As someone who grew up in a middle class household with modest means, financial conservativism was the only option. Mostly out of necessity, our family made no extravagant expenditures on anything.

This meant that on the rare occasion I asked for gifts/toys, I was refused. Sometimes outright, sometimes through long emotional explanations. I seldom asked for fancy things, so I clearly remember the refusals - a remote-controlled car, a trip to Nepal, and a football . In the last case, I wanted a new one and was instead suggested to use my baby cousins brothers old one. NO I WANTED A NEW ONE.

The only new things I got every year were two pairs of clothes - one for Christmas and one for the New Year. Not counting things like new textbooks and other necessities.

My first laptop was a hand me down from my aunt when I was going to college. An IBM ThinkPad R51 It had had 256 MB of RAM, two years later my college friend would have a new Pixel phone with 1 GB of RAM . Sigh!

But this whole environment shaped me to be quite miserly when it comes to spending. That mixture of traumatic refusals and not having much to spend, meant I only spent on the necessities.

Shockingly that didn’t change even when I started earning well. I started working in 2012, and it would be till 2019 when I would buy myself a new laptop . I had made do with company laptops as personal ones for year.

My “algorithm” for buying things was always “Sort by Price: Low to High”. I had never experienced quality, so I neither understood it nor desired it. I’ve had insomnia for years, I can attribute at least some of it to buying the cheapest mattress available . I made several decisions like these despite me having more than enough money to buy those little things. Using even a rupee more than needed was wrong.

Of course, now my outlook has changed. Out of a mixture of having more money, talking to my wife (who told me about the mattress several times and possesess a different outlook), and accidentally getting to experience good quality products; I look at spending differently.

I had a rule of never buying a phone more expensive that 20,000 rupees. After making a small pile out of the first bitcoin boom, I broke my rule. I used the bitcoin earnings to gift myself a OnePlus 5T and the experience was mind-blowing . Unlike all the phone I had used before, it was great in every way.

Most remarkable was the lag-free UI, tap an app and it would launch instantly. Interactions were butter-smooth. I had used so many phones and computers which were like slow mainframe terminals, where you wait for many seconds after you’ve made your keystroke for the character to show up . Because we use our phones so much, this small friction can grate you bad.

And with this friction gone, I felt so good. I felt like I was a part of a superior race which didn’t have to experience laggy UIs anymore. That switch was magical . I felt so much more productive after that, I could just use apps and do the tasks I wanted efficiently without suffering from performance issues on every single interaction . That was the seed that really got me thinking, where else have I cut-short.

Another area I had to learn afresh was finance and different from my inheritance. My family’s suggestion for where to put our money is Fixed Deposits and PPF . If you know finance in India, you know that these are super conservative low-risk capital preserving options. The Indian financial has come a long way - we even have Index funds now . The apple has fallen far from the tree here. I mentioned bitcoin, didn’t I?

I still think I’m conservative with spending, but not too much. I allow myself to spend when things can improve my productivity, health and happiness. You can consider a lot of these as investments, you get so much back over time . I also allow myself occasional indulgences, be it good clothes, good food or travel. Occasional vanity and vices are ok. Life is meant to lived. The best use of money is to enable your best life . It’s foolish to not spend and optimise the number of bank note you’re take into your grave.

One thing I must be weary of is hedonic adaption aka lifestyle inflation. As people get more money, they get more loose with it. And soon their more money seems like a lot less . Taken to the extreme you end with the urban poor who are buying top of the line products, living a visibly luxurious life but actually strapped for cash . These folks don’t feel rich_._