Papa John’s pizza?

You Philistine…..

Papa John preach?

Papa John preach?

So Kryton’s an anti-material girl?

We had a chap join our Saturday cafe ride. This week we went to a cafe which is often very busy, so I’d pre-booked a group table to make sure we could all get served quickly. Good service and banter with the staff etc. However, when we came to pay, new boy (well middle aged man) riding a brand new shiny £7k carbon bike, kicked off a massive hissy fit at the till over being charged £2.50 for a can of coke in a lovely air conditioned restaurant with excellent service / food. He was so bad I took him aside and explained that being rude to staff was unacceptable and given we all had menus he should have not ordered the drink if he didn’t like the price. He wouldn’t let it go and started a massive argument with me about being ripped off. In the end I had to ask him never to ride with us again, by this time he was shouting in my face in front of the whole group. I did at one point think he was going to punch me over the issue…

Absolutely insane behaviour…

What op described is not anti materialism imo more being careful with money to the point of obsession. Anti materialism would be freeing one self from the desire for material goods although that is not quite anti more free, anti would be a almost distain for material goods.

For the op I think the key is to consider that of value.nincluded in this calculation is that of the impact mentioned in in the op but also that of the impact on the rest of your life. For me a an example would be a good meal at a restaurant and a meal at a expensive well know restaurant where you should be see and be seen. What value does the second option offer over the first? The only value is to you ego, which should be avoided.

My stepfather used to go mental about the hallway light being left on, whilst he had several flash watches

Apple and oranges. One is needlessly waisting energy due to lack of awareness, the other is owning an asset that if purchased with any level of care should be able to be sold for what it was brought for, ideally more.

Is this thread worthy of the Happiness cartoon?

It’s very much about spending smarter and living a bit cleaner. No posh phone, no TV subs, no car (and associated costs/headaches), no holidays (cos if you don’t have all the other shit going on you don’t need to ‘get away from it all’), work as much as you need to and no more. Spend the rest of your time riding your bike, going for walks, playing music (or learning to play).

Life is short and you’re here once. Once.

What op described is not anti materialism imo more being careful with money to the point of obsession.

Yes I agree, thats what I meant to communicate but did it badly.

It’s very much about spending smarter and living a bit cleaner. No posh phone, no TV subs, no car (and associated costs/headaches), no holidays (cos if you don’t have all the other shit going on you don’t need to ‘get away from it all’), work as much as you need to and no more. Spend the rest of your time riding your bike, going for walks, playing music (or learning to play).

I don’t want to go that far, but upon entering a new job with a 3 year plan, its worn a little thin a little quicker than I thought, and although I don’t know the answer, I can’t help feeling that there’s something more exciting out there.

You seem to be quite a restless soul @kryton57. At least I get that impression from the things you post. How about trying to drop the plan and just living in the moment for a bit.

I used to plan things when younger and worry about the future. Then my brother was killed at the grand old age of 33. Made me take stock and reassess. Life’s short, way too short in some instances. Just go with it. It won’t work all the time, but you can’t really control it at the end of the day so try to ease up a little.

However, when we came to pay, new boy (well middle aged man) riding a brand new shiny £7k carbon bike, kicked off a massive hissy fit at the till over being charged £2.50 for a can of coke

By funny coincidence just had a strava ride pop up with someone moaning about a £2.50 for a coke in tetbury 🙂

Not your guy thou as a Sunday anti-social.

How about trying to drop the plan and just living in the moment for a bit

well, that was my plan for 2027, age 55.

Then my brother was killed at the grand old age of 33. Made me take stock and reassess. Life’s short, way too short in some instances. Just go with it. It won’t work all the time, but you can’t really control it at the end of the day so try to ease up a little.

I’m really sorry to hear that FP, thats very emotional. Visiting my best mate I’ve known since the age of 11 yesterday – he’s not an emotionally outgoing person – and listening to his ” **** it” way of dealing with his bowel cancer has really made me think of this. I see him once a year, and as we shook hands to say our goodbyes yesterday he looked at me and said, hey, we’re all still here, and walked off.

I’m still processing that.

Wouldn’t anti materialism be about buying as little stuff as possible?

Ah. IDRATS. Bin dun.

I see him once a year, and as we shook hands to say our goodbyes yesterday he looked at me and said, hey, we’re all still here, and walked off.

There is a last time for everything and I remember the last time I hugged a mate. We kind of knew it but didn’t want to say anything.

Naomi Klein’s ‘No Logo’ recommends buying good quality clothes, preferably locally made, and making it last. Having the type of relationship with neighbours whereby you swap tools and materials for projects (rather than let them perish on your shelves), social capital goes up and your costs come down. Keep old bikes and cars going through a bit of care and maintenance. Grow stuff, make stuff and repair stuff. Buy second hand and out of season, my summer bargains include a BNWT cashmere overcoat (£40) and a Barbour jacket (£70). Camping and hostels. Avoid credit if you can. Avoid impulse buying, spend a bit of time researching and you’ll either lose interest or make a better purchase.

The OP is nothing to do about money really. It’s about his desire to be in control.

Is this thread worthy of the Happiness cartoon?

That was excellent, I’d not seen it before. Thanks for sharing.

Yup, I can relate to the OP.

Although I’ve accepted that I hate the decision making process as much as I hate materialism and shopping in general.

So rather than spend hours reading reviews I just set some minimum criteria for a purchase and buy whatever meets them. Sometimes that’s just going with screwfix own brand LED bulbs because life’s too short to consider the difference between Philips and Osram. Other time’s it’s an £800 TV because I do still like nice things and it’ll last a decade so I’ll still be enjoying it long after the pain of the purchase 🤷‍♀️

It’s probably a symptom of some sort of neurodivergence, so now if I find myself spiraling in co-op over what teabags to buy I just have to give myself a kicking and pick any brand reminding myself they all taste basicaly like “tea” and cost about 3p/bag and get on with my day.

Naomi Klein’s ‘No Logo’ recommends buying good quality clothes, preferably locally made, and making it last. Having the type of relationship with neighbours whereby you swap tools and materials for projects (rather than let them perish on your shelves), social capital goes up and your costs come down. Keep old bikes and cars going through a bit of care and maintenance. Grow stuff, make stuff and repair stuff. Buy second hand and out of season, my summer bargains include a BNWT cashmere overcoat (£40) and a Barbour jacket (£70). Camping and hostels. Avoid credit if you can. Avoid impulse buying, spend a bit of time researching and you’ll either lose interest or make a better purchase.

““The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”

Which raises the slight counterpoint that it’s better to get the good boots on credit as long as the repayments are less than the cost of the cheap boots every “season or two”.

The OP is nothing to do about money really. It’s about his desire to be in control.

No bad thing really, the flipside of “materialism” is being controlled by advertising?

Avoid impulse buying, spend a bit of time researching and you’ll either lose interest or make a better purchase.

This is actually really good advice. “I really want this [thing], I’ll buy it tomorrow.” Come tomorrow you’ll either be thinking “damn, I should’ve bought it yesterday” in which case it’s a sensible purchase, or you’ll have forgotten all about it and be lusting after something else.

I learned this when out of work once. With disposable income it’s too easy to, well, dispose of it. I was no longer in a position to do that so rather than mope about – well, after a degree of moping about – I hit on the concept of Not Shopping. Rather that looking at all the things in shop windows that I couldn’t afford and getting all miserable about it, I’d make a conscious decision to Not Buy something I wanted. On a light day I might Not Buy a book; on another I might be really extravagant and Not Buy a Playstation.

The really weird thing though is… I found you get the same dopamine ‘retail therapy’ reward regardless of whether you actually make the purchase or not. If you’re buying tat in the pursuit of happiness, you can go through the same process but stop just before the “handing over money” bit. Placebo effect? I don’t know, but it’s very curious.

We massively went down the FIRE rabbit hole a couple of years ago, about the time COVID bite.

Everything got baked in to spreadsheets and we worked out how much money we needed to retire and be financially independent.

At the time it seemed to make a lot of sense to us, especially given we’re relatively environmental conscious as well.

We began to value everything versus how much time it was going to add on us reaching our mythical fire number.

A couple of years on we’ve made great strides, but we’re still at least 3 years from being done, knowing we’ve still got a fair way to go has weighed on us a bit of late and we’ve decided to ease back a bit not suck all the spontaneity out of our everyday living.

Whoever mentioned living for today has it right, we have a couple of close friends and relatives struggling with MS and seeing them go downhill over the last couple of years you realise somewhere there is a balance to be found with enough forward planning and living in the moment.

Not Shopping

Are you Reverend Billy?

One way of buying fewer things (and longer term saving money) is to spend a bit more buying good quality items. These tend to last longer, often considerably longer, than cheaper things which need replacing every couple of years.

I still have a Camelback MULE I bought more than 20 years ago. At the time it was one of the pricier backpacks out there, but it’s still going strong today after many tumbles. Many, many tumbles! And has therefore probably saved me a fair bit of money.

Caveat 1. Yes some cheaper things can last a long time too, and some expensive stuff is junk.

Caveat 2. Of course you could just not buy the thing in the first place.

Re the Boots analogy above….

GF always used to say that we’re too poor to buy cheap, therefore we buy the best of what we can afford and only if we need it.

And the best way to save money is by not spending it.

It’s odd how friends of ours with high incomes seem to worry about money more than us. They earn more and as such start spending more in line with their income.

One of them was complaining recently how the GF and I afford so many holidays* and that they’re a bit jealous. I pointed out that we could have had several year long holidays for the price of their new car…. “It’s not new, it’s second hand!” she retorted. Indeed it is, but it still cost 29,000€ because it had to be a new shape 5er BMW. I pointed out that if they were that brassic they’d have bought a shitbox for a few grand and hoped it made it through the next MOT.

*our holidays are jumping in the van and riding and walking in the hill, as opposed to all-inclusive exotic 5* jobbies. Biggest expense is usually the ticket for the bike park.

It’s probably a symptom of some sort of neurodivergence, so now if I find myself spiraling in co-op over what teabags to buy I just have to give myself a kicking and pick any brand

I dunno, I think it’s just part of being an overthinker… But I can really relate to this. Just this weekend I was in the nice local shop, having been about to buy a box of my normal teabags, but noticing that they were £1.50 more than in Tesco. That’s a lot more! But I want to support local shops, and I can afford £1.50. But that’s like 40% more! But also it’s only 2p a bag more. But they are nice people and I do want their shop to do well! I stood for a while agonising over it. That box of teabags will last 6 weeks. Eventually I bought it, having wasted some time and probably looking like a ninny dithering in front of the teabags.

The worst one for choice (for me) is toothpaste. I stand in front of the infinite wall of options, paralysed by choice, until I go **** IT I JUST DON’T CARE and pick the nearest one to me, only to realise that it’s £5.99 and maybe I do care after all, so I step back again, and wonder whether I need 24 hour protection or extra whitening, or maybe £5.99 is reasonable for toothpaste, and what’s the difference anyway and hating myself and the very existence of the universe.

An hour later I will impulse buy a houseplant for £20 or an album from my local record shop.

There is of course an argument that by saving those pennies on toothpaste I’ll have more opportunities to impulse buy houseplants and albums. Or perhaps go on holiday once a year.

I do struggle to find the balance sometimes!

I suppose this is where ‘brand loyalty’ can be useful. Just buy the same toothpaste every time. It’ll be fine and you don’t need to waste your life thinking about crap. If you can remember what toothpaste you use, that is…

I dunno, I think it’s just part of being an overthinker… But I can really relate to this. Just this weekend I was in the nice local shop, having been about to buy a box of my normal teabags, but noticing that they were £1.50 more than in Tesco. That’s a lot more! But I want to support local shops, and I can afford £1.50. But that’s like 40% more! But also it’s only 2p a bag more. But they are nice people and I do want their shop to do well! I stood for a while agonising over it. That box of teabags will last 6 weeks. Eventually I bought it, having wasted some time and probably looking like a ninny dithering in front of the teabags.

The messed-up bit of all of this is that tomorrow most of us would to a café and pay more than the cost of the entire box of teabags for a single mug of tea and not think twice about it.

All my money is spent for neurodivergent (or obsessive, whatever you want to call it) reasons. My life revolves around fixing problems. So I see an issue with, for example, the bedroom being a mess, and I design a solution that requires some more furniture or a storage system or a DIY project or something. So money gets spent on that. None of it is expensive but there’s a lot of it. My wife does the same thing too. If something on the car or the bike is not working properly, I get genuinely stressed out until its fixed and when it is there’s a wave of relief as stress levels drop. And it really is external in origin – when everything’s working fine I do properly relax – until something else breaks.

Fantastic thread.

I read “Not Buying It- My Year Without Shopping” by Judith Levine many years ago which changed the way I looked at material things. When tempted to buy I use her technique of asking if I could continue to live and function without buying the particular item.

Very intersting point on the value of more expensive items over time. Not from a wealthy background but as I got older it never ceased to amaze me how modestly some very wealthy peole live.

I’m really sorry to hear that FP, thats very emotional. Visiting my best mate I’ve known since the age of 11 yesterday – he’s not an emotionally outgoing person – and listening to his ” **** it” way of dealing with his bowel cancer has really made me think of this. I see him once a year, and as we shook hands to say our goodbyes yesterday he looked at me and said, hey, we’re all still here, and walked off.

I’m still processing that.

It was a long time ago. I was still in my twenties and I’m in my mid forties now. Thanks for the comment though. Just thought it was a good illustration of how life can be. Easier said than done but try and relax a bit and not over think everything or beat yourself up. I could be wrong but from your posts you appear to do both. Be frugal but don’t let it dominate your life.

I hope your friend beats the cancer and you have many more yearly catch ups to come.

I’ve tried explaining but it falls on deaf ears. I will just kill her one day to appease my mechanical sympathy.

Haha! Yes. I’ve found the best way to deal with this is turn it round in your head – it clearly needs to be better designed if it can’t handle day to day usage by a ‘normal’ person.

When tempted to buy I use her technique of asking if I could continue to live and function without buying the particular item.

Hm. I’m fairly sure that there’s plenty of stuff “I could continue to live and function without buying” but that sounds like eking out a pretty miserable existence rather than actually enjoying life. Prisoners live and function, so do many people in third world countries.

How much did you spend on your bike over a BSO? Do you even need a bicycle, you could just walk. Do you actually need a new living room carpet? Cushion covers in a matching colour? Running hot water?

Great thread

Right now I’m struggling not buying expensive things that I know I ‘need’ in the future, but inflation means it’ll be 10% more expensive in just a few months, and supply problems mean they’ll be in very short supply as well. And if I buy now and it turns out I don’t actually need it, I’ll get my money back by selling on…

It’s like advanced man maths.

Hm. I’m fairly sure that there’s plenty of stuff “I could continue to live and function without buying” but that sounds like eking out a pretty miserable existence rather than actually enjoying life. Prisoners live and function, so do many people in third world countries.

How much did you spend on your bike over a BSO? Do you even need a bicycle, you could just walk. Do you actually need a new living room carpet? Cushion covers in a matching colour? Running hot water?

Surely the gist of the philosophy is to figure out what level of spending is actually necessary to enjoy life, and then put the rest into savings so you can retire ASAP and enjoy that same life without having to work?

So I’d argue that yes I need* a bike, carpets, cushions etc. The question becomes more pertinent in 5-10 years time, can I live with this carpet/cushion/sofa/bike a bit longer and still be comfortable, not offended by the color choice, have fun on the bike, etc.

My OH would re-decorate the whole house every year if she could, she’s determined the spare room needs re-decorating despite I think it’s probably been used less than ten times? So by the “do we really need this?” argument, I’m saving ~£500 in materials by being happy to live with the fact she painted it purple (it’s pretty horrible, but I just don’t care enough).

*or at least expect to own.

Hm. I’m fairly sure that there’s plenty of stuff “I could continue to live and function without buying” but that sounds like eking out a pretty miserable existence rather than actually enjoying life. Prisoners live and function, so do many people in third world countries.

It’s difficult to nuance without writing an essay. I apply it when looking at questions like do I really need to spend money on replacing an older but still perfectly functional item? It’s not an exhortation to suffer needlessly.

Surely the gist of the philosophy is to figure out what level of spending is actually necessary to enjoy life, and then put the rest into savings so you can retire ASAP and enjoy that same life without having to work?

So I’d argue that yes I need* a bike, carpets, cushions etc. The question becomes more pertinent in 5-10 years time, can I live with this carpet/cushion/sofa/bike a bit longer and still be comfortable, not offended by the color choice, have fun on the bike, etc.

But then we’re out of the realms of “need” and into cod philosophy to justify our expenditure. No?

A better question may be one of worth rather than necessity. If I spend [amount] on [thing], will it bring me joy to that value? Is it a net gain?

When we moved house I spent a small fortune redecorating our bedroom to turn it from a clinical white room into a cosy retreat. Worth every penny. Yet my office is the same clinical walls as when we moved in because, frankly, I don’t care. I’m working, I look at screens not walls, painting would’ve been an extravagance.

If I spend [amount] on [thing], will it bring me joy to that value? Is it a net gain?

but money isn’t, uh, ‘linear’ like that. Most would balk at the idea of spending an extra £200 on (for example) some handmade shoes, even though they might be incredibly comfortable and you’d wear them a lot and enjoy that comfort for several hours a day. But the same people might spend an extra £4,000 on the car with the turbo instead of the normal car, even though both cars will get you to the trail centre in the same amount of time, and both cars will spend the majority of their time either parked up or crawling along in first on the daily commute.