exasperation

No sorry this is gastro-entomology.

What is violet at the end of the visible spectrum, then? We call the higher wavelength stuff ultraviolet, and violet looks purple to me, so I'm having trouble reconciling this stuff with what you're saying.

Yeah, I'm not going to pretend like I'm good with money. I'm not. I have a decade of experience of being a young adult on a tight budget to know that's not one of my strengths. I wasn't great at stretching each dollar to its most efficient use. And I still am not.

I won't speak on whether student loans are worth it. I think, like everything, it depends. I think a bachelor's degree is definitely worth the cost (both in tuition and time), but it might still be worth doing it cheaper if there's a cheaper path available.

So we're having a conversation about the Wal-Mart style self checkouts, which you've not only never experienced, but apparently can't even imagine.

To borrow from an earlier comment of yours, we're in an "alternate reality," so your conversation should be grounded in that understanding.

Or are you just speaking about cash reserves?

Yes. Cash reserves are like unused RAM to me: I have it, so I might as well put it to work. If it turns out I need it somewhere else, I can always go rearrange things to make that possible.

Realistically, I think I'm rich because my wife and I both have strong ability to command high salaries, switch jobs, etc., even in a pretty severe downturn. The main things that might tank the value of that expected future cash flow are disability or death, and we at least insure against those.

We also only need one of our two incomes to support our lifestyle, so we have a certain resilience that just comes from having that buffer. At our current ages, we also already have substantial retirement savings, so we have some resilience there, too.

Your entire comment seems premised on the mistaken assumption that every self checkout system is implemented in the exact same way.

I use self checkout at certain stores, and avoid it at others.

And the store that this whole post is about, Wal-Mart, is definitely one of the stores I'll avoid self checkout at. Their system sucks.

What’s your relationship or philosophy with money?

A life-changing shift to my approach has been to worry about absolute amounts rather than percentages. Saving $10 on a $20 item feels great but ultimately is the same thing as saving $10 on a $500 item (which feels like nothing).

I grew up lower middle class: never had to worry about not having a roof over my head, but there were times we were somewhat food insecure, and spending money on leisure/entertainment or anything unnecessary for survival was a foreign concept until I got to high school and some my parents' career moves paid off and put us in upper middle class. It took them a good 10+ years before they could relax a little bit and feel secure with their money, though, and that was as much driven by the fact that their kids were adults who had moved out.

So life has been about deciding which of my parents' frugal attitudes and approaches to money to keep and which to discard.

Things I decided not to adopt:

• I slowly learned to stop caring as much about wasted food. Food is just cheaper now compared to when I was growing up (even if the last 5 years has shown an uptick), and as a society we have more issues with obesity than hunger, so cleaning off a plate seems like it doesn't actually do that much good.
• My time is worth something to me. I will gladly pay the few dollars here and there for convenience.
• I'm glad I ignored my parents advice to buy a home as soon as I could and build equity or whatever. I rented and it worked out great for me, giving me the flexibility to make changes at different stages of my life.

Things I kept:

• Life is uncertain. Always be prepared with whatever you can accumulate for financial resilience: cash, other property, lines of credit, marketable job skills, literal insurance policies, etc. Don't underestimate the importance of personal relationships, whether it's "credit" from friends and family who can help you out of a bind, colleagues who can refer work to you, bosses who will fight for your career, etc.
• Develop your career. Education and credentials are important early on, and up-to-date skills and a good understanding of the landscape in your field (both in the type of job and the type of industry you work in), plus solid relationships with people, can help you know when switching jobs is right for you.

Things I had to learn on my own:

• Life is unfair. Many types of unfairness are systematic. So why not position yourself to where the unfairness works in your favor, if available?
• Higher income makes it easier to survive mistakes on the spending side. To flip around Ben Franklin's quote, a penny earned is a penny saved.
• Know yourself and your own laziness. Set up automatic functions wherever possible: automatic bill pay, automatic savings, automatic investments, etc. Steer away from any strategy that requires active management, and towards strategies that tend towards a set it and forget it philosophy.

I've also made a shitload of mistakes, some of them pretty costly, especially back in my 20's:

• Paid probably thousands in credit card interest in my early 20's chasing lifestyle bullshit.
• Paid thousands in unnecessary car loan interest in my mid 20's by getting suckered by a dealer.
• Paid hundreds, maybe thousands, in late fees and interest from forgetting deadlines to pay shit I actually already had the money on hand for.

I'm rich now, most of it from luck (especially timing), much of it from personal relationships (good family, good marriage, good friends), some of it from actual effort (good grades from a good law school), and some of it from conscious decisions to steer towards my strengths and away from my weaknesses (lazy but smart, prototypical "gifted" slacker with undiagnosed ADHD).

It took a while to get here, though, and I was financially insecure well into my 30's. Sorta figured shit out then, and then married someone who complements me pretty well on these things, and covers my blind spots.

For the extra brave ones: how much savings do you have, and what are you planning to do with them?

I have some savings, and it's an emergency fund. It's representing 1-2 months of typical spending, that could be stretched to 3-4 months if I needed to stop the frivolous spending. But I have credit beyond that, and less liquid assets I'd be able to tap into if I were facing a longer term issue.

But I'm not saving for any particular thing other than retirement. If things accumulate and grow, great. I'll make a judgment call on when to retire based on how I feel and how much I have and what I want to do. I anticipate my wife and I will probably want to retire in our early 60's, based on our anticipated career trajectories and the ages of our children.

I read that half of Americans couldn’t cover an unexpected $1,000 expense.

Without borrowing or selling property, yeah. Not a lot of people have that much liquid cash laying around.

But I wouldn't assume that this would be some kind of economic devastation. Our whole system revolves around easy credit.

If the unexpected expense is something that can be paid for on a credit card, that 20% interest isn't exactly ideal but for many people it can be a simple task of buying now and paying it off over 2 or 3 months. For them, $1000 isn't a lifestyle changing expense.

For others, $1000 might be devastating. It might be the difference between making rent or not, and ultimately lead to eviction and maybe even homelessness.

So liquidity is a different question from financial health or resilience, even if they're somewhat correlated. There are other metrics out there more directly measuring financial stability or vulnerability.

Also over here cashiers don't bag your items for you, so you have to do that anyway

I'm a lot faster at bagging when I'm not also scanning. The human cashier divides the labor to two people, which makes it faster.

In the name of theft prevention and legal compliance, they do not give self checkout customers the same powers as actual cashier employees:

• Self checkout customers cannot verify their own age for age-restricted items.
• Self checkout customers cannot scan something and report the number of duplicates (e.g., scan a can and punch in that you're buying 8 of them).
• In most stores, self checkout customers are policed by the system to make sure that each item is placed onto a scale that weighs everything, and stops the process if weights don't match up.
• The ergonomics and flow of self checkout doesn't allow for a conveyor belt style rapid scanning, because a self checkout station is a tighter space and tends to require bagging as you scan, instead of scanning and bagging separately and independently.
• The frequency of produce code entries means that customers tend to be much slower to enter foods that don't have bar codes.

As a result, self checkout tends to be slower for customers who have more than 20 items. That might be offset if there's a longer line for regular cashier, but if there's no line the employee cashier is much faster.

I remember a post by OKCupid noticing the same phenomenon at 179 cm countries that use metric.

In that case, you have a few options:

• The home office/battle station where you can pipe the output from one bash command into another bash command, or set up your media server or just play video games.
• The kitchen where you can knead and bake sourdough, roll your own pasta, braise a hearty stew, or roast a leg of lamb.
• The backyard where you can smoke a brisket, bake a pizza, host a wine tasting.
• The garden or lawn where you can cultivate plants, grow something to eat, design a beautiful landscape, or restore a native sanctuary for migratory insects like the monarch butterfly or birds like a hummingbird or songbirds.
• The gym where you can get ripped, build up your personal stats, and let off some steam through physical activity.
• The closet or bedroom where you can plan out your fashion choices and wardrobe, iron your clothes, shine your shoes, and otherwise make stylish choices.
• Some sort of room or garage where you can jam out with musical instruments.