The most helpful tool here, I've found, is maintaining a personal finances spreadsheet.

It's one thing, without a spreadsheet, to have the emotion of "I'm not going to have enough and I need to save more to make sure I have enough." I'd argue it's even evolutionary; we want to make sure we have enough to get through the winter we know is coming.

It's quite another when your spreadsheet shows you saved X, your monthly cost of living is Y, and therefore you have enough money saved, even if your income went to zero and you made no changes to your lifestyle, to last you for Z years. Being able to take YouTube University rule-of-thumb advice like "of your take-home pay, use 65% for necessities, 15% for long-term savings, 20% for enjoyment" and seeing how much money that is per month for you in your personal circumstances, along with rules of thumb on things like what ratio you should have achieved by which age on net worth-to-income ratio (1x by 30, 2x by 35, 3x by 40, etc.) and seeing what your personal actual ratio is, to get a sense of benchmarking yourself.

I mean, the influencers could be totally full of shit, but it doesn't matter. Getting actual numbers for where you are, plus getting "generic" advice that you know wasn't directed at you personally, and seeing how those numbers make you feel, can do a lot to either tell you "you don't need to be so frugal anymore" or "yep, your emotions are totally justified, keep saving".

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ansgri an hour ago | parent | next [-]

That is good if you can count on your cost of living being predictable. It's not for many people, even for relatively well-off ones: you may earn a lot for your area but being an immigrant without a permanent enough status in your current country, and your home country which you always have a right to return to may be unsafe or highly undesirable for whatever reason. So you need to consider the emergency of moving somewhere in a political and legal climate not known in advance.

Thus it becomes a more difficult choice what proportion to bet on stability of the current living situation, and what on long-term savings for emergencies which look quite probable but still unmeasurable. And the latter is complicated by absence of reliable and relatively liquid investment opportunities. All in all, fun to be from a sanctioned country.

	▲	solatic 15 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I think a spreadsheet is still helpful in this case. > So you need to consider the emergency of moving somewhere in a political and legal climate not known in advance. Fair enough. So do the financial planning, and ask yourself, how much does it cost to fly/travel to X place that is far away? Put in a risk premium - what if the cost became 2X or 3X because of a sudden catastrophe affecting everyone? What is the actual number that you need to save? Can you keep the money in a bank account, or are you concerned that banks will be inaccessible, and thus need something more portable? If you need something more portable, how much will it cost to protect it (vault/safe, weapons)? I sympathize that life isn't fair, and that financial goals for some people need to be concerned first and foremost with personal safety instead of luxurious "nice-to-haves". But my point is that there are still actual numbers involved, and that you can put those numbers into a spreadsheet, and that the spreadsheet can help you understand your progress towards those goals. Financial planning is valuable regardless of what your goals are.

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brailsafe 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I need to get into building a PF spreadsheet and getting things in better order, but fwiw the way I sometimes frame the question of whether or not it's "okay" for me to buy something is 1) Will spending the money compromise or help my ability to pursue something else I want to do, based on the price and utility, 2) Could I buy 20 of them? Even better if I could buy 20 without tangibly hurting my wallet.

If you can buy 20, 1 is probably fine, don't stress too much.