i can buy what i want (within reason, though i'm still very frugal about big purchases). it's nice to shop for christmas gifts and not worry about paying the bills, for instance, or to occasionally splurge on a nice restaurant or expensive cut of meat without guilt or sweat. it's wonderful to be able to pick up the tab when out for dinner with friends (though we're careful about doing this, since if not done correctly it comes off as insulting). it's a gift to be able to handle unexpected big expenses without an impact to daily/weekly/monthly life, beyond planning for how to budget to put that money back into savings. (for instance, my son recently had a surgery not covered by insurance, and we were able to pay for it without sweating beyond outrage insurance wouldn't cover it; likewise, we had a homeowner disaster earlier this year and were forced to remodel our kitchen, which we were able to pay for without going into debt.) it's also nice to be able to afford a nice hotel room now and then.

downsides:

my family, however, is not as close as it was when we were poor. it's easy to retreat to the corners of the house with myriad things that distract us from each other. we don't have to 'make our own fun' anymore, and thinking back to when we did, we were a lot closer. back when it was the same vhs tape every night, and hot dogs from 7-11 (perhaps splurging on nachos to go with them).

we are now very used to the above mentioned perks, so if something forced a change in our lifestyle, we would find it uncomfortable at best - very difficult at worst - to scale back. our expenses are actually very low and we have no debt, so getting by wouldn't be the problem; it would be the psychological shift that we'd find difficult to achieve. not being able to save anymore; having to go back to sticking to a strict budget to ensure necessary expenses would be covered.

we aren't allowed to say "we can't afford it" to anyone outside the family, because they don't understand that "we can't afford it" means "we aren't comfortable spending the money because we have broader goals than joining you at a four star resort somewhere." the response is often, "what are you talking about, of course you can afford it!" and when we try to explain, we're considered cheap. (this doesn't happen often because our friends aren't assholes, but we do notice the raised eyebrows sometimes when this comes up.)

likewise, we often find ourselves overspending when it comes to gifts for others. for instance, whereas mom might be thrilled with a $50 gift card to her favorite store and a nice scarf, and that is a perfectly kind gift, we feel inclined to bump that up to $200 (lest we seem cheap - and by the way, this is pressure we put on ourselves; no one is putting it on us) and then add a few other items on top of it. if a friend has a baby shower, we feel inclined to purchase one of the most expensive gifts on the registry [crib/stroller/etc] because we know others invited to the shower might not be able to afford it, forcing the new parents to either go without or stretch their already stretched budget to buy it for themselves. once this is extrapolated across all friends and family members, it adds up to the point we often spend more on others than we do on ourselves and each other. which is something we enjoy being able to do, but sometimes i wish we didn't put that pressure on ourselves to 'live up' to some weird ass standard that we're applying only to ourselves.

but, the upsides far outweigh the downsides (the latter of which are the textbook definition of 'first world problems'), so we are definitely not complaining. it's just, that's an honest answer from our perspective.