Inflation is Poses a Great Challenge for Delayed Gratification

[kryptqnick]

Some of the things you started doing to save up money were actually good IMO. For example, recycling is certainly good, and eating home-cooked food is both cheaper and healthier than eating out all the time. Of course, treating oneself occasionally, as well as buying new things occasionally is completely normal, but I'm just saying that not all of these changes should be seen as restrictions that delay gratification because some of them have immediate benefits.
As for inflation, I agree that it must be very frustrating to save up for a long time only to need even more to cover the inflation. That's why I treat Bitcoin as a currency for savings: instead of losing value over time, it does the opposite, even if it comes with some risks and occasional bear markets.

[lovesmayfamilis]

OP, your brand of car is probably obsolete in four years, despite the increase in car prices. Do you still want it, or are you looking for a new one?
Nowadays, it is absolutely impossible to save up for anything of value without investment. Money lying at home "under the pillow" will certainly depreciate. That is why people use loans. Money must always "work", that is, it must be profitable. In my country, there is also a strange pattern, used cars become more expensive than new ones, that is, when buying a new car in the past, it cost less than now, being used. Demand will always create supply.
But I am sure that you have had a good experience and will be able to decide what to do with your deferred fiat in order to increase your capital in the future and fulfill your dream.
In addition, being a fan of the desire to have a car, not chatting with friends, is such an occupation, because it is friends, if they are real, who could help you with buying a car.

[Bananington]

So, when someone said that inflation posses a great challenge for delayed gratification. That is, delayed gratification isn't as rewarding especially during inflation, recession. I agreed with them. Do you?

Delaying gratification and keeping the money means you were saving, and it has always been said that money saved be it in the banks or personally like in a piggyvest is always affected by inflation. You should have reached out to the car dealers when you had like half the sum or more than half the sum for your dream car to know if they have a payment plan where you can pay twice. If you had made that kind of commitment, the new price would not have affected you because it is already a closed deal where you already know the balance you are to pay. This can work in some cases. If not you keep delaying your gratification until inflation gives you a chance.

Invest the money and get your dream car from the profit of your investment, that is how it should be done.

[vv181]

Delaying gratification do rewarding if you do it carefully. It is expected that if someone sacrifices the present for the future there is a chance the reward could be enormous. The problem is how we achieve and control our gratification. By handling money considerately does not mean just keeping the funds in your bank account untouched. The comprehension of inflation should pressure anyone to seek an investment opportunity.

Where it goes wrong is if you consider inflation yet do nothing about it, even if you delay any unnecessary spending.

[Silberman]

Some time 4 years ago, I started to save so that I can buy my dream car which was around $15,450. I was determined. I cut a lot of costs and delayed so many gratifications. For example, I stopped going out with the boys. I did a lot more recycling. I quit eating out and opted for cooking my own meal, I didn't buy new clothes, jeweries, electronic devices etc. I was pretty determined to reach my car saving goal. Before I knew what was happening inflation struck and it swept across all industries. Did you know that my dream car that was an equivalent of $15,450 rose up to $23,680. My heart sunk. It took me doing some additional jobs and twice as much time to rise the new money. So, when someone said that inflation posses a great challenge for delayed gratification. That is, delayed gratification isn't as rewarding especially during inflation, recession. I agreed with them. Do you?

You are doing things right by not becoming a mindless consumer and use all your money, and sometimes money you do not even have, to buy something you do not need, you are pursuing a very specific goal and that is great, however now you need to learn to not save in fiat, because as you have noticed this can be a massive waste of time and effort, what you need to do is to put that money in an asset in which you trust and that you know it can outpace the inflation we are going through.

[Iadegbola34]

It's important to note that inflation is a natural part of any economy and is often necessary for growth and stability.

While inflation can make it more difficult to achieve savings goals, it's not necessarily a reason to abandon the practice of delayed gratification. Rather, it may be necessary to adjust goals and expectations based on economic conditions. For example, instead of saving for a specific dollar amount, one could focus on saving a percentage of their income each month, or prioritize investments that are likely to keep pace with inflation.

Ultimately, delayed gratification can still be a valuable and rewarding practice, even in the face of inflation or other economic challenges. By setting goals and working towards them over time, one can build financial stability and achieve long-term success.

[Gozie51]

Some time 4 years ago, I started to save so that I can buy my dream car which was around $15,450. I was determined. I cut a lot of costs and delayed so many gratifications. For example, I stopped going out with the boys. I did a lot more recycling. I quit eating out and opted for cooking my own meal, I didn't buy new clothes, jeweries, electronic devices etc. I was pretty determined to reach my car saving goal. Before I knew what was happening inflation struck and it swept across all industries. Did you know that my dream car that was an equivalent of $15,450 rose up to $23,680. My heart sunk. It took me doing some additional jobs and twice as much time to rise the new money. So, when someone said that inflation posses a great challenge for delayed gratification. That is, delayed gratification isn't as rewarding especially during inflation, recession. I agreed with them. Do you?

This is rather funny to me. While reading I got smiling   not because your dream is not superb but because I knew before I will finish reading your story, felt something would take all the money and yes it happened that way. And one other thing that can push down your savings for buying such a big car apart from the rise in inflation could be health issues, yes health issues. However, I have heard that monies used to buy cars or large properties may not be monies cut down from important house hold necessities. What about in the bid to starve yourself off nutritious food, you start lacking important healthy nutrients that will cause you damage to your system.

Anyway meanwhile, you didn't tell us if you have got your big car

Inflation is not tackled by the way you have tried to do it. IMO I believe if you want to be better in inflation or recession, you have to increase your earning power and not to try to live the way you did by starving yourself and at the end you ended up going back to zero. So you can increase the rate or speed of easing the reward of your delayed gratification by diversification. This is the best to cultail the effect of inflation or recession. For example, if a country is going through recession they are advised to invest and this is why they go borrowing or seek for financial help from other countries. A clue is therefore taken from this that diversification is one panacea to inflation.

[Die_empty]

Some time 4 years ago, I started to save so that I can buy my dream car which was around $15,450. I was determined. I cut a lot of costs and delayed so many gratifications. For example, I stopped going out with the boys. I did a lot more recycling. I quit eating out and opted for cooking my own meal, I didn't buy new clothes, jeweries, electronic devices etc. I was pretty determined to reach my car saving goal. Before I knew what was happening inflation struck and it swept across all industries. Did you know that my dream car that was an equivalent of $15,450 rose up to $23,680. My heart sunk. It took me doing some additional jobs and twice as much time to rise the new money. So, when someone said that inflation posses a great challenge for delayed gratification. That is, delayed gratification isn't as rewarding especially during inflation, recession. I agreed with them. Do you?

In my country you can't save for anything. Inflation and currency depreciation is making our currency worthless. When we tell people that we keep our money in Bitcoin to reduce this effect, the will always think that we are overrating bitcoin and its benefit. They will always point to bitcoin's volatility or unpredictability. But my country's currency is more volatile and it never goes up whenever it loose value. The truth remains that bitcoin is a reliable hedge against inflation. They might dispute it but that is the whole truth. My money is in bitcoin and I have not experienced any losses because I am a DCA and not a  lump-sum investor. I believe you won't have lost the value of your money if you had kept it in bitcoin.

[Lorence.xD]

Inflation is actually a sign of economic issues such as supply and demand that affecting the prices of the products that could be foods, clothes and etc. But for my experience, this is actually frustrating even though I am aware of it. I also experienced your scenario OP like I did everything just to save some money to afford buying a new personal computer which cost a lot in here.

Then in just few months instead of downgrading like the prices should go down since there's always a new model that much cost a lot still it increases. I've noticed that it might be a bad thing to the consumer and businessman, but if there's people that are reselling then they profit a lot like they bought in a cheap price then suddenly it increases so people would prefer to buy in the reseller since the businessman increases it's prices.

[yhiaali3]

Yes, inflation destroys everything, not only dreams. There are many needs that were within our reach, but now they are difficult to obtain because of inflation.

I never save fiat because it will surely lose its value with time, so my advice to you if you want to save is to save gold or bitcoin because it maintains the value and increases its value with time, look at the price of gold a year ago and look at its price now.

[Gyfts]

Some time 4 years ago, I started to save so that I can buy my dream car which was around $15,450. I was determined. I cut a lot of costs and delayed so many gratifications. For example, I stopped going out with the boys. I did a lot more recycling. I quit eating out and opted for cooking my own meal, I didn't buy new clothes, jeweries, electronic devices etc. I was pretty determined to reach my car saving goal. Before I knew what was happening inflation struck and it swept across all industries. Did you know that my dream car that was an equivalent of $15,450 rose up to $23,680...

The problem with cars is that they have gone up more than the average inflation rate. In your case they could have looked for an interest-bearing account or something similar so that the savings would yield a little, although they will always yield less than inflation.

It is usually recommended that if you are saving for something but for 5 years or more, put the money in an investment, for example a fund indexed to the S&P 500 because in approximately 85% of 5-year periods it has been profitable. The downside is that you have about a 15% chance of losing money. If you don't want to bet with those positive probabilities, what happens to you is what has happened to you, that you face the inevitable loss of purchasing power due to inflation, which has been exacerbated precisely in this period.

Another idea would be to put your money in Bitcoin, which although it is very volatile, with a high probability of cycle to cycle you will increase your purchasing power quite a lot.

I haven't calculated what the odds are on a positive ROI on an index fund over 5 years using historical trends but it's almost impossible to lose money over, say, ~10 years. I don't even consider it to be a bet, even though there's inherent risk associated with any investment that yields any level of interest. The inherent risk being virtually zero granted the funds mature over some period of time without needing liquidity.

The risk sure beats letting your funds decay with inflation.

[panganib999]

It does. Been in the same boat as you once this year too! Bought my dream car from 2015 and I swallowed my heart after finding out it was almost twice as expensive now than it was back then. Of course, I was still able to buy it, but it took a lot of my savings more than I expected. This urged me to go big on investing and prioritize it over saving money. Because the logic is when you save money you’re just storing it it’s not compounding it’s not increasing in value whatever it’s just there. When you invest it however, your money essentially works for you, so there is a good chance for profit, and most of all investing it on appreciating assets like gold, silver and bitcoin means that the valuation of your money is secured with saving money that doesn’t really happen because all you’re basically doing is storing the representation of your money and not the value itself. So that’s basically the story of how I got around the inflation problem without risking letting go of delayed gratification.

[Lanatsa]

Some time 4 years ago, I started to save so that I can buy my dream car which was around $15,450. I was determined. I cut a lot of costs and delayed so many gratifications. For example, I stopped going out with the boys. I did a lot more recycling. I quit eating out and opted for cooking my own meal, I didn't buy new clothes, jeweries, electronic devices etc. I was pretty determined to reach my car saving goal. Before I knew what was happening inflation struck and it swept across all industries. Did you know that my dream car that was an equivalent of $15,450 rose up to $23,680...

The problem with cars is that they have gone up more than the average inflation rate. In your case they could have looked for an interest-bearing account or something similar so that the savings would yield a little, although they will always yield less than inflation.

It is usually recommended that if you are saving for something but for 5 years or more, put the money in an investment, for example a fund indexed to the S&P 500 because in approximately 85% of 5-year periods it has been profitable. The downside is that you have about a 15% chance of losing money. If you don't want to bet with those positive probabilities, what happens to you is what has happened to you, that you face the inevitable loss of purchasing power due to inflation, which has been exacerbated precisely in this period.

Another idea would be to put your money in Bitcoin, which although it is very volatile, with a high probability of cycle to cycle you will increase your purchasing power quite a lot.

I haven't calculated what the odds are on a positive ROI on an index fund over 5 years using historical trends but it's almost impossible to lose money over, say, ~10 years. I don't even consider it to be a bet, even though there's inherent risk associated with any investment that yields any level of interest. The inherent risk being virtually zero granted the funds mature over some period of time without needing liquidity.

The risk sure beats letting your funds decay with inflation.

A must thing to be done but we know that not all people would really be that having the confidence or having that risks taking mindset and would rather keeping their fiat into their banks and let it sit and be idle for a long period of time without even realizing that on how bad inflation would be affecting it out overtime or over the period of how many years to come.Unless if you do put it up on something which does give out some interest or really have the chance on making some profits then it would surely cover up yourself into that inflation problem which you wouldnt really be bothering yourself on the time that you do see
that you do have some other income stream or side sources.

In relation on the condition of OP, then if you are really that serious on achieving on something and tends to buy on something then you should really be needing to work hard twice or thrice so that you do
able to cope up with inflation because if you dont really do such thing then there's no way that you could be able to buy it because it would really be keeping it moving in regards into its price.
Once you do have other sources then it would really be just as easy as pie.

[BRINIRHA]

Some time 4 years ago, I started to save so that I can buy my dream car which was around $15,450. I was determined. I cut a lot of costs and delayed so many gratifications. For example, I stopped going out with the boys. I did a lot more recycling. I quit eating out and opted for cooking my own meal, I didn't buy new clothes, jeweries, electronic devices etc. I was pretty determined to reach my car saving goal. Before I knew what was happening inflation struck and it swept across all industries. Did you know that my dream car that was an equivalent of $15,450 rose up to $23,680. My heart sunk. It took me doing some additional jobs and twice as much time to rise the new money. So, when someone said that inflation posses a great challenge for delayed gratification. That is, delayed gratification isn't as rewarding especially during inflation, recession. I agreed with them. Do you?

Something similar happened to me a few years ago. But at that time what I wanted to buy was not a car. But I am raising money to buy a piece of land near my house. of course I had to collect money for a long time and the stupid me at that time was that I saved in fiat. And yes, a few years later I realized that the value of my savings had decreased in value even though the amount had increased a lot. Meanwhile, the price of the land is actually increasing from time to time because it is indeed a strategic location and many parties also want it. But a few years here I started implementing a more effective financial strategy. That is, I save partly in gold and partly I invest. And I also invest in my friend who has a business that is quite advanced and makes me make money with the money my friend used as capital. And a few months ago I managed to buy the land I wanted. actually my intention to buy this land was for me to make a long-term investment. Because I know from 20 years later the price of this service will definitely blow my mind. Because I researched about the price of land in my neighborhood which continues to rise rapidly. But fortunately the people around me seemed not interested in investing in land. In fact, many of them want to sell it. Because they think that the current price is enough to satisfy them. Even though I think 10 years later they will regret selling it.

So basically my method is to divide my savings into 3 parts. one in a deposit in an asset that has a fixed value such as gold. secondly invest it in several fields that can have an increase even if only a little and thirdly I invest in friends who have promising businesses. So that our money can grow to be more. And right now I'm also collecting money to buy livestock. Because there is one of my neighbors who is interested in managing a farm and he is able to look after it and share the proceeds if the cattle reproduce later.

[Semar Mesem]

Inflation is a common thing in a country's economy, explaining the causes of inflation is of course very complex and complicated, but the easiest thing we have to do to avoid inflation is to tighten spending, when we can make expenses according to schedule then we can avoid inflation.

[nesty]

Inflation can make it difficult to save money for future purchases and goals. As an inflation rates increase, the value of money decreases over time, making it for individuals to save. This can lead people being more likely to spend money now rather than save for the future. It is important that delayed gratification can still be beneficial in the future. To combat inflation is to invest our savings in an assets that have historically outpaced inflation such as real states or stocks. We should also be mindful and have self control for us to be prepared to delay impulsive spending.

[kojektea]

I don't really feel the impact of inflation because my use of money is very minimal. I always buy necessities not for what is in style or to be resold in the future unless it's an asset to invest in like crypto and gold. yeah that makes me a little calm in dealing with inflation. It looks like I don't have a lot of money but it also keeps me from being affected by inflation.

[iphone5s]

I don't really feel the impact of inflation because my use of money is very minimal. I always buy necessities not for what is in style or to be resold in the future unless it's an asset to invest in like crypto and gold. yeah that makes me a little calm in dealing with inflation. It looks like I don't have a lot of money but it also keeps me from being affected by inflation.

If you can manage your expenses and suppress your lifestyle it will be great for you to experience in the future. many people find it difficult to do this nowadays. they think more about what people say or follow the current trends that don't know how long this campaign will end. if you can save like that, it will be a big key that makes you one of the millionaires later. This is a big lesson for me to go to a better thing in the future.

[YinShuiSiYuan]

This is what inflation is doing to almost every human making their lives difficult for them, removing and destroying every enjoyment and happiness from them because everyone is just struggling to cover expenses in day basis . Nothing is left with them for their pleasure , happiness ( because obviously everybody is not rich ).

[inthelongrun]

I applaud people that know how to save and prefer paying cash rather than thru loans or credit. But a big amount of savings should not be slept at home or stored in a bank with a very low-interest rate because it is a guaranteed loss against inflation. Even before the pandemic and the war that made the world economy suffer and inflation turned worse, inflations are usually still higher than the low-interest rates that banks are offering. 

The money should be invested so it will grow against inflation. If your country's economy has recovered or if your local stock market is performing well, then you can put part of your savings there. There are financial institutions that offer better rates than banks too. Of course, we need to DYOR and make sure the company we choose to invest in is credible and has been in the business for many years already.