Having Nice Things
I alternate back and forth quite a bit on how I feel about “stuff.”
Half of me really wants to have nice stuff: the newest iPhone, a Tesla, a MacBook. And it’s really nice to have quality clothes to wear—I like to look stylish.
On the other hand, I’ve often thought that if I suddenly became a millionaire/billionaire, I would meticulously not flaunt my wealth. I’d drive an old beater of a car, use a 5-year-old phone, and shop at goodwill. Why? I think I romanticize being secretly wealthy. I’d walk around with the ability to buy nice stuff at any time, but I wouldn’t. I’d have better things to do with my money than to just buy stuff. Because to be honest, if I ever do become rich some day, it will only be by being thrifty with my money now and not spending it excessively.
So I have these two conflicting desires within me. I want to spend money on buying nice stuff, and I equally want to save it. This expresses itself in slightly odd ways in my behavior. For instance, I currently use a 4-year-old phone whose screen I seriously cracked up last December and just never fixed. I’ve had the money to fix/replace it, but it wasn’t a priority. On the other hand, about a month ago I paid 80 bucks to buy a new file manager for my computer, of all things. (Yes, I disliked the windows file explorer enough that I spent 80 dollars on a niche replacement). Is this behavior logical? Not really. I just saw the file manager (Directory Opus, if you’re interested), and thought: “that is really cool. I want it.” Not to say that it was a bad purchase. Using Directory Opus really does spark joy in me. But there were probably better things I could have spent that $80 on.
So it’s that sort of purchase that makes me wonder if I’m mature enough to handle large amounts of money. I’d like to think if I won the lottery tomorrow I’d be able to use it responsibly. But to be honest, I think I have a lot of growing to do.
So to get back to the question I posed at the beginning, I think it’s perfectly fine to own some nice stuff. It feels good to have a quality pair of boots, for instance. But I just need to be comfortable with not always having everything be nice. I currently drive a 21-year-old car with a big dent in the rear corner and significant under-gearing. But it does the job, and I don’t have to worry about it quitting on me anytime soon. On the other hand, my phone with the broken screen is quickly deteriorating, so I do expect to replace it soon with something significantly nicer.
-Jakobus