It's a gamble. I take the opposite mindset now; scarcity mindset.

"$1600 is too much for a video card" - me a few years ago on not buying an RTX4090 from nvidia's website.

"I only need 32Gb of RAM. If I want more later, I'll just updgrade" - Me a year ago.

Both mistakes, with hindsight. I will always future proof from here on out.

I future proofed by stepping back to high end components from last generation (except for GPU). My memory speed is slightly lower, but I have 32 cores and 128 GB ECC RAM on 4 channels. I doubt I will need to upgrade this thing any time soon for my typical use cases.

Note that this was before the RAM shortage, but I bet you could still do this now and save a little versus mid-tier current gen gear.

When you try to future proof, you are basically hedging. It’s a kind of insurance; sometimes it pays off, sometimes it does not. Having more disposable income now than I did 10 years ago I tend to pay more attention to this sort of things, but everyone can choose where they put the cursor. Someone who overestimated their RAM needs when buying a computer last year are probably pretty happy about it, but it could have swung the other way.

Counterpoint:

"$100 is a reasonable amount for a video card, I know this is on the budget side but at least I have a card this way" — me 12 years ago.

"I guess it's worth it to spring for 8GB of RAM..." — me 12 years ago.

Still using the same machine, with no regrets (just the occasional bit of envy).

Different people have different expectations and requirements.