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Frugal Downside - All my stuff is old

Controlling costs means I don't throw things away. I buy used, I repair, I make due, I do without, I don't get caught up in appearances, etc.

The net effect, is I'm living a life with old stuff, behind the curve on just about everything. I am easy on my possessions. They rarely break or wear out to the point of replacement. When I decide to get rid of something, often nobody would want it.

Objectively, one could say my quality of life has dropped over the past 10 years because of this. It's hard to buy things degraded to my minimum acceptable state. So I was living richer when I first established myself.

I also locked into choices that are suboptimal, but would be wasteful to undo. My 4 person kitchen table was great for a 1 bedroom apartment. Moving into a townhouse, we stuck the leaf in the table and called it done. For 10 years. Our dining room would hold an 8 person table.

My car... It's fifteen years old now. Low to the ground, rusty, worn shocks, mediocre night visibility, limited hauling capacity, etc. Not at all what I'd buy today. But we got a deal in 2008 and it's still running, so I'm not replacing it. The insurance is so cheap.

This all happened so gradually. The individual items don't bother me and life feels normal. Stepping back and looking at things objectively though, I pretty much don't own or use nice things. A lot of people would have a real problem with my day to day standard. I'm not intending to change it, but there is definitely a trade off.
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Comments

  • xewecan said:
    Controlling costs means I don't throw things away. I buy used, I repair, I make due, I do without, I don't get caught up in appearances, etc.

    The net effect, is I'm living a life with old stuff, behind the curve on just about everything. I am easy on my possessions. They rarely break or wear out to the point of replacement. When I decide to get rid of something, often nobody would want it.

    Objectively, one could say my quality of life has dropped over the past 10 years because of this. It's hard to buy things degraded to my minimum acceptable state. So I was living richer when I first established myself.

    I also locked into choices that are suboptimal, but would be wasteful to undo. My 4 person kitchen table was great for a 1 bedroom apartment. Moving into a townhouse, we stuck the leaf in the table and called it done. For 10 years. Our dining room would hold an 8 person table.

    My car... It's fifteen years old now. Low to the ground, rusty, worn shocks, mediocre night visibility, limited hauling capacity, etc. Not at all what I'd buy today. But we got a deal in 2008 and it's still running, so I'm not replacing it. The insurance is so cheap.

    This all happened so gradually. The individual items don't bother me and life feels normal. Stepping back and looking at things objectively though, I pretty much don't own or use nice things. A lot of people would have a real problem with my day to day standard. I'm not intending to change it, but there is definitely a trade off.
    thank you so much for your response.
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