My wife’s like that, haha. For her to successfully shop for clothes, she more or less has to bring me along to push her to buy things that look nice.
“Anyone remember who said something to the effect of “Wealth is not what you make or spend, but what you keep”?”
Yes… my parents. About 1,000 times growing up. And they of course were right… I know so many immigrants who have so much more money than the hiring and corporate folks that I work with that makes triple their salary. Because they live frugally and most people live beyond their means.
to me everyone that doesn’t have to worry about how the grocery bill will be paid this month or how the electric bill will be covered this month should FEEL rich. The first time I felt rich was when I could get bills and not have to worry about having enough money in the account to cover those bills. does that mean that I will pay $5 for a gallon of milk when I could buy it for $3 somewhere else (or 70K per year for college instead of 40k)? No. I still care what things cost, I just don’t have to worry about cash flow.
This thread is doing a great job of corroborating the results of the original link–people are focusing on “feeling” rich, as if wealth is somehow subjective. Socioeconomic class has literally nothing to do with how we feel.
The title of this thread is about FEELINGS, which is why some of the posts address that. Here’s an article talking about objective vs subjective wealth and the 0.5 to 0.6 correlation between FEELING wealthy and objective wealth.
@cbreeze - where is the article you referenced about net worth of the top 1% being at least $10M. My DH is a doubting Thomas, as they say, and it’d be great to share that article.
The link goes to something other than an article about that topic.
Yeah, but how does an Oxysaver Oxygen Conserving Cannula (Adult) with Pendant make you feel? 
More seriously, this is one of the main conclusions of the article in the OP:
I’d argue that this feeling is a problem insofar as it contributes to an obfuscation of class consciousness that’s necessary to move towards social and economic justice.
My mistake, sorry. Here’s another article—can’t find the 1st one I had been reading.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167487014000348
Here’s another article—this one global on objective and subjective wealth and justice.
The first link is just an abstract and I have no access to the paper itself, and the second link appears to be about perceptions of country-level wealth rather than self-perception of individual or family wealth.
(Have you read those papers? If not, what? If so, care to contextualize/summarize so I don’t have to take the time only to realize they’re either not relevant or not available?)
Ok. Found the article I originally meant to link about why people are inaccurate perceivers of wealth.
https://www.thecut.com/article/why-you-feel-richer-or-poorer-than-you-really-are.html
Just read that–all stuff that’s already come out in this thread, and it omits class consciousness, sadly, thereby reproducing the very distortion it purports to explain.
Ok, this article talks a bit more personally about class consciousness and social mobility.
https://www.getrichslowly.org/class-consciousness-and-social-mobility/
If you make 300k, you are rich, period. Most families will never earn 300k at any point in their career.
@roethlisburger Sorry, but just because you state your opinion emphatically doesn’t make it so. According to your logic, I am rich. Well, you don’t know squat about my personal financial situation. I’m 56 years old and work for a company and industry that is no longer secure. I have enough in savings to fund my children’s undergraduate years, and hopefully fund a comfortable, if not extravagant retirement. My father, who recently died with relatively little, probably thought of himself as well off… until a debilitating brain disease required round the clock care for my mother until she perished after a number of years and much of their savings were gone.
It used to be commonly thought that having a million dollars was enough to ensure financial security for a lifetime. Now most would agree that that is not true. However much we think is enough today will more than likely look like a terribly low figure in a decade or two. Having more than most doesn’t define wealth. Just because we are better positioned financially than others doesn’t mean we’re rich.
Health is wealth in our middle age and later life years. My DH and I work out together and compete with each other. Our house is paid for and we have pretty high net worth for our age. Do we feel wealthy? Well, case in point, only if we held certain stocks longer, D’s med school would have been paid for. You will never be happy or content if you constantly compare yourself to other people or wonder what might have been. DH and I realize that money is not everything, health and happiness worth more.
@RandyErika - Having a million dollars does mean you’re rich. Sadly, the US has the most expensive and worst healthcare system in the developed world, so things like your mother’s tragedy can happen even to rich people. It’s heart breaking.
@roethlisburger That’s your opinion not a fact. I’ve stated on other threads my parents will never make the money we make but they have a better retirement because they have pensions, and good lifetime healthcare. 300k doesn’t make you rich especially when you don’t start earning that amount until your forties.As many have stated there is a high difference in having a high salary and great wealth. It depends on a lot of other factors. The stock market is due for a downturn which won’t affect retirees with pensions but will screw those of us with defined contribution plans.
That comment’s a good example: If you define “rich” as “impervious to problems or economic downturn,” then it’s easy to make a ton of money and delude yourself that you’re not rich.
“my parents will never make the money we make but they have a better retirement because they have pensions, and good lifetime healthcare”.
And more importantly my parents bought their house in the early 1970s for less than 5% of what its worth today. If they’d lived in Silicon Valley their house value would have increased in value by more than 100 times in those 40 years. There are plenty of stories in Palo Alto of fairly ordinary $15K-$25K houses in 1970 becoming $5M houses today (without any major rebuilding).
If you live in a place like that then even if you bought your house 10 years ago, you can likely sell the house, move elsewhere and retire rich. That’s what most people are doing. But if you want to stay and you bought more recently then you will probably be struggling to pay off the mortgage for a long, long time.