[commmentator]

> Why do I earn money if not to buy things?

To create a safety net for yourself (and perhaps your family)? So that if you were to incur unexpected catastrophic expenses, or lose your job, you would still be able to sustain yourself?

[paulcole]

That’s a fair point, but the amount of money needed for those things isn’t insanely high for me. I don’t have kids, don’t own a car, and have pretty low living expenses.

There’s always another job to get. I can always spend less. If something’s truly catastrophic (like healthcare), I just wouldn’t pay the bill. I rent (not interested in owning property) so my exposure there is pretty limited.

I have a pretty big stack of credit cards and would just use those if I absolutely had to. I don’t carry a balance on them now so that’s a lot of freedom in a truly worse-case-scenario.

Plus, I have a chronic illness so I tend to not be too worried about long-long-term. How long do I really want/need to sustain myself for?