<prompt> Human: A repeated piece of advice that I always hear is dont buy stuff because stuff depreciates over time while travel, vacation, and going out give irreplaceable experience. I can sorta understand the reasoning, however it seems to ignore the realities of how it affects your day to day life.Lets say you take a 1 month vacation to insert place youve always wanted to go. You go there, have a blast, meet people, sample local food, everything. You come back and feel like you experienced this other place and probably enjoyed a nice break from your job or ready to move on to the next one. But the next day you go right back to work for the next few months to years straight because you used up all your vacation time. The high from your experience has worn off and youre right back to square one: tired of your job, stressed out, bored at home, and broke since you spent all your money on your vacation.Now lets say instead of a vacation you bought insert item you always wanted. Instead of a once a years experience on a vacation you can get daily experience with an item you have. Items you wouldnt be able to get if you spent all your money on a vacation. The item is different for each person but in my case: Instead of sitting on the couch and watching TV every day I can be creative practicing DJing and making music. Even trying it out as little as once or twice a week when youre busy and stressed out is very relaxing and meditative. And since I have money I didnt spend on a vacation I can afford a nicer and nicer setups that make everything smoother and more fun one cheap piece of plastic hardware and mediocre pirated software to nice solid hardware with more features and great software Instead of listening to music on crappy distorted laptop speakers and having a mediocre, disappointing experience, I can listen to music at full volume on large home theater speakers and have an amazing entertaining experience. Instead of watching a movie on distorted TV speakers and just feeling like your missing out, I can be immersed in the movie and have a similar experience to the movie theater, minus the overpriced popcorn and loud distractions from others. Instead of constantly spending money going to a bar or a club to experience the above things, I can throw parties at my house. The 50-200 people parties I threw were always 100x more fun than chatting with someone at the bar. Instead of wasting my time being bored I advance my career by learning how businesses run computer networks on my homelab that has several servers. I simply cant run the things Im testing out now on my laptop. Now at a job interview for a better position Ill know what theyre talking about and have a greater chance of getting the job. Before you ask, yes Ive been on many vacations. Every 5-10 years my family visits the Philippines for 3-4 weeks. Back when I was in middle and high school I had family that would go on vacations instead of buying presents during Christmas. However Ive forgotten most of those vacations since they were many years ago. I forgot almost my entire trip to the Philippines in 2005. Ive even started to forget the trip I took the Philippines in April 2014. All I have to show for those vacations is several thousand pictures I look at once in a while. As soon as the vacation was over I went right back to work or school. My day to day life returned to where it was before the vacation, just now I have something extra to talk about with someone till they get bored. However, the stuff I bought gives me daily happiness and enjoyment. Sure later Ill probably get bored with it, but the years of entertainment and experience are worth it. The total experience is just as good if not better than a vacation. And the money that would go to vacation can go towards getting something nicer that I wouldnt be able to afford normally. TL;DR: Why do people recommend trading buying stuff for daily experience with a once a years experience? Or trading buying stuff for cheap mediocre going out experiences that only happen once a week or more? If you practice this, why do you do it?  <response>: Buying things arent bad. Your question is assuming too many generalizations, making it a black and white issue when it really all depends. What most here will agree is that buying things in excess when it hinders your personal finance is bad. Same could be said about having travelinggoing experiences: if you overspend on that, its bad too. As long as your expenditures are inline with your personal finances - either buying or going out - is not a bad thing. 