I’ve got a friend who once told me she enjoys the finer things of life. Fancy wine, jaunts to exotic diving locations. The most expensive dining experiences. All that.
I had an associate tell me that he enjoys only the best scotch, and no longer can stomach any of the lesser swills. He said he’s developed his palette so he can pick out the most minute hints of whatever was used in the maceration(?) process.
That ain’t me. I enjoy the coarser things in life. And not only has that saved me boat loads of money, thus enabling me to hit FI before 40, but I think it’s made me happier too.
The Money
This is sort of a finance blog. At least sometimes. So let’s look at the green aspect of the coarse vs. fine debate.
Intuitively this is easy to grasp. You like fancy stuff? It’s going to cost more. Throw in hedonic adaptation-now your base level of acceptable has been shifted. You get used to expensive fancy crap, and then you must seek out even more expensive fancy crap to feel like you’re winning.
You never lusted for spaghetti with store bought marinara. But throw some parmesan and butter on it? Pretty damn good. Boil water, throw in Aldi sourced noodles, then add the fixings. 20 minutes to a solid meal with decent taste and mixed health benefits. But then you start going to that fancy italian restaurant down the road. They have the same thing with a fancier name, and a whole lot of added spices, salt, and hand made red sauce from the hills of columbia or whatever. Go there once or twice a month, and you’ll enjoy the shit out of it. Go there every other night? That’s your base level now. Them Aldi noodles suck by comparison-you won’t enjoy them anymore. Hedonic adaptation has just fucked you and your wallet. Plus those 30 dollar restaurant noodles ain’t even special anymore. You’ve got to find an even fancier(more expensive) place to boil water for you when you want something special.
Caveat:
Maybe you can afford to have a few select expensive tastes. Perhaps you’ve found one thing you want to spend a relatively fuckton of money on. Someone once said you can afford anything, you just can’t afford everything. Another guy said you can chuck a lot of coin at something which is comparatively less expensive than big ticket luxury items. Like buying one or two really nice bicycles instead of buying one or two BMWs. I think both FI gurus are probably right. We go off the tracks when we choose to only buy the finer version of everything. If all you buy is the very best, you’re financially fucked. If most of what you buy is the very best, you’re still fucked. Find what works and is reasonably priced, and buy mostly that. Strategically spend more on something only when it’s deliberate and you’ve acknowledged how much of your life you spent to accumulate the money it costs.
The Happy
By definition, there are fewer finer things in the world than your normal, run of the mill, standard stuff. Let’s look at two examples to drive this point home; cars and food.
According to the google, the most luxurious car in the world is currently the Rolls Royce Phantom. This thing makes your Tesla Model S Plaid look like a cheap golf cart (more like Model Sad, lol!). The Phantom runs just under half a million dollars, and only a few thousand are made a year. In comparison, you can buy a brand new, decked out Toyota Corolla for around $25K, and there have been 50 million of them sold.
The best restaurant of 2022 was Geranium. You’ll have to travel to Denmark to eat there, and the menus starts off around $500. You’ll easily pay double that if you select a wine pairing, which of course you will, because you’re all about the finer things. Meanwhile, you can get a damn good burrito down the block at Chipotle. Pair it with a Mexican Coke (real sugar!), and you’ll be out the door with about 15 less bucks.
Look, if your goal in life is to be able to afford half million dollar cars and regular intercontinental flights just for dining, more power to you. I’m not going to stand in your way. But let’s look at the time involved to go either route. If you decide to only enjoy the absolute finer things in life (I know we’re dancing between reductio ad absurdum argument and the appeal to the extremes fallacy , but hey-fuck it, let it ride), you’re going to spend years acquiring the capital to afford that Phantom and thousand dollar baseball steak. I’ll be watching you hustle you’re ass off while I do donuts in my Corolla while eating a damn good burrito. Then look at the availability. If you’re some super rich person, you’re still going to have to wait on a list to get that Rolls. And there are a finite amount of tables at the best restaurant in the world. You’ll have to compete with all the other elite rich to get your spot at that Geranium place, and then wait for that meal for hours while you’re stuck crossing the atlantic in your G6. If all you can enjoy is the finer things, you’ll be spending most days subsisting on comparatively proletarian fare.
The bottom line here is you’ll be happier if you can enjoy the regular. Good shit has been written about hedonic adaptation, and how you can game it to be happy with whatever you’ve got. While that’s valid, this is not what I’m getting at. I’m saying that even if you have the means to afford the finer shit, if that’s all you can enjoy you won’t be as happy as the other dude who appreciates the coarser things. Not because of some lofty enlightenment, but because there’s so much more coarser things out there, you can spend more time enjoying the great variety of normal shit instead of waiting in line for a finite amount of exceptional shit. And that sounds like a pretty good way to be happy to me. 🙂
Do you appreciate the coarser things in life? What are your favorites of the normal variety?
