“From Savings to Snafus: 69 Cost-Cutting Decisions That Went Horribly Wrong!”
I don’t know the details, but I heard that his wife ended up remarrying her personal trainer not long after. I’m sure they are enjoying his hard earned money, basically none of which he enjoyed.
2) A family friend of mine is american born asian. His dad emigrated here and was the stereotypical frugal/cheap asian. He married an asian american born in the US. Unfortunately his frugality DID NOT translate to his wife, my friend, or his sister. In fact, they downright loathed him and his cheapness.
I am not sure why they hated him so much. He provided them with new clothes from the Gap, they always had enough to eat, he paid for the 3 of them to go on vacations 2x/year (he stayed to work,rarely joined them). He even bought my friend a new honda accord when he graduated high school. He paid for their college education. As far as I could tell, he wasn’t beating them or anything, yet my friend would always complain about how he didn’t have this and that.
Same story, the dad worked his rear off, wore the same crappy clothes at work (he owned a bunch of restaurants), barely spent a dime on himself. He died in a robbery from a gun shot wound, probably wearing the same crappy grease-covered jeans and khaki shirt he did for the better part of the decade before that.
My friend and his family sold all the restaurants and the strip mall since they didn’t really want to manage it (understandable, none of them knew anything about the businesses nor cared to be involved).
They went on a spending spree RIGHT AFTER, it was sick. My friend bought a condo in NYC with cash (he couldn’t stop bragging about how he bought it with his own hard earned cash…). Unfortunately, he lost his job during the .com bust, wouldn’t settle for something “beneath him,” He couldn’t keep up with the HOA fees, ended up extracting equity. He no longer owns the condo.
Sad story, the dad spent decades building his fortunes from scratch, and it was essentially all blown away within a decade. They aren’t poor by any means now (the both have 6 figure jobs). I have no idea how much money they inherited, it had to be at least 3 million since they each bought 3 condos in NYC, Boston. The sister as far as I know still owns the condo she bought with the inheritance. She did also marry a rich Wall St guy as well (they are both Wall St yuppies making more money than 10 of us put together). So I guess in the end, the dad was successful in that he raised 2 financially well off kids, but unfortunately didn’t seem to get to enjoy the fruits if his own labor.
Story #1 was what hit me the hardest since he was my age. I had a 1 hour long phone conversation with my friend, and while I encouraged him to quit his job and spend some of his money before he died, he ultimately didn’t. It was then, I realized if I don’t spend my money, someone else will if I die early, and I will end up regretting not enjoying the fruits of my labor.
I stopped “hyper saving” and made a conscious decision to go out more, work less, eat better food,
