I certainly don’t do much “discretionary” spending any more. I remember when my wife and I would go to buy a few essentials and wind up spending five or six hundred dollars on things we saw and liked and that was when money was worth about three times what it is now, maybe more. Now if we spend fifty dollars it is a big deal. We have not bought a vehicle since ‘07 and we bought used then. Now I just dream of upgrading to something less than ten years old. Thank heaven we have sense enough not to get conned into buying a new car with seven years of payments.
Here in CA, we refuse to purchase most everything other than real necessities. We refuse to contribute more tax money than what is humanly possible. Taxes for things like new cars and larger purchases are simply out of the question. It’s flat out robbery at every turn.