splurge
Frugality can be a beneficial quality — it helped us reach early financial independence — but an associated scarcity mindset can also be something of a hindrance to living a joyful life with a sense of abundance.
Splurging for the sole sake of spending more money isn’t going to bring joy to a lifelong saver. Immersion therapy might be an effective approach with certain phobias but I can’t see it working for those with an aversion to extravagance.
Travel is often exciting, fun, and it can also be terribly inconvenient and challenging. While we’re pretty adept at budget travel, I have been selecting modest upgrades for recent bookings. Financial independence has helped me realize that we can afford to have nice things.
We’ll have more house than we need, especially once the kids fly the coop, but that’s alright. This is one of those areas in which we’re okay splurging.
Education
While I do believe that public education can be excellent in many locales, and it’s essentially all my wife and I have personally known, education is an area in which I have been willing to spend.
Experiences
You’ll probably get more joy from experiences and the anticipation of them than you will from most things, but things can also lead to experiences, memories, and fun.