Making allowances for instant gratification

Why is it that some children hoard their weekly allowance, while others spend it as quickly as possible? I know that the general consensus at the moment is to applaud delayed gratification and discourage instant gratification, but before making a final judgment on this, I would like to understand where this behavior comes from.

On one end of the scale, you have children who prefer not to spend any of their money. Having been a bit like this myself, I can see several reasons for this.

1) you attach great importance to what you buy, and find it so difficult to choose that you end up not choosing anything;
2) you know that your parents prefer this behavior, and want to please them;
3) saving stuff has become a goal of its own.

This last idea is linked, I think, to the "collector instinct". As a child, I collected a lot of things - shells, insects, rocks, fossils, coins, stamps - but mostly only the things I could get without spending any money. And when I did spend my allowance, I would consider the purchase carefully in advance, and try to think ahead by imagining what it would be like to have the thing I wanted to buy.

The other end of the scale is much more difficult for me to understand, but I can imagine some reasons why money might burn a hole in someone's pocket:

1) you really want something, and have been waiting for it "for a really long time" (I put quotation marks because to a child, five minutes can be an eternity)
2) spending, for you, is linked with being "grown up", and you want to exercise this right
3) purchase pleasure (spending for the sake of spending)

I do not have "purchase pleasure" (defined by the urban dictionary as "The unexplained feeling of bliss, joy and satisfaction one gets following a purchase"), but I imagine it is linked to comfort buying which - like comfort eating - is something you do to chase away the blues. And if so, it seems to me that it is a bit like treating the symptoms of a disease (dissatisfaction, weltschmertz, call it what you like) instead of its cause. Sometimes this is necessary, but it should definitely not be a long-term policy. Apparently it is possible to fight fire with fire, but I am not sure you can get rid of materialist blues with even more consumerist behavior.