I have noticed a trend, maybe even a general rule, that the more money someone has, the worse they are at managing it.
It’s perspective. When you have a little money you must manage it scrupulously to survive. It comes with the territory. When you have more than enough money the management of that same money starts to become a chore as opposed to a need. So it’s not that having more money makes you worse at managing it, its that it makes it a lower priority. And at a certain threshold you start outsourcing it entirely. I think it’s wrong to assign a value judgment to it. Just different priorities.
And these high-earners aren’t working weekends or second jobs to make ends meet. They are doing because they want to always be busy or because their biggest priority in life is to accrue as much money as they can now so they can lead a life of luxury later. It’s rarely because they mismanaged their income from the first job.
And if it’s a low priority, then you are not doing a good job with it. I still maintain the same thrifty mindset I developed over a decade of poverty even though now I make close to six figures. Which means that my bank account and investments are flush, and if I could ever figure out a way to get my business to run in my absence, I could afford to take some time off.
No value judgement, and we seem to be in agreement that the more money someone has, the less they manage it.
And because they live in a three quarters of a million dollar mcmansion, drive an Audi and a BMW, eat out at fancy places regularly, send their kids to pricy private schools, and take expensive international vacations.
When I worked in small-town broadcasting, it wasn’t unusual to work seven days a week. In fact, one station I worked at was so thinly staffed that they had to scramble to cover an employee’s absence. I was overjoyed to end up at another station where we were only expected to work six days a week.
No value judgment eh? Hilarious.
I have not had good experiences working with people who work 24/7. They don’t pull their weight bc they are too exhausted. And they’re always screwing up bc again, too exhausted.
I much prefer working with people who take time to recharge.
That said, I know some people HAVE to work 24/7 to keep the bills paid. And they have my sympathies.
No, why would you think otherwise?
I had a coworker some years back who was pretty much the first one in, and he’d often come back to the office in the evening when he had big projects. He was good, he was dedicated, and he did take vacations, but when he was working, I don’t know that he saw much of his wife and kids. He got all kinds of awards, but at what cost, I have to wonder…
In reality, we live in an age of tragically poor financial literacy. The vast majority of people are bad with money, rich, poor, and in between. It’s just more noticeable when someone making six figures is bad at it.
The hardest working lawyer I know worked 6.5 days a week from about 7 am till about 9 or 10pm - half day on Sundays - for about 40 years. He’s semi-retired-ish now and only works about five long days a week. He’s unstoppable. He never whinges about how hard he works. He just seems to absolutely love it.
I knew someone ~20 years ago who had an Indian restaurant in Georgia. He went 17 years of being at the restaurant every single day (7 days a week, 365 days a year). He didn’t trust anyone else to run it and Christmas and Thanksgiving were huge days for business.
The day he took off after 17 years was his daughters wedding. His kids all went to top schools, then investment banking and consulting and they finally convinced their father to take a day off a few times a year.
For his daughter’s wedding he closed the restaurant on Saturday, but he was there at 8am on Sunday morning to set up for lunch.
He never let anyone else run the restaurant, so he was there 8am to 10pm seven days a week. He’d leave for a few hours but ALWAYS closed. Even when his wife was in hospital having surgery. He dropped her off in the morning, left her sister there with her (who had come in from out of town for this) and then went to open the restaurant.
I just looked up the restaurant and it’s still there, he’s still the owner. It’s still open 7 days a week, but I hope he’s not running the place solo. He must be in his seventies by now.
This made me laugh. Where I live, I just did a search for every single house under $750,000. The mls site came up with ONE, listed at $739,000. “Cute cottage next to a shopping mall”. 2 bed/1 bath. One of the bedrooms is 6 foot by nine foot. I believe it’s a former crack house.
I used to work with a guy who didn’t take vacations. He was divorced and I guess he grew up in a family that didn’t take vacation trips, so he basically didn’t know how. He would schedule a vacation, but come into the office anyway. He would not wear a tie during that time so we all knew he was on vacation.
I can see how someone might enjoy their job, but centering their life around it? That strikes me as sad and worthy of pity.
That said, I used to work with a guy who would work overtime nearly every single night, whether or not there was an actual need to work past 5. His rationale was that there’s always work to be done, and he could get more done by working extra each day. I tried explaining that there would always be extra work to be done, and it was like trying to drain a river. I think he was just working extra to be noticed by the boss and get promoted or something. Which was equally absurd, as there were literally no positions to get promoted into at that company.
I think what he’s trying to say is that when you don’t have much, you have to watch your nickels and dimes. But if you make six figures, you have to watch your $50s and $100s, but not your $10s and $20s in general.
Personally I think what happens more than that is that most people are always in some sort of competition with their peers and neighbors. As they make more money, that changes and becomes more expensive, and a lot of people don’t have the willpower at any income level to be able to forego the competitive stuff for the sake of their bank account. So they go into debt, etc… to keep up with the Joneses.
I once had a workaholic boss who once managed to arrange some work with a naval reserve unit over Christmas & New Year’s leave one year, on the opposite coast of the country.
He thought that this was just the greatest thing. I remember after we returned to the office after the holidays him expounding on how he had just created the coolest thing - a hybrid work-vacation.
Way back when I was a tween, I volunteered at a large museum and was fortunate enough to be working for the Doctors Mr and Mrs Leaky. They both lived to work. Mom loved having a safe place to leave me while she was doing housewife and mom of four things so I was there all the time. The Doctors were there all the time unless they were off in the field, but they would call their students all the time and would take the time to talk to us tween volunteers.
I think they were both slightly mad, but they were always happy, OMG, I have never been as constantly happy as they were.
I’ve known other obsessed researchers over the years. They all seemed to be at least slightly mad, but they were happy AF.
The year I retired (at 63) I went to a retirement party for a guy who’d been working there since before I was born. He retired due to medical necessity, and abhorred vacations, usually donating or cashing out his hours. He genuinely wanted to be at work and really enjoyed it. He was one of the few software folks in his 80s, and was still up to date and productive. Even the younglings were sad to see him go.
In my twenties, I worked pipeline jobs that were 6 months on - 6 months off. “On” was 12 hours/day, 7 days/week with no breaks at all. Days off were only tolerated for injuries or serious illness. The actual hours worked annually were the same as a normal workweek, but the OT was incredible (time and a half for anything over 40)
A married couple of researchers I know - went to a conference in Europe, and arranged an extra few days in Paris before they returned. I asked them how the holiday went.
She expounded about how much they loved staying in Paris: “We’d get up in the morning and go to an outdoor cafe, where we’d bring out laptops. Then we’d go in the afternoon to a museum and bring our laptops. In the evening, we’d stay at our lovely hotel with our laptops. Mr. X got two papers written, and I finished off two whole chapters of my book! Paris is great!”
Urgggh, the memories that brings back. The worst was when two on-air jocks were seriously hurt in a motorcycle crash, a third was off in Europe traveling with a local semi-pro football team, and I wound up working seven-day weeks doing daily split shifts which started at 5:30 a.m.
If I’d known better I’d have demanded double pay for this hellish overload, which would probably have exceeded minimum wage by a decent margin.
I’ll bet she hated to be called “Di”.