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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'll weigh in on the other side of this.  I've always been an avid saver and while I'm not advocating profligate spending I missed out on some once in a lifetime opportunities by being a big saver.  You can't go back and do study abroad, could have done more trips with friends or back then g/f.  Now, I've got way more money than I need and it's too late to replicate some of those experiences and memories I gave up.  All of that is to say that balance is important and I would emphasize that to him[/quote]

[b]Research shows that people who save tend to oversave[/b]. In hindsight, I regret turning down some of my friends' weddings because I "couldn't afford" to go, even though I could have if I were less agressive on my savings goals, and I regret that I didn't travel more pre-kid (esp. now that my kid has a number of disabilities and simply will never be able to travel easily). There are some things that, if he's missing out on now, can't come back.

(Also, at your son's age, locking his money away in retirement savings may not be the best vehicle. We bought our house two years after  graduating from law school and most of our savings were locked up in retirement accounts. We had to borrow money for a down payment even though we could have had more cash on hand had we not put everything possible into our retirement accounts. And also, given that we spend a relatively small percentage of our income, it's very obvious that we don't actually have to save enough for retirement to replace our income. I think that, for people who tend to oversave, they should use retirement benchmarks that are based on their spending rather than their income. I doubt we're going to retire and suddenly become spendthrifts. So really, we could have diverted some of our retirement savings into down payment savings, and spent some of our housing money on my friend's wedding in puerto rico. It would have been fine. [/quote]

🧐 [/quote]

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