So you'll either be a poor-ish young playboy or a rich old guy? Why does the first option sound more attractive?

Of course, fast cars and country clubs are all superficial, but being a miser just so you can die with millions isn't that much better...

"Living frugally" isn't what it used to be in the pain department. I have a Netflix subscription for one DVD and unlimited streaming instead of a $70 cable subscription (or an expensive antenna for my area), and while I made this choice to be "frugal" in the end I've actually been happier than I was with the cable. Do you need a smartphone with unlimited Internet? I can't speak for you, but I'm almost always within range of a computer and Wifi, and when I'm not I don't really need it. Does a new car bring you proportionate joy to the cost? It doesn't me, so mine are chosen to be relatively cheap to buy and operate, and I don't miss out on much I care about. (And I'm examining doing without my car; without going into my personal analysis it isn't a drop-dead win for my real numbers, but I'm looking at it. Note: I do not live in an area where I can trivially use public transportation.)

And so on. You don't really have to eschew the pleasures of the flesh entirely to be a "miser" nowadays; you can eat well (cooking yourself), drive adequately, be entertained for a reasonable price, etc, and still save enough money to retire comfortably. You do have to avoid credit card debt, not overcommit on your housing, and there's some tricks and issues (can you psychologically deal with having $10K+ in the bank without spending it, without relenting on the discipline?), but the days of actually facing the choice you outline are gone for most of the people who would be on HN in the first place.

Oh, recently internalized "trick": Take all "monthly fees" and mentally multiply by 12 to get the yearly cost, then treat that as the real cost. $24.95 a month for a service may sound reasonable; does $300 a year sound just as reasonable? I've been using this as part of my cell-phone upgrade resistance; there's a lot of ways I'd personally rather spend $300 than on a cell plan upgrade, up to and including not spending it at all. My Netflix savings is ($70 - $9) x 12 yearly, or $732/yr. My only regret is that I didn't do it about a year earlier!

Any tips on finding a reliable, inexpensive car?

My approach is to live in Michigan and have half my family work as engineers for car companies.

This approach may not scale, and may carry certain other disadvantages. (I like the Michigan part, honestly, but your mileage most assuredly may vary.)

Live close to work, and cycle. You also get free exercise, feel better in the mornings, and now can travel lots of other places cheaply.

Used Japanese. Any of them.

You've got the dichotomy disease. There is no need to go to either extreme.

You can belong to a country club and still live within your means.

You can certainly drive a fast car and live within your means. Fast cars can be bought for well under $10k, especially in California where a fast car can last for thirty years and more without rusting. Most of the stuff on more expensive cars is just bling, or comfort features that have nothing to do with high performance.

What you have to do is pay attention. Don't spend more money than you have. Don't spend at an unsustainable rate. That doesn't mean "spend no money at all". There's a happy medium there.

And you don't have to be a miser. Though, in fact, you probably do have to die with millions, or at least several tens of thousands, unless you plan your own suicide and stick to that plan. To ensure that you're living as comfortably on your last day as your first, you need a bunch of money in the bank. And you don't know which day will be your last. So, die with a million in the bank and endow an amusing trust fund in your will.

Anybody can buy a fast car, but few can actually afford to maintain it.

A $10K fast car you buy might cost you a good bit of money per year to drive and keep in shape. Especially when it's thirty years old.

That's mostly the reason it's only $10K to begin with (and the fact that the market for impractical cars is not too large).

When I lived in the Valley I bought a 1986 Toyota MR2 for about $6k. It had hilarious 80s-era retro styling with angles reminiscent of Tron, and it admittedly has been through an engine and transmission rebuild in the last 24 years, but it still runs great (for the friend I sold it to) and doesn't cost much more to maintain than any car of that age would cost.

It is marginally less fuel efficient than many cars, despite its tiny size, and one does go through tires when one is tearing off the starting line at the entrance ramp to 101. Fast cars are more expensive than regular cars. But not necessarily much so.

Of course, if your definition of a fast car includes the word "Chevy" or, god help you, "Porsche" I take back everything I said. ;)

The WRX has been mentioned in this thread, that's one that I would definitely stay away from second hand.

People that drive those usually push them as far as they'll go (and further) whenever they get the chance.

MR2 is a great little car and about as reliable as sports cars come.

First Gen MR2s are definitely fun (and cool/quirky looking), but I sure wouldn't call them "fast". The NA cars are 0-60 in the mid/high 8s and standing quarter mile well over 16 seconds.

The average 2010 soul-less imported sedan will easily show its taillights to a 1986 MR2 in a stop-light grand prix (and most will give the MRS2 a good run).

The fun in driving a sports car is all in the handling and improving your skills as a driver, not necessarily in raw power.

I drove this little thingy for years: http://pics.ww.com/v/jacques/cars/copen/dscf1074.jpg.html , 700 cc, not even 80 HP and an absolute hoot to drive. On the straights not the fastest car (about 175 real km/h), but very quick of the mark because it's so light and absolutely unbeatable in corners.

It's also RHD which helped a lot in not having it stolen.

Most fun I've ever had driving a car.

well the car doesn't really need to be 30 years old.

sure if you buy some unreliable piece of crap...but there are plenty of fast cars that only require regular oil changes to keep in shape.

granted there are different definitions of fast, some people are fine with 14 second cars, others need 12s...and others don't consider anything fast that doesn't run 10s.

But overall, $10K is plenty to get yourself a reliable 6-7 year old car that's quick/fast.

Fast, fun cars are emphatically middle class these days. The Subaru Impreza WRX is $25k new, for example. A millionaire who started collecting fast bargainmobiles would be killed by garaging and insurance, not maintenance.

As others have pointed out, with the buyout presented in the article, you can live forever spending low six figures (like $120k, with inflation adjustments.) That's not "rich young playboy" territory, but it's not "miser" territory either. At that level, you can raise a family in a comfortable house in a nice neighborhood, drive a nice car, have an RV or a boat or a cabin in the woods, have a country club membership and season tickets for your favorite sports team.

Or you can live a little bit cheaper, still doing most of that stuff but maybe skipping out on the country club membership or something, and become a rich old guy who can leave a huge estate to his kids... and still not be a miser.

The key is to position yourself in that middle ground.

Saving a buck is a lot easier than making a buck.

That's one very good reason why plenty of rich people are seen as 'misers', if they let it roll then they'd stop being rich pretty quickly.

The secret to that is to not make it plain what your financial situation is and to live well within your means.

The tax situation on work you do for yourself (saving money) is also as favorable as it gets.

There's a sense in which dollars saved are like tax-free income.

The millionaire next door makes too much of a deal about stuff like clothing and cars. You have to control your bleed, sure. I've found that if you have half a brain and live somewhere with a lot of money flowing around like NYC you can buy fancy shirts, go out to dinner, AND save 6-10 grand a month, which is the best of all worlds.

Millionaire next door is more for people running a landscaping business in the suburbs, and saving every extra dollar instead of blowing it on a new home theatre system or an expensive vacation to somewhere that isn't as boring.

I.e. it's more for lower middle class people trying to get a leg up. In my experience it's better to become a "millionaire next door" ... next door to multimillionaires or billionaires. It's way easier if you're around a bunch of people with a lot of extra dough.

Hmmm...

I hang around with two distinct groups of people a lot: grad student types with essentially no money and young professionals (doctors, lawyers, etc) with nice, solid salaries. From my experience, it's much easier to not spend money when I hang out with the first group, because they have no expectation of spending a lot of money. On the other hand, you'd feel out of place with the other group if you don't spend some higher base level for doing "normal" things like going out to eat, trip to Vegas, whatever.

I assume this scales if you are just the millionaire and you hang out with multimillionaires.

It depends. In NYC if you work in finance you'll probably find yourself getting taken out to nice cigar bars or steak houses after a good Friday trading session and running up several thousand dollar bar tabs on somebody's corporate card, rather than paying anything out of pocket.