Bear with me for a few paragraphs here before you blow up the comments section with hate, please ;) I consider myself a hardcore Mustachian, but frequently see many comments in the forum that bash nice things (I started discussing this in a thread but decided to move it here). We tend to say we pity those who spend and resort to comments like "But, we will all FIRE sooner!" and I'm wondering if some of that stems from jealousy.
Don't get me wrong... I love being Mustachian and wouldn't have it any other way. But, were are all delayed rewards people. Given the marshmallow test, we would all wait patiently for 2 marshmallows later than eat the 1 now. I think that's a great way to be and I choose to be that way myself. It is highly correlated to long-term happiness and success in life. But, while we're waiting for those marshmallows... I bet a few of us would look at the other person who just ate theirs with slightly hateful eyes as we watched them enjoy what we cannot partake in yet... (despite all the tricks we learn to take our minds off it like focusing on future rewards)
But despite knowing this at an academic level, do you think there's an underlying jealousy, even a slight one, for those who are a little less careful with their spending but are doing fun things now. It's easy to say that money doesn't correlate to happiness and you can be just as happy spending less, but that's much easier to say when you're talking about annihilating consumer spending, maybe not as much when you're denying yourself a trip to see family members who you hold dear while you keep chipping away at your FIRE plan.
We talk about balance in our lives and maybe a leading indicator that we haven't hit that proper balance is that we feel the need to judge people who spend, because in reality, maybe we have a wee bit of envy for their ability to live a life now that we have to wait to live later. Maybe it stems from some biological impulse to live in the now because tomorrow might never come.
(PS - I'm hoping this doesn't turn into a discussion on 'saving is better than spending!' or other trivial rules that we all know to be true as Mustachians)