I like to stay in my little world of computer hardware, but working on commercial projects has really exposed me to the idea that "time = money" for certain professionals, where "cost is no object" because they use the tools as money-making machines, not just as standard office machines, home desktops, computer gaming rigs, etc. Like, my buddy recently spent $5k on his gaming rig because he's a DINK, and it's a pretty awesome setup (even the desk itself is RGB lol), but not many people dump a ton of money into customized portables & desktops these days, outside of some very specific niches. Like, on the higher side of things, they can just rent out processing farms for running big jobs, but there's still a few DCC niches (CGI for film/CAD/game design, etc.) where these super-duper laptops have a niche! Although for gaming, they don't necessarily make a lot of sense because the GPU's usually lag a generation behind, so it's more about raw CPU horsepower, huge amounts of memory, and massive SSD storage space in DTR's these days!