I'm currently moving into a new place, and in the process of outfitting it. I'm taking my time because I can cope without a living room set for a while, and don't want to pay even market prices for things. I'm for all intents and purposes FI, and you stay that way by getting deals.
To an extent though, I find it's almost taken over my life in that I refuse to pay market prices for anything any more. Food is a big one since by its nature I buy it so often, but for instance you shop so often, and buy similar things so often, you get a feel for what a fair, high, good, and great price are. When you see great prices (such as when MMM commented on cheese in
http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/09/20/wealth-advice-that-should-be-obvious/ )I literally buy months worth of whatever, and constantly have a maybe 2 month buffer of food, constantly re-stocking up as deals cycle through the stores.
It's to the point I almost refuse to buy things that aren't within a stone's throw of the best price I've seen for them in the last year.
By being flexible, willing to eat one of say 10 different dinners whichever one you can eat cheapest, you save a ton of money of the long haul. It still means lobster and striploins, but only ones that were bought at $5/lb. I'm starting to do that with furniture and bigger things. If I hold out, just wait long enough, I'll get furniture that's 90% what I'm looking for, for probably 1/4th the retail price.
Friends are starting to (only half-jokingly) say I have a mental issue. "You can afford it, stop being a cheap bastard and pay the fair retail sale price for good, high quality furniture that will last you 20 years and which is exactly what you want".
I see the wisdom in that. However part of me can simply not accept that a brand new living room set is the functional(and there fore economical) equal of 4 nearly identical, lightly used ones that are 2 years old. Part of the problem I think is that so many things these days are just wildly overpriced. Why should something literally lose 75% of it's value because it was taken from a store and lightly used for a couple years? Does that not indicate it was wildly overpriced in the first place?
To me that's what it boils down to, a sense of efficiency. For $40, I can eat one meal out, or survive on rice/beans for a month. If I was down to my last $40, what would I do? Coffee for a month, or one cup of starbucks? These are the mental tug of wars going on in my head.
Has anyone else experienced this? How do you cope? I also do see at least logically the ridiculousness of an actual millionaire living off the leftovers of regular people, stuff that even "30k millionaires" wouldn't have bought new because they want to show off.
