How to be frugal after being raised as a "spendthrift"
Anonymous in /c/frugal_living
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Hello! I have been reading the comments on this sub for awhile now and finally made an account so I can post! I'm a 22 year old and as the title suggests I have a problem. My parents are very, very wealthy. From a very young age I have been given every single thing I wanted. I'm not exaggerating. My parents spared no expense in my upbringing ever, and I have been given hundreds of thousands of dollars of items from them my entire life. I never had a job in high school, and in college my parents paid for everything including a brand new car, apartments, all of my school, and I was also given a very large monthly stipend that I never came close to depleting. My parents did not make me get a job in college, so I spent most of college partying, drinking a ton of alcohol, doing drugs, and banging around between different groups of friends for the "fun" experience. I did graduate with a good degree, but I did not enjoy a single minute of college outside of the partying. I did not have any work ethic, I did not have any money consciousness and I spent most of college blowing money on alcohol, drugs and taking my friends out to eat all the time. <br><br>Fast forward to today, I got a pretty good job out of college and I've been working there for 2 years now. 2020 gave me a massive wake up call. I realized how much I spent on alcohol after calculating all of my Uber Eats, Amazon, Uber, Lyft, Door Dash and PostMate bills and I was horrified. I also realized I was drinking almost a 12 pack of beer every night after work, mixed with liquor and sometimes drugs. 2020 forced me to take a hard look at myself after I had no where to go and no one to see due to covid. I stopped drinking entirely for 3 months, and then started drinking again in small amounts here and there. I still go out on the weekends to the bar, but now I keep track of all my expenses for the month and I record every drink I have. I have substantially cut back on my drinking and I have noticed huge changes in my body. I have also started cooking more and have been bringing my lunch to work instead of buying fast food 3 times a day. I have also started running and working out more.<br><br>Now, I am frustrated because it seems like every single person in my family on my parent's side is wealthy. I feel like the only people I know who don't make a lot of money are the people I met in college who worked through school, or my co-workers who don't make near as much as me. I feel like I don't have anyone to relate to when it comes to money. I want to save up a huge amount of money in my savings account, and I have been doing that over the last 2 years. However, I feel like I am the only person I know who cares about saving money. It feels like everyone around me is telling me to "not worry so much about money" "you make good money don't worry about it" "you only live once" "you can always make more money" etc. It seems like I am the only one who is concerned about saving money. I feel like everyone around me is dishing out the usual "American" mantras when it comes to money. <br><br>I want to be frugal. I want to live below my means. I want to cook instead of eating out. I want to avoid drinking every weekend. I don't want to spend my money on stupid shit. I don't want to buy a brand new car every 2 years. I feel like I am by myself in this. I think I might be the only person in my entire family who has ever even visited this website. It feels like everyone I know lives in the moment, and no one seems to ever talk about the future or planning for the future. I want to be able to retire as early as I can. I want to be frugal. I want to be cheap. I want to save money. I feel like I have no support for doing this, and it's hard for me to find people who think like this. How do I adapt to this? I feel like 22 years of being taught to not care about money at all is impeding my ability to change. I don't want to become a stupid, entitled rich kid. I want to be frugal. Help.
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