I’ve never really liked the vehicles I owned. They were an impressive lot, including a Volkswagen Beetle, Mercury Capri, Toyota SR5 pickup, Toyota Camry and Ford Fusion. I’d like to say they took me where I needed to go, but it wasn’t always like that. All the cars except the Camry were unreliable, which sometimes made my life difficult and made it difficult. Of course, maintaining these cars for many years did not help.
When I think about it, I didn’t really like the houses where I lived either. They included small apartments, without many of the standard amenities you might expect when renting or buying a home.
Some of my apartments were downright terrible. In 1979 I rented a studio located in an alley over a garage. The apartment had poor insulation. It would be very cold in the winter, I could feel the North Pole and in the summer it was so hot that it looked like the Valley of Death. He was such a small friend that he visited that he asked if the place had a bathroom.
It was not the safest place to live. In the apartment next to me lived a drug dealer, my car broke down more than once and one day someone stole my laundry clothes. I was there for six years, enduring all the discomfort and problems that surrounded me.
The small 789 square foot apartment I bought in 1985 was an upgrade, but it wasn’t a place you’d want to be for 35 years, which I did. A young lady, the same age I was when I first moved into the studio above the garage, bought my apartment earlier this year. Her real estate agent informed me that it was just an initial home for her and that she would probably move in five years. When I moved into my current home, I realized all the comforts I had lost during those years living in this small apartment.
I made a lot of money working for a big aerospace company, so I didn’t have to live like that. But I chose to do it, because I wanted to save money. When I look at my investment portfolio, I have more money than I need for a comfortable and secure retirement. In fact, I probably saved too much.
You may be wondering, “Can anyone save too much money? Is there such a phenomenon in personal finance?” That I think.
When it comes to saving for retirement, you need to strike a balance between giving up smaller rewards today to get bigger rewards later. But you don’t want to delay satisfaction to a point that makes life harder than it should be. And that’s what I did to accumulate the big pile of cash I’ll probably never need. Some of that money would have been better spent in my early years.
After retiring, I hired a low-cost financial advisor to manage my investments. Hiring this financial advisor made me think about my relationship with money.
One day, we were reviewing my budget for the year. I could tell he was pushing me to spend more. He asked me if I wanted to buy a new car.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
He replied jokingly, “How about a ship?”
“No, I don’t fish.” I interrupted him. “I should tell you I’m getting married.”
“Congratulations, I’m sure you could afford to buy him a nice ring,” my advisor said. “Why don’t we add it to your budget for this year?”
Since then, I’ve been adding quite a few more items to my annual budget.
The result: I try to live the moment more, enjoy life more. You should not live life always thinking about your future, because it does not mean a good saving if you are not willing to spend them.
This column originally appeared in Humble Dollar and has been republished with permission.
Dennis Friedman retired from Boeing Satellite Systems after a 30-year manufacturing career. A self-described “humble investor,” he enjoys reading historical and personal finance novels. His previous articles include Live It Up, Don’t Delay and Try Not Slip. Follow Dennis on Twitter @DMFrie.