{"id":8428,"date":"2015-05-24T07:07:16","date_gmt":"2015-05-24T12:07:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=8428"},"modified":"2015-05-24T07:07:16","modified_gmt":"2015-05-24T12:07:16","slug":"the-first-world-fear-that-makes-life-harder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=8428","title":{"rendered":"The First-World Fear That Makes Life Harder"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><a href=\"http:\/\/twoicefloes.com\/perspectives\/the-first-world-fear-that-makes-life-harder\/\" target=\"_blank\">The First-World Fear That Makes Life Harder<\/a><\/h3>\n<p>Here in the so-called First World, we give up a lot because of an exaggerated fear of a particular feeling.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s usually pretty subtle, but I see this fear made explicit whenever\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mrmoneymustache.com\/\">Mr Money Mustache<\/a>\u00a0or other\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/earlyretirementextreme.com\/\">early-retirement advocates<\/a>get\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/business\/meet-mr-money-mustache-the-man-who-retired-at-30\/2013\/04\/26\/71e3e6a8-acf3-11e2-a8b9-2a63d75b5459_story.html\">national news coverage<\/a>. The comment sections of these major publications are always vile, and I don\u2019t recommend you read them, but if you do you will notice a trend. Even when Pete explains the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mrmoneymustache.com\/2012\/01\/13\/the-shockingly-simple-math-behind-early-retirement\/\">shockingly simple math<\/a>\u00a0that proves early retirement is possible for people of average incomes, commenters insist they would prefer to leave their lifestyle costs unchanged than retire twenty years earlier but \u201clive a life of deprivation\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>This unexamined fear of deprivation has a huge effect on our lives. Consumers go into debt because they\u2019re afraid of going without something they\u2019re used to. We eat too much because we\u2019re afraid of being disappointed by small portions. We continue bad habits for years because the thought of disallowing ourselves to do something we enjoy feels oppressive. \u201cWe deserve it!\u201d we tell ourselves. Or at least advertisers tell us to tell ourselves that.<\/p>\n<p>The strange thing is that usually it\u2019s not even real deprivation. These are all choices. The big purchase, the extra calories, and the indulgent habit are always available to you to take or leave.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The First-World Fear That Makes Life Harder Here in the so-called First World, we give up a lot because of an exaggerated fear of a particular feeling. It\u2019s usually pretty subtle, but I see this fear made explicit whenever\u00a0Mr Money Mustache\u00a0or other\u00a0early-retirement advocatesget\u00a0national news coverage. The comment sections of these major publications are always vile, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[162,195,302,5630,421,5191,5632,5631],"class_list":["post-8428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-liberty","tag-consumption","tag-debt","tag-fear","tag-fear-of-deprivation","tag-income","tag-lifestyle","tag-oppression","tag-retirement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8428"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8429,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8428\/revisions\/8429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}