Rich

[Wd40]

I am one of those, who likes to accumulate money, but dont know what to do with it. I dont like to spend anything beyond necessity, the definition of necessity keeps growing by the way and I am in constant struggle with myself as to where to put the bar between what is necessity and what is excess. I am too risk averse to put lot of it into stuff like property, stocks etc and hence my money is very hard earned and not something that just grew out of thin air. That makes me even more protective about my money. The world we live in today, unfortunately doesnt reward people who are risk averse, like my parents generation

[JR8]

@PH - Agreed. For me it about being entirely independent of the state, any state. When I was young there was such a thing as a state pension, hardly any more, and won't be when I retire (despite paying for it for 20+ years).

My career pension and 'employee stock plan' accrued over many years - BLAM! Similarly worthless.

It's no wonder if you end up trying to be self-reliant.

@PNG. When I was starting out, I'd do a tally (a 'balance sheet') at least weekly. I had the ledger pages in my mid-80s Filofax . That is how avaricious/'hungry' I was ...

Once you become more settled I think you can become complacent. This is why right now we (wife and I) are going through a once in a decade kind of reassessment of what we actually want to do, where to live, how to fund it, etc. (call it a family assessment/prioritisation if you like).

@ WD40 I hear you. In this day and age you have to branch out and invest to get any inflation+ return. It requires a great deal of research to do it well/wisely unfortunately. There used to be an adage 'Risk and reward go hand in hand'....