The thing is that people need a few indulgences not to feel miserable. They don’t have to be nice indulgences, but they need to be real. At my absolute poorest, I was living at my parents’ house, nursing an injury that prevented me from taking the vast majority of jobs open to me (not that the list was long given my employment history and the smallness of my parents’ town). The small amount of work that I could get didn’t leave me very rich. All the same, once or twice a month, I would treat myself to the occasional used DVD or book, or to buying the paper and a cup of tea. I spent between $0.50 and $3.00 for these indulgences. I was poor enough that I “shouldn’t have been spending any money,” but honestly, I needed them. They helped me be happy and fill time in my little work-small town-pre-Netflix-no one my age lives here existence. Also, the funny thing is that as poor as I was, I really only felt poor when I refused to buy myself these little indulgences. As it turned out, I hadn’t been purchasing books or tea so much as I had been buying myself a more peaceful state of mind.