# How Being Cheap Is Keeping You Broke
**作者**: Tim Denning
**日期**: 2026-07-04T11:26:27.000Z
**来源**: [https://x.com/Tim_Denning/status/2073367834172993897](https://x.com/Tim_Denning/status/2073367834172993897)
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Everyone talks about how the solution to money problems is to make more money.
The opposite of this idea is to stop being cheap. Being cheap unconsciously screws up your life in spectacular ways. And none of us is immune. Not even you.
To stop being cheap sounds easy. It’s not because it’s psychological. But if you can overcome this mental demon, you will go on to make ungodly amounts of money.
Here’s how I overcame being cheap (and have helped others do the same).
# The simple philosophy of being cheap
Your mind tells you to be cheap because it’s a survival mechanism.
If you run out of money, your survival is at risk. Being homeless is difficult and so is begging for food. So it makes sense that our 100,000-year-old brains want to protect us from this tragedy out of love.
I wouldn’t wish being homeless on my worst enemy.
My family faced this reality several times when I was a kid. And one of my good friends has been homeless for ~5 years while raising two children. Anyone who underestimates this reality is deeply mistaken.
While your brain loves to jump to worst-case financial scenarios, most of them are fantasies that will never play out.
When you focus too much on your survival you assume everyone is out to rob you. You become overly skeptical. You say “That sounds like a pyramid scheme.” And you may become so toxic you start blaming rich people for your problems, which is a slippery slope into hell on Earth.
At its core, being cheap seems smart.
“If I pay less for this thing, then I will have more money to spend on other things.” What no one talks about, though, is the more something costs you, the more you value it—and the more likely you are to use it fully.
Take consulting as an example. I’ve been doing it for 12 years. Without a doubt, the most successful people I’ve worked with have coincidentally also spent the most money with me. Bar none. It sounds wild to say that, but the data doesn’t lie.
It’s not because I’m great. It’s because money focuses the mind.
It makes you do the work and get the help you need, so you can justify the investment. In that new frame of mind, you bizarrely want things to cost more, not less, because that’s how you get the most out of spending the money.
# Being cheap secretly pisses people off
I used to be a hard-nosed negotiator.
I learned this tactic by watching the TV show American Pickers like a junkie. I applied their way of life to every purchase I made.
A lot of things went wrong.
People ghosted me. I got yelled at when I tried to negotiate. I got banned from groups, masterminds, and conferences. For a while, I couldn’t figure out why. Then I learned the hard way.
When you’re cheap, nobody likes you.
You become a giant pain in the ass that everyone just wants to get the hell away from. Being cheap fools you into thinking it helps your survival, but at the same time, it takes money away from someone else who is also trying to survive.
The best opportunities in life have a premium price tag and a screening process.
There is likely an application. You’ll likely be judged. And only the right people will get access. Acting cheap guarantees you’re excluded.
# “A bad psychological relationship with money will absolutely ruin your f*cking life”
(Dan Koe)
The money game is psychological.
It’s why the best-selling money book of the last decade is called “The Psychology of Money.” You don’t make a lot of money by working hard or getting lucky. You get wealthy based on your relationship with money.
I had a bad relationship with money for a long time. My family has been bankrupt multiple times and my 104 year old grandma grew up in The Great Depression. She turned her wedding dress into clothes for my mother because times got so tough.
She accidentally taught me to have a bad relationship with money.
She saved every dollar. She saw everything as an expense to avoid. She never had any real fun. She never went on an airplane in 104 years. She never even left Melbourne, Australia. She died at 104 with regrets.
I miss her deeply.
On the opposite side, it wasn’t all bad. She knitted clothes for children in Africa for multiple decades. She won several awards for it.
This demonstrates that people’s psychological relationship with money is complicated.
On the one hand, she had an incredible scarcity mindset. On the other hand, she had no issue giving away time and money to make clothes for people in extreme poverty.
If you don’t sort out your relationship with money, it’ll ruin you. I found it hard. I went to therapy which helped. And I lost a lot of money multiple times which helped retrain my brain. I’m now a cheapskate in remission.
How you think about money determines how much money you’ll have.
# Don’t you dare become obsessed with the price
When you sell something expensive the common sales advice is to avoid telling people how much it costs until you speak with them 1-1.
This seems deceptive on the surface. It can even seem illogical.
But when you look deeper it makes sense. If a person comes to you for help and jumps straight to “how much does this cost” without any context on how you could help them, there’s no way they will buy.
High prices without context scare us.
Before you’re presented with a high price, you need to be presented with the outcome and ROI of your investment. Otherwise, the price alone will automatically make your brain shut it down.
There’s never a day in your life, no matter how rich you are, when $100K will sound cheap to you. Expensive purchases always mess us up psychologically by design. I’m going through this right now. I want to buy a new home for my family because the current house is one bedroom short.
I’m looking to spend . There’s never a time when this won’t feel like a face-ripping amount of money. But if that’s what I focus on, then my two daughters won’t have their own bedroom and will suffer because of my scarcity mindset.
The best way to avoid being cheap is to focus on the ROI and the outcome of an investment – and not the price tag.
Because the price is relative. $50K to get help from a doctor sounds expensive without any context. But $50K to have chemo when you’ve got stage 4 cancer that’ll save your life sounds like the deal of the century.
# Believe that everything is going to work in your favor
Now, when I make a financial investment, I assume everything will work in my favor. There’s a key reason why this works.
I’ve reprogrammed my brain to understand that when I invest money, I am the one in control of whether that investment was a good one. I’ve stopped outsourcing blame to other people for my financial mistakes.
This approach gives you unlimited power to bend the world to your desires.
# Trying to get the bargain of the century while looking like an idiot
Asking for discounts is offensive.
Without realizing it, you’re basically telling someone “I don’t value your work.” Or you’re saying “based on your price, I think you’re dishonest.”
This is a terrible way to live. It makes you look like an idiot. Through the filter of price, you’re basically punching people in the face who are trying to help you.
After decades of looking like an idiot, one idea changed everything for me:
You don’t want to buy the cheapest product or get the highest discount. You want to save the most time and get results ASAP.
Every time I’m tempted to be cheap, I remind myself of this powerful idea.
# A different lens to see the world through that’ll make you a badass
A few years ago, a stranger said something to me that I’ll never forget:
“People are just trying to feed their families. Remember that every time you buy anything.”
Since then I’ve adopted this idea. It’s made me way more compassionate and helped me reconnect with my humanity.
When you stray too far from this idea, you can become a deeply transactional person devoid of all emotion. A robot. A corporate drone who says “kind regards” or “thoughts and prayers” but doesn’t mean it.
One solution I’ve found is to gently tell people about your family when you ask them for money or to take action.
For example, I tell people that when they are kind enough to leave me a testimonial, it really helps my family business which is how I feed my two daughters. Every time I say this it completely changes how someone responds.
Instead of them believing they don’t have time, they now see a testimonial as part of a higher purpose. And I like showing up like this because it ties nicely to my daddy-first approach to modern freedom and business. Try this yourself.
# One area to invest insane amounts of money in
Having a budget in each area of life is probably a good idea.
There’s one area this can trip you up though, and that’s investing in new skills and self-learning. Your skills determine your income. If you’re cheap in this area, you’ll limit your income without even realizing it.
I’ve spent $500K+ on my skills over the last few years. I credit this one financial decision for most of my successes online.
Yet this is not the norm.
Most people will still see acquiring new skills as an expense, except, bizarrely, the average person doesn’t blink twice when it comes to investing hundreds of thousands of dollars into a university degree which they have to go into debt for with zero promises of results, a job, or a business after they graduate.
Being cheap with self-education guarantees you’ll be broke.
# The weirdest money idea you’ll ever come across
Let’s finish here.
I did the opposite of being frugal with money the last few years. I spent money like it didn’t really matter. I didn’t obsess over every purchase. And I assumed things would work out when I paid people.
Bizarrely, when you live like this, money finds its way back to you. I can’t quite explain why. Maybe it’s woo-woo. My best guess is that when money leaves your bank account, you have the motivation to help it come back again.
I also think part of it has to do with how you show up in the world. If you show up as a helpful person who inspires others and is generous with their skills, the right people will find ways to pay you and the wrong ones won’t.
People who operate from abundance and are generous… have an aura. This helps you attract more money into your life.
Bottom line: Stop being cheap. Start living as if you’re already wealthy.
If you found this helpful:
1. Follow me @timdenning for more posts on money, freedom, and digital businesses.
2. Then, I'd appreciate it if you could scroll back to the top and repost this X article to help others.
— Tim
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*导出时间: 2026/7/5 17:51:39*
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## 中文翻译
# 贪便宜为何让你一直贫困
**作者**: Tim Denning
**日期**: 2026-07-04T11:26:27.000Z
**来源**: [https://x.com/Tim_Denning/status/2073367834172993897](https://x.com/Tim_Denning/status/2073367834172993897)
---
每个人都在谈论解决财务问题的办法就是赚更多的钱。
这种观点的对立面是：停止贪便宜。贪便宜会以一种惊人的方式在无意识中搞砸你的生活。我们谁都逃不掉，甚至是你。
停止贪便宜听起来很容易。事实并非如此，因为这是心理问题。但如果你能克服这个心魔，你将赚到数额惊人的钱。
以下是我克服贪便宜的经历（以及我是如何帮助其他人做到这一点的）。
# 贪便宜的简单哲学
你的大脑告诉你贪便宜，因为这是一种生存机制。
如果你没钱了，你的生存就会受到威胁。无家可归很难，乞讨食物也很难。所以，我们要几万年历史的大脑出于爱想要保护我们免受这种悲剧，这说得通。
我不希望哪怕是我最大的仇人落得无家可归。
在我小时候，我的家庭曾多次面对这种现实。我的一位好朋友还曾在抚养两个孩子的同时经历了大约 5 年的无家可归生活。任何低估这种现实的人都大错特错。
虽然你的大脑喜欢跳到最糟糕的财务情景，但它们大多是永远不会发生的幻想。
当你过分关注生存时，你会假设每个人都想来抢劫你。你会变得过度怀疑。你会说：“这听起来像个金字塔骗局。”你甚至可能变得非常偏激，开始因为你的问题而责怪富人，这是一条通往人间地狱的滑坡。
在本质上，贪便宜看起来很聪明。
“如果我在这件东西上少花点钱，我就会有更多的钱花在其他事情上。”然而，没人讨论的是，某样东西花费你越多，你就越重视它——你也越有可能充分利用它。
以咨询为例。我从事这一行已经 12 年了。毫无疑问，我合作过的最成功的人，恰好也是在ーカ身上花钱最多的人。毫无疑问。说这话听起来很疯狂，但数据不会撒谎。
这不是因为我很厉害。是因为金钱能让人专注。
它让你去工作并获得你需要的帮助，这样你就可以证明这笔投资是合理的。在这种新的心态下，你会奇怪地希望东西更贵，而不是更便宜，因为只有这样你才能从花钱中获得最大的收益。
# 贪便宜会暗中惹恼别人
我曾经是个强硬的谈判者。
我像个瘾君子一样通过看电视节目《美国 Picker》（American Pickers）学到了这一招。我把他们的生活方式应用到我做的每一笔购买上。
结果出了很多问题。
人们对我玩失踪。我试图讨价还价时被大吼大叫。我被禁止加入群组、智囊团和会议。有一段时间，我弄不明白为什么。后来我通过惨痛的教训明白了。
当你贪便宜时，没人喜欢你。
你会变成一个让人极其讨厌的家伙，每个人都只想离得远远的。贪便宜愚弄了你，让你以为它有助于你的生存，但同时，它也从另一个也在努力生存的人那里拿走了钱。
生活中最好的机会都有高昂的价标签和筛选过程。
很可能有申请流程。你可能会被评判。只有合适的人才能获得准入。表现得贪便宜只会保证你被排除在外。
# “与金钱糟糕的心理关系绝对会毁了你的 TMD 生活”
金钱游戏是心理战。
这就是为什么过去十年中最畅销的金钱书籍叫做《金钱心理学》。你并不是通过努力工作或运气好才赚很多钱的。你变富有是基于你与金钱的关系。
我与金钱的关系一直很糟糕。我的家庭破产过好几次，我 104 岁的祖母是在大萧条时期长大的。因为日子太难过，她把婚纱改成了给我妈妈穿的衣服。
她无意中教会了我与金钱建立糟糕的关系。
她省下了每一美元。她把一切都视为需要避免的开销。她从未有过真正的乐趣。她在 104 年里从未坐过飞机。她甚至从未离开过澳大利亚的墨尔本。她在 104 岁时带着遗憾去世了。
我深深地想念她。
另一方面，也不全是坏事。几十年来，她一直为非洲的儿童编织衣服。她因此获得了几个奖项。
这表明人们与金钱的心理关系是复杂的。
一方面，她有着令人难以置信的稀缺心态。另一方面，她在花时间和金钱为极度贫困的人做衣服方面毫无问题。
如果你不解决你与金钱的关系，它会毁了你的。我觉得这很难。我去看了心理治疗，这很有帮助。我也多次亏了很多钱，这帮助重塑了我的大脑。我现在是一个处于缓解期的吝啬鬼。
你对金钱的看法决定了你会有多少钱。
# 千万不要痴迷于价格
当你销售昂贵的东西时，常见的销售建议是在与客户一对一交谈之前，避免告诉他们成本。
这在表面上看起来具有欺骗性。甚至可能看起来不合逻辑。
但当你深入观察时，这就说得通了。如果一个人来找你求助，没有任何关于你能如何帮助他们的背景信息就直接跳到“这要多少钱”，他们是绝对不会买的。
没有背景的高价会吓到我们。
在你面对高价之前，你需要先看到投资的结果和投资回报率（ROI）。否则，仅价格一项就会让你的大脑自动关闭。
在你的一生中，无论你有多富有，从来没有一天会觉得 10 万美元听起来很便宜。昂贵的购买总是会在设计上从心理上折磨我们。我现在正在经历这个。我想为我的家人买一所新房子，因为现在的房子少了一个卧室。
我打算花这笔钱。永远没有任何时候这笔钱不会让人觉得是一笔令人肉疼的巨款。但如果我关注这一点，我的两个女儿将不会有自己的卧室，并会因为我的稀缺心态而受苦。
避免贪便宜的最好方法是关注投资的 ROI 和结果——而不是价标签。
因为价格是相对的。没有任何背景，花 5 万美元请医生看病听起来很贵。但如果你得了四期癌症，5 万美元的化疗能救你的命，这听起来就是世纪交易。
# 相信一切都会对你有利
现在，当我进行金融投资时，我假设一切都会对我有利。这种方法之所以有效，有一个关键原因。
我已经重新编程了我的大脑，明白当我投资金钱时，我是控制这笔投资是否成为好投资的人。我已经停止将财务失误的责任外包给别人。
这种方法给你无限的力量去按照你的意愿改变世界。
# 试图争取世纪廉价交易的同时看起来像个白痴
要求打折是一种冒犯。
在不知不觉中，你基本上是在告诉别人“我不重视你的工作”。或者说“根据你的价格，我认为你不诚实”。
这是一种糟糕的生活方式。这让你看起来像个白痴。通过价格的滤镜，你基本上是在给你试图帮助的人脸上打拳。
在像白痴一样生活了几十年后，一个想法改变了我的一切：
你不想买最便宜的产品或获得最高的折扣。你想节省最多的时间并尽快获得结果。
每当我受诱惑想要贪便宜时，我都会提醒自己这个强有力的想法。
# 一个能让你成为强者的不同世界观视角
几年前，一个陌生人对我说了一些我永远不会忘记的话：
“人们只是想养家糊口。每次你买任何东西时都要记住这一点。”
从那时起我就接受了这个想法。这让我变得更有同情心，并帮助我重新连接我的人性。
当你偏离这个想法太远时，你可能会变成一个深度的交易性人，没有情感。一个机器人。一个会说“亲切问候”或“思念与祈祷”但并不真心的企业无人机。
我发现的一个解决方案是，当你向别人要钱或要求他们采取行动时，温和地告诉他们关于你家庭的情况。
例如，我告诉人们，当他们好心给我留下推荐信时，这真的帮助了我的家族企业，这也是我抚养两个女儿的方式。每次我说这句话时，它都会完全改变某人的反应。
与其认为他们没有时间，他们现在将推荐视为更崇高目标的一部分。我喜欢这样表现，因为它与我“父亲至上”的现代自由和商业方式很好地联系在一起。你自己试试这个。
# 一个值得投入疯狂金额金钱的领域
在生活的每个领域都有预算可能是个好主意。
然而，有一个领域可能会让你绊倒，那就是投资新技能和自学。你的技能决定了你的收入。如果你在这个领域贪便宜，你会在不知不觉中限制你的收入。
在过去几年里，我在技能上花了超过 50 万美元。我将这一财务决定归功于我在网上取得的大部分成功。
然而，这并不是常态。
大多数人仍然将获得新技能视为一种开支，除了奇怪的是，对于投资数十万美元获得大学学位，普通人连眼睛都不眨一下，而他们在毕业后还要背负债务，且没有任何结果、工作或生意的承诺。
在自我教育上贪便宜保证会让你一直贫困。
# 你会遇到过的最奇怪的金钱观点
让我们在这里结束。
在过去几年里，我做着与金钱节俭相反的事情。我花钱就像这并不重要。我没有执着于每一笔购买。而且我假设当我付钱给别人时，事情会解决得很好。
奇怪的是，当你这样生活时，金钱会找到回到你身边的路。我无法完全解释为什么。也许这是玄学。我最好的猜测是，当金钱离开你的银行账户时，你有动力帮助它再次回来。
我也认为这部分与你在这个世界上的表现有关。如果你表现得像一个乐于助人、激励他人并慷慨分享技能的人，对的人会找到支付给你的方式，错的人则不会。
那些以富足心态运作且慷慨的人……有一种光环。这有助于你吸引更多的金钱进入你的生活。
底线：停止贪便宜。开始像你已经很富有一样生活。
如果你觉得这有帮助：
1. 关注我 @timdenning 以获取更多关于金钱、自由和数字业务的帖子。
2. 然后，如果您能滚回顶部并转发这条 X 文章以帮助他人，我将不胜感激。
— Tim
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*导出时间: 2026/7/5 17:51:39*