I don’t suggest people put off everything until they are old. Enjoy life today. Take the vacation, enjoy the concert, etc. It’s about balance. Of course you should save/invest.

I am not saying buy the expensive house, cars etc.

Not what i meant.

The idea is to make sure that you can guarantee (barring unforeseens) the absolute minimum that you need to live before anything else. Once this is done everything else becomes a choice and you can indulge (or not) as you please.

Life is all about Risk Management and given the uncertain world we live in, you need to ensure that you are not totally dependent on the future performance of the Economic System. "Enjoy Life Today/YOLO" etc. should not become an excuse to not think realistically and plan for your own/family's future with definite guarantees.

Nassim Taleb's ideas about Mediocristan vs. Extremistan, Power Laws/Pareto Distribution, Barbell investment strategy, Black Swan events etc. are all relevant here.

Savings/Investments etc. ideas from Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE) movement are also very relevant here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIRE_movement

The Objective is to avoid total ruin when things go wrong, but have the resiliency to bear the loss and bounce back or be anti-fragile enough to get better.

If the economic system today collapses, no realistic amount money will save you.

I don't mean "collapse" but a gradual/abrupt slide downward towards another equilibrium than that expected from earlier projections.

A good current example is what is happening to the economies of many countries due to Trump's tariffs.

I re read your initial reply more carefully and we are doing just that.

Because of a combination of poor life choices between 2000-2008 and purposeful decisions between 2012-2020 early retirement or even retirement before my wife and I are eligible for Medicare is mostly out of the question unless we move out of the US - we are seriously exploring this possibility and we will be in one of those countries for six weeks starting in late February.

That being said, knowing those are my constraints. I have made some purposeful decisions.

First I pivoted to cloud consulting working full time for consulting departments /companies where there are plenty of remote opportunities, experience and age is an asset and not a liability, and the pay is better than enterprise dev. They also can’t outsource customer facing consultants who have to fly to customer’s sites.

Second, I “retired my wife” in 2020 so she could pursue her hobbies and we could travel extensively while we are healthy and it can be funded by income.

That has the knock on effect that we don’t need as much money for retirement because we would have already gotten our expensive travel out of the way by then.

Third, we aggressively reduced expenses when my youngest step son graduated in 2020 - we sold our big house in the burbs and bought a condo 1/3 the size in central Florida close to Disney. Florida is a state tax free state.

Now between making decent money and low expenses, we can live comfortably day to day, do the digital nomad thing off an on (and rent our home out as vacation rental while we are gone).

Nice! I am not sure whether i should comment on your decisions ;-)

For myself, because of my upbringing and my own studies, i follow these axioms;

1) Be extremely risk averse when it comes to money-in-hand. I would rather live within my capital than risk it on investment which may make me lose a sizable portion of it.

2) Never trust any financial/investment advice from anybody unless i have thought through it and assessed the risks. Nobody has my welfare at heart as me myself.

3) Curtail my desires i.e "wants" and whatever i buy, make full use of it over a number of years. That means using cars/laptops/phones/gadgets/clothes etc. until they die on me. Never buy something just because and/or follow fashion.

4) When you splurge on some specific "want", you must balance it with saving on other fronts. This rule is inviolable; nothing will build financial discipline like being forced to give up something for something else.

5) Never buy stuff on loan/EMI etc. but always do it with cash-on-hand. If you can't pay for it completely, you can't afford it. The only possible exception is buying a house but even here you should try to payoff everything as soon as possible.

6) Always payoff your credit card etc. in full every month. There should never be any outstanding debts.

7) The future is uncertain. Hence always imagine the worst-case scenario and then plan for it. As i said, the goal is to avoid total ruin.

8) Always rely only on yourself; do not assume/depend on help from siblings/relatives/friends etc. when things go wrong. This builds mental fortitude and responsibility so that you can face come what may in the future.

Oh my decisions were objectively bad - marrying the wrong person the first time around, letting my career stagnate for almost a decade until 2008 and becoming an “expert beginner” and investing in real estate before the crash.

I preach not doing the first two all of the time in real life and on the appropriate threads on HN.

My purposeful life decisions from 2012-2020 was getting married (still married) and gladly taking on the responsibility of my two stepsons (both grown and fully launched now). That tied me to Atlanta for 8 years. I landed a job in BigTech one month after my youngest graduated. My wife said she was willing to move anywhere the money took us after my youngest graduated. It just never came to my having to move.

While no one would ever call us “frugal”, with the money we spend every on travel and experiences, we do keep our fixed expenses low and I max out my 401K + catch up contributions (over 50) + Roth + HSA. All of my projections are that we will be fine at retirement age and worse case we can nice to small town south GA where I’m from and where my family still lives

I just remembered; every American should watch the documentary Waging a Living - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waging_a_Living - Available on Youtube and other sites.

People from other countries may also find it useful, though the lessons would need to be adapted to their own environments.

Our Economic System and Social Conditions are so skewed that many (all?) of the rules that enabled our grandparents/parents to raise and sustain a family without too much risk (i.e. guaranteed income from guaranteed job provided you met the requirements and didn't do anything absolutely self-destructive) no longer apply. Hence of a necessity our adaptation to these circumstances must change accordingly with a greater emphasis on safety-first.