For anyone who hasn’t already, I would strongly suggest that you read/listen the “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”. It speaks of the “Rat Race”, where once you increase your income by a fraction, you almost immediately and subconsciously adjust your needs to absorb that increase.
I think this is one of the books that everyone over the age of 15-17 should read as it gives a crash-course on the fine art of making money.
This book, together with the minimalists’ work influenced me to change my work style and other habits and now I feel more focused, clutter free, and with significantly more €$£¥ in my pocket.
I have read this book and I would recommend as an alternative "The Richest Man In Babylon." It is more clearly a book of parables about building wealth and less about the route one person took to financial success.
I'm not saying there isn't usable advice in that book, which I have read, but in full disclosure, the book's author, Robert Kiyosaki, fictionalised most of the anecdotes contained within it.
Additionally, he operates a real estate "investing" school that advocates and instructs semi-legal, morally questionable predatory practices.
It is openly modelled after Trump University, Trump being Kiyosaki's business mentor and aspirational avatar. They have authored at least one book together.
> Additionally, he operates a real estate "investing" school that advocates and instructs semi-legal, morally questionable predatory practices.
Yeah, it's 90% trivial platitudes about "buy low, sell high" and "invest your money wisely", and then a few pages about how he actually made his money (if that part is true, anyway): Haunt foreclosure auctions to flip the houses. Skeezy.
So he says to buy low and sell high, and he made his money by buying real estate cheap and then selling it higher? I have absolutely no background on the guy, but that doesn't sound "skeezy" or even inconsistent; what am I missing?
Why is that skeezy? If the house is at a foreclosure auction, it's being sold whether he buys it or not. If he buys it, he's paying more than anyone else was willing to.
I assume anybody reading that book understands that "Rich Dad" is mostly literary device, probably loosely based on an actual figure(s) and a few key events or experiences.
Nobody remembers conversations they had word for word an hour afterward, let alone decades.
..and the “Rat race” I mentioned on a previous comment above is that exactly perpetual effort to cover that +25% as you very correctly stated of “more expensive lifestyle” that we impose to ourselves.
It doesn't really make sense to say it because it's not as if there's a general cultural tendency towards shrift. Most people aren't saving enough, what's the point in popularizing the message that we should continue on that same course?
Saving never really makes you happy, it makes you feel secure. Seeing a number in an account rise over the years is great, but also a constant reminder of money you’ll never get to touch until you are old and gray, if you even make it that far. And even if you do, what if the world of the future is no longer worth exploring or even living in?
Is it more important for people to feel happy, or secure?
Security is a part of happiness. It is finding the right balance.
Modern medicine is advancing all the time. You could be old an grey for many years. You could live to be 170. If you live to 170 and save well you could retire at 65 and live the last half of your life with more income from savings to enjoy life than if you work until 170 and spend every penny as you make it.
Of course you could also die in the next few minutes. You need to find that balance.
Drop natural population growth toward zero. Import one million low skill, very low income persons per year.
Welcome to the non-merit, non-point based immigration system treadmill of never getting anywhere because you perpetually flood your system with cheap replacement labor.
Tens of millions of Americans moved from the middle class into the top two economic tiers since 1970. And we replaced them with vast amounts of low cost imported labor. If you keep doing that, you will not see meaningful wage growth at the median, you'll only see it in the top tiers.
Most other developed nations are once again correct: the US should move to a common sense points based immigration system. We could merely exactly copy Canada on immigration, and that would dramatically improve the conditions for workers at or below the median.
I don't think the hedonic treadmill or that link has anything to do with your statement "the average person spends almost exactly as they make as income rises." The hedonic treadmill says that happiness is eventually independent of income and savings. So, eventually, whether someone makes $1mm/year, saves none of it, makes $1mm/year, saves $500k, or makes $30k/year, saves none of it, s/he'll have the same happiness.
Also, your statement is false. The average higher-income person saves both more money on an absolute basis ($ amount) and on a percent-of-his/her-income basis.
An individual employee may do almost anything. But most of them won't decrease spending when given a raise. Some may spend exactly the same as before. The rest will spend more. Do those who spend more outnumber those who spend less? I have no data, but I would be astonished if those who spent less outweighed those who spent more.
That's not a claim that I make, nor one that I think is relevant.
What would I do with more income? Well, I'd probably save some of it, use some of it to pay down debt, and spend some of it. I don't have to be spending 100% of my current income for that to be true.
