You’re allowed to spend money on fun and occasional yummy food wants. I hate that you berate yourself over it.
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One of the reasons I quit my job was because I didn’t have the ability to do it at the level I thought was appropriate and I started doing this more and more - losing confidence in my ability to do my work and make decisions there and elsewhere. I was sleep deprived and mentally running a household, caring for kid, working part time, and I recognised if I kept working, I was just going to get worse at my job AND my confidence would continue to plummet. It took months after quitting to start clearing my head of that.
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Is imposter syndrome a facet of this? Would love to hear more of your thoughts.
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Oh goodness, just reading those episode descriptions was a lot for me! I might not be in the best headspace to try it now but it sounds really interesting.
I read his book, by the same title, when I was just barely out of college, because an older coworker suggested it. Some of his more bombastic language was a turn off but overall I thought it was a very useful book. Very practical and thorough and I appreciated his focus on doing the important 80% of the work and not needing to hyper optimize.
I feel like spending money and feeling OK about it is still something I am working on. (aren’t we all?) Hmmm. Food for thought.
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I had a close friend who got hired by a bank, pre-great recession, for what they thought was a bank teller job at a normal mainstream bank. It ended up being 90% cold-calling senior citizens and trying to get them to take out scammy loans. They quit realllll fast but the horror stories they accumulated freaked me out. It’s not paranoia if the scams are real!
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I feel this so hard. It’s been 9 months since I quit my job and I’m still not feeling very confident towards applying for new work.
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That’s an interesting question. Obviously I am just an armchair everything so I have no real information other than observation to back anything up (disclaimer).
Off topic, not money saving related
My sense is that it is not related to imposter syndrome, or only related superficially? Like perhaps they are both symptoms.
I also don’t think it’s directly related to judgment, because everyone gets judgment about their decisions and not everyone responds with such trepidation. Now, the fear of judgment might be more accurately part of the issue, but the fear of judgment is not a given just because judgment exists, since it exists for everyone. I would also say that the people who seem to care the most about external judgment to me are the people who are least likely to suffer real world negative consequences as a result of judgment. They won’t lose their job or their house or their safety, but they are terrified. That’s very interesting.
To me it feels something like a lack of true community and a very unusual world view? Maybe extended adolescence has something to do with it, too, I don’t know. Maybe lack of religion and hyper focus on politics and news is partly the issue. Thinking constantly about privilege but rarely feeling the actual feeling of gratitude. I think there is something (as ginja mentioned) about this desire to act like humans are non-emotional machines capable of reacting to pure data perfectly with zero moral missteps, is fascinating. I literally think it’s impossible and counter to human nature, and that it stokes far more problems than it solves.
I think world view is at least partly to blame because of the delicate sense of self it can create. The idea that a person should not ever be selfish, for example, because then they are a bad person, even though we literally wouldn’t have survived as human beings without selfishness, is an wild concept when you really think about it. I wonder if not just the lack of living a religion but mores the lack of studying (in depth) the beliefs of world religions but also historical philosophy has something to do with it. Debates on those topics are increasingly not happening, I think, because they are derailed by more popular topics previously mentioned.
It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that more things are more fraught in general when you don’t feel you have a strong world view to support what you’re doing. If no one can meet the standards of a certain world view, I would conclude that view itself to be problematic and in need of massive revision, but I’m not sure if that would be an acceptable point to argue to most people.
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It’s been 3 years since I stopped working and when I look at job listings I can’t imagine that I’m capable of doing any of them. Even for the tiny handful I’ve found that actually list the work I was doing. My confidence has become much better in other areas during that time, though.
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whewwwwwwww I’m sweating
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So much of what drove me to get my MLIS was feeling a distinct lack of community and sensing that the library could preserve or reinvigorate that for me. I don’t go to church, I’m not part of a club, I have very few recreational outlets (partly due to grad school, partly due to COVID). Although I am slightly annoyed by her, the founder of Financial Diet, Chelsea? She often retweets people talking about wanting to cancel social outings or flake or whatever, and that’s become increasingly an OK thing to do, like it’s supposed to be cute and funny and understandable that people never want to leave their houses and talk about things they don’t agree on, even with friends! And she’s always like, guys? It’s actually really worrisome if you are constantly making your lives smaller and don’t want to even see your friends? And it is actually so scary to me. (Note: Not even sure if I’m talking parallel to you or not lol.)
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Like don’t get me wrong, introvert homebody here, and the Stay At Home Club merch is cute, but yikes!!!
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Sorry OK I see you typing lol so last response but FOR ME, maybe this will tie it back…when I am personally feeling insecure or a lack of confidence in my ideas/decisions it is probably due to internalizing them 100% rather than just casually bumping up against the edges of the world/other people?? When I feel in community I feel more at ease and confident.
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I’ve been thinking a lot about the lack of true community for many people in North America, and how companies trying to exploit this human need/people trying to fill this human need through their work teams is somewhat toxic
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Yes! Or the constant drive to turn restorative leisure stuff into side-hustles!
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Editing to delete, love you all
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Understood! I’m sorry, this doesn’t belong in this thread.
To All: I miscalculated this conversation! If you want to respond and continue talking about this type of thing, maybe DM me? I’ll amend my posts and we can just do it via DM instead so people here can enjoy money saving focused topics.
ETA: Further conversations on spending habits and outlook on spending are still ok!
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SO grateful for you and for this community! I think these are smart, important conversations, and also appreciate your continued thoughtfulness.
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Of course! I’m glad you said something because other people probably felt similarly. This thread should be fun 
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@AllHat I agree with you on many things but not that budget-minded grocery shopping can be fun! 
Just kidding, I am doing my best to get there eventually. Growth mindset.
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Haha, well many things I find fun are not fun to most 
I need to remember that! Now I’m off to meal plan, but like, fun meal planning. I’m using a purple pen and everything.
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