I have a hard time finding a strong reason why spending 75K on a car paying cash and no interest thanks to the comments and advice here that was so helpful provided seems like a reckless decision if I can easily cover that expense in less than 6 months interest/dividends. I worked very, very , very hard to get to this point that is why what the one person noted was it seems like going on a diet and then once you reach your goal going out and going bananas and getting a huge ice cream cone seems to defeat the purpose resonated with me especially.
I wanted to ask, is that absolute or commensurate with where you happen to be in the FI journey? I am new to MMM and like the virtues espoused here.
Some of it is practical, some of it is psychological.
The practical is this: if you intentionally live a constrained lifestyle in order to get to FI, and then let everything loose once you get there, you will quickly find yourself no longer FI. If, say, your budget is $40K, and you have $1M saved, you're FI. But if you then add various luxuries because now you feel like you can afford them, then pretty soon your budget might be $50K/yr, and now you need another $250K invested to get back to being FIRE. It is always easy to justify one particular thing, and tell yourself that it is ok, because it is a one-off; after all, it is not like you're going to buy an expensive new car every year. The problem arises when you end up with a series of one-offs; this year it's a car, next year it's a vacation, the year after that you need to remodel your home, etc. etc. etc. So the point is to think very carefully about what you want that one "thing" to be, and always be careful to make sure you're not bullshitting yourself and just rationalizing a more expensive lifestyle overall.
The psychological actually has a bunch of different aspects. The obvious one is the hedonic treadmill, which fits into what I just said above. We tend to get used to whatever level of luxury we are currently living with. So if you buy an expensive car, you get used to the amenities of an expensive car, and over time your view of the kind of car you want/"need"/"deserve" changes to now require that more expensive car. Any time you increase your lifestyle, there is a very high likelihood that you will want to continue that, and in fact increase it further, because after a while, even that new level of luxury no longer provides the same kick that it used to. That is the fastest way to destroy your FIRE plans.*
The second, also-related one is that we as humans are absolute crap at predicting what will make us happy. We tend to buy and do things for the wrong reasons; we are social creatures, and so it is fairly natural to want to buy things that elevate our perceived status in our social structure. The problem is that when you buy something because you want to impress your friends, or because it makes you feel "rich," or for any of a variety of other reasons, that initial boost wears off, and then you need to buy more/better things to get that happiness hit again, and then boom, you're smack in the middle of the hedonic treadmill. Most of us here put a lot of time, energy, and thought into deciding whether to buy something and if so, what, to try to make sure the long-term happiness will be worth the extra expenditure. Pretty much what it sounds like you're doing now. We all have something that actually makes us happy;** the key is finding it and focusing on that, instead of all of the societal noise.
The third one is stoicism. This is the one I personally struggled with for so long; I grew up doing without, so the idea of intentionally doing without was not even remotely appealing. But the underlying key is that you build strength and power from understanding that you don't need all of the fancy trappings to be happy. We grow only when we push ourselves, when we do things that are uncomfortable; it's like going to the gym, if you slow down every time you start breathing hard, or stop whenever the weight feels uncomfortable, you're never going to improve. Telling yourself no when you want something is basically exercising your frugality muscles; you are reminding yourself that all this stuff is just Stuff -- it's a temporary want, not a need. And there is an incredible degree of power in really understanding that you truly need very little to be happy, because that frees up all of the fear and opens up a variety of choices. Hate your job? Well, if you really need your lifestyle to be happy, then you're stuck, because you either need to suck it up or to find another job that pays the same. OTOH, if you understand that you don't actually need all of that current lifestyle, that gives you many, many more options; sure, you can get another job like the one you have, but you can also reduce your lifestyle, take a less-demanding job, and free up time for hobbies; or you can throw everything away and live in a van for a while to explore some passion that you've always wanted to try; or go back to school to change course; or any of 8,000 different things. And that mindset also reminds you that even if things go badly -- you can't find a job, you have to sell your house or whatever -- you have the strength and power within yourself to find a way through and make your future something better than it is now.
And the converse of that is that the stoic mindset helps you recognize the true luxury you already have everywhere in life just because of where and when we live. The thing I like most about MMM is the way he looks at literally everything in his life as an abundance of luxury -- even things like being able to get clean, heated water just by turning a knob, or being able to transport ourselves anywhere we want to go in what is basically a motorized recliner. If you can see your current life as surrounded by abundance and luxury, that helps combat that constant need for more more more -- it puts it in perspective as a possible minor improvement to what is already really fucking great, as compared to something that you actually need to be happy.
*One thing I do to try to combat this is to assume that any lifestyle increase is going to be permanent and then figure out how much longer I need to work in order to do that forever. So for example, I figured out that having a housecleaner come every couple of weeks for the rest of my life would require me to work about 3-4 months longer in order to afford that luxury. I like my job, and I detest cleaning with the blazing heat of 10,000 suns, so that was a very easy decision for me. But if you don't like your job, or if buying a particular thing costs you 2-3 years of your life energy, then it's probably not worth it.
**For example, most folks here know that I'm a car guy (and they put up with me anyway). Like you, I bought an expensive car that I very much wanted after we were FI, had college savings covered, etc. The car is definitely a show-off car, but for me, that was a bug, not a feature; I dithered for a couple of years because I did NOT want to draw that kind of attention. But, OMG, popping the top down on a sunny day, downshifting into a curve -- it's visceral joy, literally makes me smile every time I drive it, and it is a feeling of power and control that I get nowhere else. Best StupidMoney I ever spent.
