> terrified to discard anything even if its broken because there are components that might be useful to fix something else
I've fortunately never been poor, or even temporary broke, but I'm not sure how you'd get through life with without this. I've gotten myself out of so many binds by being able to repurpose something out of the junk pile. It is not even about the money, more being able to deal with it immediately. Once you need to involve other people the burden grows substantially.
Ah but if only it were so simple. In my woodworking shop, in pretty much every project I end up using odd scraps for either temporary scaffolding or jigs or what have you that would be difficult to buy. You would have to go out of your way to buy a large board, and cut it up intentionally. Even then you would not have as rich a set of scraps. Actually the value is not in the material itself but in the variety of the shapes.
> When you have money, you can just buy the thing you need
What I need is time. Whereas buying things is stupidly time consuming, running completely counter to what is needed.
I don't have it all. Sometimes I have no choice but to go buy parts when a breakdown occurs, but that's never a welcome experience. You're looking at a good hour or more to source even if it is available locally, and often you have to travel far and wide to find someone who has it in stock. Worse, sometimes the only stock available is on the other side of the world in who knows where, leaving you down for days while you wait for it to show up...
Once someone invents a magical teleporter that can spit out what you need in a split second on demand, then money to spend when you need it becomes more powerful than already having what you need, but we're a long way from seeing that become reality.
It's a lifestyle that snowballs. You can't "just start throwing things away" because your life has grown up around the assumptions of having your brand of junk around.
Poverty-sculpted packrat brain here. I believe this specific behavior became a nuanced social issue starting with the Marie Kondo "Cleanliness" movement from years ago to present, at least my experience of this is through the Tumblr commentaries about how tone-deaf the movement was to people in or who grew up in poverty. so for "never-poor" people like you, the specific nuance would be whether you had space to keep these backup parts like an attic or garage or even extra closet space where this behavior becomes a "tidiness/organization" issue otherwise. hope this perspective gives a better picture
I've fortunately never been poor, or even temporary broke, but I'm not sure how you'd get through life with without this. I've gotten myself out of so many binds by being able to repurpose something out of the junk pile. It is not even about the money, more being able to deal with it immediately. Once you need to involve other people the burden grows substantially.