[guessmyname]

I call it “The Broke College Student Syndrome.”

Most of us did stuff like this when we were younger.

For starters, we were broke. I mean, we didn’t have enough extra cash to pay for something we knew we could probably get for free. Back then, having a credit card in college was basically a “rich kid” thing. The money we had was whatever was in our pockets, maybe stashed under a pillow, or saved in a piggy bank. These days, kids are more “modern,” so the idea of not having a card paid for by mom or dad, or at least some extra cash, sounds ridiculous. But that’s how it was for a lot of us.

So I’d constantly look for ways around paying, because I genuinely couldn’t afford it. Think learning C just to write a keygen.exe and bypass license checks, doing in-memory hex edits to tweak games and give myself more virtual coins, or forking Tor to get single-hop proxy connections.

Good ol’times.

[LoganDark]

I remember when I was younger and didn't have a single cent to spend, at all. Any payment requirement would completely lock me out, because I had no payment method.

[fragmede]

The question is, how do you live now? I remember being on University email lists that I had no business being on, just to get find out when they had free food that I could eat. I grew up ridiculously cheap and broke college student syndrome only exacerbated things. I've gone too far in the other direction, which is equally as unhealthy, but I can't be the only one.

[embedding-shape]

I've went from being broke most of my young life, to homeless a short period, to being employed as a programmer to eventually being financially independent, I'm not sure there is much difference ultimately, besides being able to afford more expensive things. I used to buy stuff I enjoyed, if I could afford it, I still buy stuff I enjoy, but never buy things to just buy it, mostly happy with the stuff I have, except for some computers stuff that I don't neeeeeeed. But it's really nice to have 96GB of VRAM available for example.

Don't overthink either directions, be happy with what you have and focus on what you want to do, rather than "what you should have" or similar. Not sure anyone can really give you good non-generic tips here, without knowing more about your specific situation.