She buys 4 packs of cigarettes each day on her way home for her husband and herself, costing $24 each day.
This kind of short-sightedness is a bad symptom. She could at least buy cartons instead? I knew someone who did things like that, always buying just the minimum amount of something even though it was more costly per unit and in terms of time.
I think it could have something to do with paying as little as possible now, even though it costs more overall. This also implies a very high subjective rate of time preference - $1 tomorrow is worth much less than $1 today.
As a former smoker, I usually didn't want to stock up on packs. I always wanted to be ready to quit and if I had an extra pack, I wouldn't quit until I was done with that pack. Not saying it makes sense, but it's the way I looked at it, and I know a lot of other people did too.
Warning.
Humblebrag alert.
hahaha A paid off house is NOT AT ALL a humblebrag on this forum. I'm 40 and I work for the man full time. That's actually rather low performance in this neck of the woods.
A humblebrag would be....."just turned 12 and hit FI. Need to reign in my spending so I can FIRE before I'm 15 years old. Living in a cardboard box and all but still have three bicycles. should sell at least two of these useless assets."
Yeah, there's no better place to humblebrag about a paid off house, FI, etc than here. I was really referring to the complaints that people are complimenting us because we're so ripped, and rich, and our SO is so ripped, and etc etc?
This subject has been debated before, but when people use the words "you're so lucky", just accept it for the compliment it is. They admire you and may not know enough of the details of your life or may just not know how to express "good for you" other than to say "you're lucky".
But complaining because people think your life is great is a total humblebrag. Poor me, people think I just fell into this fantastic life and they don't realize it takes hard work to be perfect! LOL!