h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I don't really see the point of money - which is why I have a bad attitude towards it. As far as I've always understood, it's a representation of goods - some of these are necessary, and of course, budgeting to get these is the most important thing you can do. In order of importance: shelter, food, bills (water, heat, council tax) and basic clothing. After that, the more you own, the more you pay - like possessions require insurance and the building needs it if you own, cars have tax and insurance and running costs. If you want to keep these things, you need to budget for them of course as well as the basics. But anything you have left after that, you might as well just spend it.

Although, if the amount left is in more than double figures you're doing pretty well and maybe should save against the kind of expenses that jump on you from time to time, or to buy something big (a fridge, a car or a holiday or something)

Money when you are 20 something has a very different meaning from when you are 50 something. Now the time where you must live on your savings without that paycheque each two weeks (or whatever) starts to loom larger. Money suddnely has a future use instead of being a way to meet short term needs. Your whole attitude to money changes and what seemed like an enormous amount of cash sitting in your account becomes hardly enough to see you through. To balance this most people at that age are at their peak earning power so that paycheque is fatter than you could imagine when you were just starting.

Wise words Mr H Buttle, giving a broader perspective on the issue, thank you.

And thank you too alysdragon for your thoughts on these pecuniary peculiarities.

then again, I see retirees saying that they are spending their children's inheritance because they would rather enjoy using it than to bequeath it. I myself have no heirs so I will probably leave behind a mountain of debt which my creditors will have to write off.

I tell my mother (85) the same as I told my father before he died at 93. Good financial planning is when it takes your last dollar to bury you.
So many people save for a rainy day all their lives and never recognize the time when it won't rain enough to use up your nest egg. My mother worries about the cost of a care home when in truth she owns enough property that if sold it would keep her in the finest of homes for at least a decade an then at an age of 95 or so will she really care if the place she lives offers fine dining and deluxe decor?

Yeah, I think to worry about the long term future, you need to have enough money to make it through the next couple of weeks. You also need to think about your dependents (sp?). Before I start fretting about pensions and savings, I'm going to worry about sending my as yet unborn sprog to uni (if they want to go) and still being able to pay the rent. When that's sorted, I'll think about my dotage.

Thing is though, you never know what the future will bring. I've always been suspicious of a 'jam tommorrow' attitude to things - I've seen contemporaries barely subsisting, even though their incomes larger than mine because they are paying a huge chunk of it into some kind of pension already - and they might well die before it's of any use to them. Morbid thought, I know, but anything can happen and my attitude at that kind of future moment is that I have more immediate concerns than retirement age (which, at the rate things are going, actually gets more distant with every passing year.)And I do think a lot of people over plan, I've had friends who have retired look at their pensions and realise that they don't actually spend all of it, because so many of their previous outgoings have been reduced (not running the car so often, no mortgage to pay, that kind of thing) and then you hear horror stories about people who invested dilegently for years and are now stuck on a pittance because of Maxwell or that their building society went bust or something, which can always happen. (Maybe I'm just suspicious of plans...)