u/ExtraChubbyPikachu

I see so much villainization of the Insta lifestyle on this sub and many others that I want to share my opinion about it.

The lifestyle I’m talking about - Travelling, fine dining/Cafe hopping, Partying, expensive purchases like watches and vehicles and household stuff, ludicrous self care practices, fancy hobbies, etc.

Firstly, delete your Instagram account 🙂

Now that’s out of the way, here’s why you should absolutely do all of these… It’s Because… There’s Nothing inherently wrong with any of them. In fact, a lot of them are amazing on an isolated level. Whether or not they’re amazing for you is a different discussion that you need to have with Yourself once you try them.

People here are somehow confusing what they see being done on instagram to be the same as being financially irresponsible.

There’s a difference between doing something fun and doing something performative. Just because someone’s doing something performative doesn’t inherently make that thing bad or irresponsible for You.

The most financially irresponsible thing you can do is to not get your money’s worth within the limited time you’ve got to live.

And you absolutely won’t get your money’s worth, if you don’t allow yourself to explore things that you might absolutely fall in love with.

Whether you want to travel the west or eat at a new fancy restaurant every week or you want to have an expensive hobby or collect stuff, or buy a fancy vehicle, you should absolutely try all of it at some point.

The only financial aspect in all of this is HOW to afford what you want to do. And that is exactly what Frugality is about.

Frugality is about how you can get yourself to a position to afford stuff you Want to do without sacrificing on things that matter more.

There is absolutely an expiry date for experiences. Things you should have experienced in your teens are not something you can experience in your 20s or 30s. Similarly there’s a lot of things you can experience in your 20s that might not be feasible in your 30s or 40s.

Frugality should buy you the freedom to explore instead of buying you deprivation.

Frugality should allow you to live the Instagram life, but on YOUR budget.

This what I was told by my family after they found me lazing around today morning.

Amazing way to begin your mornings ain’t it? 😑

5 years ago, it was “if you don’t make atleast 2L per month, you don’t even deserve to exist”

Before that, it was “If you don’t get into the top colleges, you won’t be able to exist”.

My sis stays in Bangalore for work. I used to stay there too until last year. The difference in finances is so out of whack between the two experiences.

Firstly traveling to hometown. I used to travel to my hometown every 30-45 days. Over the span of my stay in Bangalore, I took about 20 flights to and fro and it costed me about 70K for them. Always used to book just 2-3 days in advance. Together with cabs, a round trip used to cost me 10K-ish on avg.

It was so cost effective mainly cuzz I used to do early morning 5:30-6:30 AM flights. Ofcourse, that meant starting from home at 3-4 AM.

And that’s not possible for my sis for obvious reasons. And always have to book 11AM-2PM flights. My dad or I foot the bill for her travel expenses. These are peak time flights and cost 7.5K-12.5K for One Side. Add in buying an Aisle seat for an additional 500, again for obvious reasons. Add cabs and that’s 25K every 45 days.

Sure, oil prices and currency depreciation are a factor in flights today. But just taking early morning flights would reduce everything from flight ticket to seats to cab prices by about 10K.

Secondly, the PG. women’s PGs in half decent areas cost like 1.5X of comparable gents PGs I used to stay at. The one that my sis stays in is like 23K or so and my dad foots the bill for it.

Insurance for women costs like 10-20% more. This is another sizeable expense.

I’ve also noticed a lot of my women colleagues get paid lower because they don’t seem to negotiate enough. I have a colleague in my current team and she gets paid like 60% less than me despite having the same title and more experience. Similar occurrences in my previous companies ranging from 10-30%.

I think there’s also generally a higher amount of societal pressure over spending money on certain stuff, that I don’t really understand. But I hear way too much debate at my home between my mom and sis about the meticulous planning that goes on so that the same group of people don’t see them wearing the same dress? Or the same jewellery? Again, I don’t get it.

I think we guys have it a bit easy when it comes to saving money 😅

I’ve been tracking every rupee for the last 5+ years, and have been using basically the best software that exists for the job - google sheets. But it is getting so difficult to keep track. So much so that I’ve been considering to just chuck it and start winging it.

Until some time back, my finances were simple. Income came in on last day of the month, I budgeted the money and spent according to plan. Rent, utilities, food, commute, home loan emi were basically all the expenses.

Used to plan so well that every month, on the last day I would have just 10K or lower in my bank account.

Today, firstly I don’t get the time to sit down and check all accounts. And secondly, whenever I do, it’s kinda disappointing😅

There’s random expenses that I don’t even remember when I checked yday. 5K here, 28K there, 7K somewhere, 4K elsewhere. Some are mine, some are my family’s expenses.

Then there’s insurance, emi, credit card payments, SIP on random dates. Income comes in on random dates 3-4 times a month.

Then there’s dates for income tax payments, TDS deductions on home loan disbursements, advance tax compliance and what not, some of which end up getting me a notice.

It’s so hard to track. Forget optimising to leave 10K at end of month, currently i have more than 1 month’s income sitting in my account despite deducting SIP.

I don’t know if it because I missed some EMI or credit card payments. Idk if it’s because I set my SIP too low. Idk if it is because I missed some tax payments. Or because my income came in before expected date.

Edit: I’m not asking for app recommendations. No app can beat a spreadsheet. I’m asking about how you people are able to track stuff when the going gets chaotic

IT workers, HRs, Managers, Analysts, this post’s for y’all.

For like the last 25 years, 2 generations of people have benefited from the bullshit job economy.

I’ll explain what is a bullshit job with an example of what I do at my own IT job.

My job involves taking information from my managers and distributing that information to my juniors. That is All. It was not supposed to be that, as a software engineer. But it is what it is.

If you’ve ever worked with seemingly lazy seniors or managers that don’t seem to do any real work, then you understand what I am talking about.

You probably have seen news articles about people working multiple jobs, people getting paid for years for jobs they’ve never been doing, people who are basically ghost employees. All of that is due to bullshit jobs.

As far as I can tell, more than 50% of India’s service industry is bullshit jobs.

For every useless employee role, you need some fractional part of a manager role, an HR role, a payrol/finance role, a acompliance and audit role, etc etc. and you need management for each of these roles.

Every useless employee basically helps feed multiple families by creating more useless jobs. And all those useless roles created help creating even more bs jobs, both directly and indirectly by contributing to the economy.

What’s kinda sad is these bullshit jobs are what AI is killing.

I used to be able to readily find the next BS job to hop to very easily. I’ve been in 4 companies till now and all my roles were like this. Useless.

But AI is making it super difficult today. Companies are expecting a return on employee cost because AI can do a lot of stuff now.

As I said, 1 in 2 people on this sub working in the service industry on a desk job is probably employed for a BS job right now.

You know who you are if you’re afraid of AI. We’re probably on borrowed time. Save as much as possible today. Because we’ll probably be unemployed at some point tomorrow 😅

My family spent about 25L on medical expenses in the past 12 months. Insurance covered about 8-10L or something. Luckily covering the rest was not a big deal for us. Insurance was denied for a significant chunk for valid reasons.

3L of it was my personal medical expenses. All of it was outpatient so insurance doesn’t cover it.

That aside, luckily I’ve got my insurances sorted already a couple years ago. If I tried getting insurances today, I would either be denied a policy or the premium would be ridiculously high and my health issues would be placed under permanent exclusions.

Horrifying possibilities, right?😅

Instead today I pay just 9.5K for a 12.5L cover health insurance. 2.5K for a 95L super top up on that. And 42.5K for a 5Cr term life plan. With CC discounts, my insurances are basically sorted for just about 50K per year.

I’d suggest you should get your insurances as soon as possible when all your health markers are good. Have a 10L health cover at the very least. Top ups are dirt cheap.

If you get a term policy of 3Cr or more, you will have to go through a health test. You never know which health markers are going to be off in the future. If you’re like 21/22 yo, then you can get a term cover of 5Cr for as little as 30K a year. Just get it, especially if you plan on getting married at some point.

If you’re a woman and plan on having kids at some point, then you gotta pay some pink tax. You will need a primary policy that you’re going to continue for life. And then you need a secondary policy that you need to buy just to cover maternity. No good policy exists that covers maternity and can be used as your primary in a cost effective manner. Also the ones that do cover maternity have 2-3 year waiting periods.

Coming to corporate insurances, make sure you cover your parents and kids on them. They don’t have waiting periods for pre existing conditions. They’re great if you want to do voluntary surgeries for the elderly like hip, shoulder and knee replacement. You’re anyways paying absurd amounts of money out of your paycheck for them. Might as well use them. Most companies deduct 30K for 5L insurance.

Anyways, just don’t cheap out on insurances. They’re pretty VFM all things considered if you get them when you’re young and perfectly healthy.

I got myself an ICICI multi wallet meal card this year. It’s basically a spend-68K-get-37K-cashback deal. Pretty crazy stuff.

You can go to a supermarket and buy everything from groceries to steelware to laundry items to skincare.

I got it for saving money, but I’ve been spending more than ever. My grocery & household item costs have jumped from around 6K to 16K.

Ngl, grocery runs have been fun. Lol. I’ve been doing all sorts of weird stuff.

I have 3 pillows now. Idk why.

I bought a cute little tool which punches holes in coconuts. Idk Why I bought it because we never use it. Actually, I bought 2.

Did y’all know that grocery stores sell furniture?!

There’s even grocery stores that sell everything that Nykaa sells. I stocked up on a few products and I don’t even know what they are for.

I have now understood how non frugal people are able to spend so much money and have nothing to show for it.

My company has told me that this Pradhan Mantri Har Ghar Avocado Yojana does not support opting out mid year. So… it is what it is until next April I guess.

Are y’all noticing how expensive coffee’s getting?

The absolute bare minimum currently is the basic Bru one which costs like 120 for 50 grams. It’s pretty bad when it comes to coffee.

Half decent blends like nescafe gold are 1000 rupees for 200 grams.

And if you’re into black coffee like I am, half decent instant coffees like Davidoff are a whopping 1000 rupees for 100 grams.

And if you like yourself some filter black coffee, blue tokai is about 600 for 250 grams. This is filter coffee, so you’re using 3-4X the number of grams per cup of coffee.

It’s a similar story with green tea. Although much more manageable. It’s about 10-15 rupees per tea bag currently. It used to be much more affordable until recently.

How are you all managing your tea/coffee situation?

I’ve been working for the last 5 years and making decent progress in my 15 year FI/RE milestone. Here’s a few things I learned over time and follow diligently.

1. Milestones should always be short, clearly defined and aggressive - having a milestone of saving 3 Lakhs when your income is 10 lakhs is nonsense. If you’re making 10 lakhs a year currently, your goal needs to be to increase your net worth by atleast 8 lakhs over the next year. It will compel you to grow your income.

2. Credit cards are not your friends. You can play your points games all you want but it’s not going to do much for you unless you’re a heavy spender. Cashbacks are neat, but 5-10% back up to 1500 ain’t changing your life. It’s far easier to make 5L more in income than to save 50K with credit cards.

3. That brings us to Income. Make sure you’re switching jobs often. Once every 1-2 years. I know it’s very uncomfortable each time. But it is worth it. You should aim at a 20% annual growth rate in income until you’re ready to slow down in your 30s

4. Stop chasing returns. Life’s extremely peaceful with vanilla mutual fund investing for all your needs. Equity, debt, gold, whatever. You should pick your battles. Win the income battle. Be average in the returns one. And also trading is not worth your time.

5. Lastly always compare with those who are doing better than you. That will push you forward. Never look back at the people struggling behind you and feel like you have arrived. You’ve arrived only when you don’t need to make money anymore.

September to January man. Every single year. So difficult to stay on track.

It usually starts with Apple releasing brand new products in September that I MUST HAVE. Ughhh.

Then there’s all the holidays starting in October. All the deals starting in November. All the vacations starting in December. And the hangover extending well into January.

I cave every single year and buy stuff. Often it’s stuff that’s never going to be used.

I bought an apple watch a couple years ago that has not seen the light of day for a year. Because who would charge the damn thing every day.

Bought a home server system last year and the only thing I am hosting on it is Disappointment.

Oh yeah, airpods pros. No idea why I bought them. I don’t even listen to music.

This year, I am going to lock up my wallet, and cut up those credit cards so that I don’t buy that new mac mini which I am trying real hard not to preorder.

I’m getting a LOT of calls from AI startups offering 1-1.1Cr range of base pay.

It’s close to 2X of my current income. But my current job is low stress 2-4 hour a day work one.

Startups are super stressful and atleast 6-7 hours of daily work. I’ve worked in 3 before, so i know.

Would you consider leaving you comfy job and joining a startup? Ofcourse job security is a myth in startups and I’ve already experienced 1 layoff and 1 firing for bad perf.

I had a few scans for Kidney related scars and turns out that there’s extensive scarring on both kidneys.

I do have an appointment with nephro soon but does having UC make you more likely to have auto-immune kidney disease too?

Every device that uses RAM is currently grossly overpriced.

Phones, laptops, watches, even stuff like wifi routers are atleast 25% more expensive than what they’re supposed to be if not 50% in a lot of cases.

A lot of my devices are due for a replacement. But replacements cost a bomb now.

There seems to be no end in sight. In 2022-23 we were dealing with semiconductor shortage. 2024 was GPU shortage due to crypto and 2025-26 we’re dealing with RAM shortage😑

About to be 27M and it’s getting a bit difficult stalling. But I’m not too eager to get into this process.

But, I want to understand, do you put your best foot forward, or do you stay yourself?

Like, physically? Do you try to present yourself differently than what you are at a comfortable baseline?

I’m in a weird situation where people keep thinking I’m a teenager or something like that. The same relatives who used to ask me which college I was studying in 10 years ago, are still asking me what I am studying whenever I meet them today

Just today I had gone to the hospital for a checkup and the doctor was addressing me as if I am a college kid. Was surprised when she learned she was 3 years younger to me. Happens rather often with me for some reason.

Almost always get ID’ed when i try entering a bar.

I guess the straightforward “fix” to it is grooming differently and putting on some more weight as i am on the lower end of the spectrum

But I wonder if it’s actually worth it since I’m already at a comfortable baseline