Walking to work, I see cars that I couldn’t afford with every penny of two year’s salaries. Mercedes, Ferraris, BMWs. My father used to own a BMW. Now he owns a Sonata.
On my way to work, my mind sometimes can’t function as more than a calculator. My student loans are $22,000. If I save $1000 per month, that’s 22 months. Not too bad, but still depressing.
I pass a coffee shop: it’d be nice to read before work. Let’s see, a coffee is $4. How many have I had this week? This would be my 3rd? If I stop drinking coffee completely, I could save $12 per week. That’s pretty good.
$22,000 couldn’t even buy half of that car. Do the people walking past me own one of these expensive cars? They don’t look too different than me. Maybe they live alone in a basement too. Do they think about how much money they can save by cutting out coffee? What else can I cut out? I don’t even drink anymore really. I haven’t bought any new things in months. I can’t even imagine buying a car. Not that I would ever want one.
Did Thoreau call them silver and gold fetters with a tinge of envy? Was he simply saying that people shouldn’t care about wealth because he didn’t even have the choice to care about wealth? His family made pencils. And in Walden he encouraged people to live in voluntary poverty. Was his poverty even voluntary? Do the rich believe in silver and gold fetters, or just the poor artists and philosophers?
Do I want to live simply because it’s really the most rewarding way to live, or have I tricked myself into thinking that living simply is good because there’s really no other option for me? If I had a BMW, I would sell it, pay off my student loans, and invest the rest. Then what if I got another BMW? Would I keep it? Well, it would probably cost too much for me to maintain it, so I’d probably sell it and invest that money too. What if I got a third one? I could afford to keep it around. It wouldn’t be so bad maybe.
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