Of course not. If you could, put the money in a CD and you are ahead..making money on the bank’s money.
We are fortunate to have no debt. The house was paid off a long time ago. We are comfortable and that is nice. But as others have said, you never know about other people‘s financial situation. I just came from my college reunion And someone had their chauffeur driven Rolls-Royce sitting outside the dorm. I was quite surprised to find out who it was, but apparently his family has New York City real estate And he has never officially worked a day in his life. Who knew? I hadn’t looked closely at the car so I asked him if that was his Bentley. He corrected me to tell me it was a Rolls-Royce and that it was the only car he had up in New York at the time. His other cars are down at his home in Palm Beach. Again, who knew?
4 Likes
You still don’t know about his financial situation. He was obviously showing off for the college reunion, which may be a poor reflection of his actual financial situation. Persons who feel the need to blatantly give the appearance of wealth to others like this are often ones who feel insecure about their actual wealth.
As noted in the previously referenced millionaires survey and others like it (Millionaire Next Door). Most persons with this millionaire type degree of wealth are big savers, rather than big spenders; which relates to how they became millionaires. They tend to live frugally, often more so than their less wealthy neighbors. Millionaire Next Door also observed the same pattern for persons with NW of $20M+ in 2025 $.
3 Likes
I was talking to some of the college development people. I kinda do know a bit more about his financial situation ;-). (And that is a bit tongue in cheek. Please don’t respond to that!)
He was also telling me about how he buys these high-end cars and ends up selling them for a profit. I’m sure how that works but apparently it works for him.
2 Likes
Just young parents? How about us old parents, now that we know everything we ever did was wrong? At least the young parents still have a chance as opposed to knowing they already screwed up and there’s nothing that can be done about it.
5 Likes
As an aside, the person who showed up in the Rolls is a very flamboyant fella (guess that’s pretty obvious). It’s right in his lane.
A side bar…Apparently Lori Shapiro and her husband, Governor Shapiro, showed up at my alma mater for a class reunion. Both of them were partying with the best of them. One of my classmates took a picture with Shapiro at a fraternity party. He looked he was having fun. I heard he did have few big guys around him to protect him because of the recent incident.
3 Likes
My nephew went to school with Harrison Ford’s son at Amherst.
I wasnt happy that he never got an autograph since I have an entire Star Wars collection.
4 Likes
This made me think of when we were doing a parents weekend, we ended up at the same hotel as Michael J Fox and his wife Tracy Pollan (their daughter was at school with my kid). I was at the valet stand confirming my reservation for a car service to take us to the airport and was confirming that the car they would be sending would be large enough as we were taking stuff home for my daughter (who was going abroad the next semester so wanted to get rid of some things), the valet confirmed that they would be sending a mini-van. As I was leaving I got tapped on the shoulder by Tracey Pollan, “Did I just hear you say 'car service that will just send a regular mini-van?” When I confirmed yes, she was like “Oh that would be perfect because my husband can’t walk to the events, but our daughter said that if we pulled up in a limo again she would no longer be speaking to us but our assistant had booked limos for this weekend (said with a laugh and a smile).”
9 Likes
Goldie Hawn and Kirk Russell’s son played hockey at UAH (Huntsville AL) quite some time ago. They were in the hockey arena with everyone else, and out with dinner. People were very respectful.
2 Likes
My experience at college functions is there are almost always a bunch of persons trying to be associated with celebrity students, such as child TV stars or children of political figures. For example, when I’d see them at the gym, the celebrity student would be surrounded by a large group of other students. Or if the celebrity student said something in a dorm meeting, then a bunch of students would make statements in support of the celebrity student’s proposal, regardless of whether it was a good/bad idea. I doubt that it’s possible to be a regular student in this type of scenario.
My earlier comment was more in regards to wealthy persons who aren’t celebrities. The overwhelming majority of wealthy persons fall in to this category – persons with a middle or upper middle class type income who saved over time, allowing them to accumulate wealth at higher rate than similar earning persons who saved less. The book “The Millionaire Next Door” is based on a survey of affluent persons with NW of $2.5M and $25M when converted in to 2025 $. The author was astounded to find the degree of their modest lifestyle, rather than how wealthy persons are typically perceived in media.
For example, in his initial meeting with the persons with NW of $25M+, he set up catering with foods and drink he associated with wealthy persons. The group barely touched it. He had to give away the food/drink to the finance group in the neighboring room. He summarizes the $25M+ wealth persons’ reaction by quoting one of the attendees
So after we introduced ourselves, one of us asked, “Mr. Bud, may I
pour you a glass of 1970 Bordeaux?”Mr. Bud looked at us with a puzzled expression on his face and then
said, “I drink scotch and two kinds of beer – free and BUDWEISER”
The author goes on to describe their relatively modest lifestyle in more detail, saying the 3 words that describe affluent persons are “frugal, frugal, frugal.” The book mentions wives were especially likely to be frugal, more so than the higher earning husbands. One anecdote is quoted below:
How did the wife of a millionaire respond when her husband gave her $8 million worth of stock in the company he recently took public? According to her
husband of thirty-one years, she said, “I appreciate this, I really do.” Then she
smiled, never changing her position at the kitchen table, where she continued
to cut out twenty-five- and fifty-cents-off food coupons from the week’s supply of newspapers. Nothing is so important as to interrupt her Saturday-morning
chores. “She just does today like she always has done, even when all we
owned was a kitchen table… It’s how come we/re well-off today. Made a lot
of trade-offs … sacrifices early in our marriage.”
This effect makes it difficult to know who is wealthy and who is not – hence the book title. Your neighbor who appears to live a modest lifestyle and has a regular job may have an especially high net worth.
I have no idea what the net worth of my neighbors are, but I have found out that some who do not do anything that especially stands out to me as wealthy have extremely high earning jobs. For example, after seeing his picture in a news article, I learned that one of the neighbors I know from letting our dogs play together at the nearby fields is a C-suite executive at a fortune 500 company.
4 Likes
There will always be people who live frugally even though they have a lot of money. Contrasted, by those who live “high on the hog” and are highly leveraged.
Two people living next door to each other in houses with similar value, can have 2 different approaches to life. One can be living there with no mortgage owning the house 100%. The other can be living there with a huge mortgage and home equity loans, having very little equity in the house.
5 Likes
Here’s a question …
Now that we are two months post-Liberation Day, how is everyone doing finance-wise? How about emotionally? Did you/are you doing anything different?
Off to Google “Liberation Day”
ETA: 
Fine, great, no change. (‘stay the course’)
4 Likes
I only learned who our next door neighbor was when I went to work for Lucent Technologies (many years ago) and saw his parking spot and learned that I reported to him — about six layers down.
This guy had spent a Saturday afternoon in his Wellies helping DH pump out our flooded basement, among many other neighborly gestures.
6 Likes
A summary of how different stock indexes have changed since the Liberation Day trough and YTD is below. With major indexes up, my portfolio is up as well, at record levels. I did not change anything of significance about my investment strategy.
S&P 500: +21%, +3%
VTI (total US): +22%, +3%
VUXS (total non-US): +24%, +17%
VT (total world): +23%, +8%
BND (total bonds, including yield): +1%, +3%
GLD (gold): +12%, +25%
BTC (bitcoin): +45%, +17%
Fed Rate: Remains at 4.25% to 4.5%
Inflation: Remains at ~2.5%
3 Likes
How we are doing? Still putting as much as we can in our 401(k) plans. Our biotech portfolio took a big beating but we are in for a long haul. Have a stash of cash to deploy to either renovate the bathrooms or to grab some stocks on sale if the markets tank because you know what…
2 Likes
The issue with on sale is low can go to clearance. I just picked up a dirt cheap Buffett buy - STZ - but is it really cheap ? What if it goes down 20, 40, 60% more ?
I pick up some I think are on sale but buying singles means - it’s half chance if going up, half not. Most have not regardless of index performance because the index is cap weighted, not equal.
If spyders go down to pennies… god almighty help us all! 