Buying freedom
This sums up the advantages of limiting your spendings:
Cash means controlling your own destiny.
This is as important in your personal finances as it is in business. With enough cash, you can decide for yourself what you want to do and when you want to do it.
I call it buying my time, but in reality, you are buying your freedom to choose. For both people and businesses, it is about getting to the point where your income, assets, and liabilities are in line such that you have a safe surplus.
If you look at the most successful companies or people, they tend to have a significant reserve and that allows them to make choices. Without that reserve, many choices go away. With no reserve, choice almost entirely disappears.
If your goal is freedom, you need to buy that freedom.
- programminggeek on Hacker News