Frankly, I look down on people that have that insatiable appetite to buy as much stuff as the money will allow them. Not living super conspicuously (if I were rich) would allow me to continue to look down on others, which is worth a lot of value in itself.
Or you could just spring for a pair of shoe lifts… 
Well, considering that I am about 5’6", they would have to be tall ones.
Many of us think that’s how we would be once we get money, but I don’t think that’s the case. One reason is that you will tend to associate with people with more money and you will likely dress to match them.
And there is a difference between people who suddenly acquire wealth and those who are born to it. I’m sure that the sons and daughters of wealthy families are accustomed to the idea of bespoke shirts, suits and even shoes.
You wouldn’t if you were BORN a billionaire.
This sort of thing is learned early. Your attitude towards money, consumption and price comparing is to a large extent a product of how you are raised.
This isn’t to say you wouldn’t change somewhat if you won a billion dollars; of course you would. But a complete disdain for $10,000 purchases is not something you’d earn very quickly.
Of course, to a lot of people in this world, the life of a working class American or Canadian is a life of stunning extravagance. People look at you the way you look at Ivanka Trump. They really can’t comprehend why a person would pay $20 for another case for their iPhone.
I agree that is somewhat true. However, there are plenty of people who grew up poor and died penny pinching all the way to their grave with a million dollars in the bank.
I definitely agree with this. When you are born rich, your sense of normal is completely wacked and there is little hope to fix it.
I saw a joke years ago about a rich kid being assigned to write an essay about a poor family:
“There once was a poor family. The mother and father were poor, the children were poor, the maid was poor, the chauffeur was poor, the governess was poor…”
I think the best way for me to answer this question is that I’d need to have net worth high enough to support the frivolous spending out of the investment income alone. Wages are to be saved/invested, and I’d need to have at least a couple million in productive investment assets (i.e. stocks, bonds, rental property - not just my house, car, boats, whatever) before I would be comfortable spending much more than I do right now. If you gave me $100k/year extra, I would take a couple of extra vacations each year, but I’d be paying down the mortgage and maxing out my retirement for about a decade.
So… let’s say 5% investment return and 2% of that should be reinvested to meet inflation, leaving me with 3% of the investment value for frivolous spending. If I wanted $10k/month of extra spending, that would mean about $4 million in income-producing investments.
Ivanka clearly has more than that (or at least claims to), so I suppose I might be spending much the same way, were I in her shoes.
$15K might be enough to cover my wine tab for the year.
Bolding mine.
Overall I agree, but that last point falls apart a bit as you get up there in money.
If somebody who makes 500K per year buys a Ferrari in addition to his daily driver BMW or Mercedes he keeps it in his garage, he takes it for annual service, etc. He *might *use a service agency that offers pickup and delivery from his place to/from theirs.
If somebody who makes 500K per *day *(a mere 180M/year, small potatoes in some circles) buys yet another Ferrari in a new color then the staff takes care of it. And takes care of the garage it’s stored in and the service and paying the bills for it and all the rest. The owner drives it. Period.
If the OP or you or I suddenly had a bottomless credit card we might go crazy at the mall. Until our house was full of crap we needed to care for. Somebody super rich does the buying and does the using but does nothing else. It’s no different from a young child seeing a toy, asking for it, and Mommy relents. 100% of the hassle and downside of ownership is somebody else’s problem.
To be sure, now the fatcat is needing to pay for a staff. But once you get used to the idea that a house comes with a crew, and a boat comes with a crew, and a garage of toys comes with a crew, then buying and using *is *your total experience.
It’s like life is a perpetual vacation in an all-inclusive resort that includes all-you-can-buy boutiques in addition to all-you-can-eat restaurants and all-you-can-drink bars. Pure gluttony, no apparent downsides or responsibility.
That’s the difference between Trump or CEO level income vs. the 500K/year yuppie couples with matching Mercedes and 2 kids in high dollar private pre-school.
That’s about $40 a day. I’m sure, on average, my wife and I spend more than that on wine.
I guess we’re in the “not having to worry about money” category.
I do fairly well, but I still have to meter my luxuries. If I was making 10x the money I wouldn’t go all crazy and be buying crap for the heck of it. but I would be spending a lot more on experiences.
I have a habit, courtesy of a typical middle class upbringing, of being willing to splurge, but not very often. There are things I’d like to do weekly that I only do annually because of cost. The funny thing is I could probably afford to do many of them monthly. But somehow that middle-class alarm keeps ringing in my head: If you can’t afford it *every *day, you can’t afford it *any *day.
Enjoy a fancy French meal for $200 for two? Sure, for our anniversary. I like fancy French cooking. I’d like to have it every couple weeks. I can readily afford it every month. But I actually end up doing it only every year or so. Because it feels wrong to splurge on that one item more often.
It’d take me a hundred K or so per year (after taxes) to erase *all *those nagging items. That’s only $300/day.
Better wine. Nicer car. Meals out without a thought to the bill. Entertaining with friends. Live concerts, sporting events, etc. Even half that would probably erase more of them than I can really stand to do every day of the year. Vacations have real high daily daily spending, but we don’t do much of that any more.
As so many have said, the best living is when your idea of “comfortable” spending is within your income. That’s hard to do at the low end, but folks can still screw that up big-time at the high end.
One thing’s for sure: at $8/year the SDMB is a real bargain compared to some of the other ways to spend an hour being entertained.
In my life, even just $75,000 a year would probably allow me to do pretty much anything I want, as in traveling, buying furniture, tickets to sports games, etc.
I would be in with the same group that would always check prices. It would be fun to collect cars like Jay Leno but I still wouldn’t do it. I might bribe Jay to let me stroll through his collection.
It would be nice to fly first class but if I had that kind of money then I’d have the time to take a cruise for a lot less. I’ll be the one on the boat getting my money’s worth.
This.
I lived like a king (well a happy guy) while a grad student back in the 70s. I was warned that those would be the happiest days of my life-they were right and I have had a very good life. I got by just fine on $15/week in groceries. When my soon to be wife finally got out to the west coast she assured me the grocery bill was going up. But that was fine with me. Now, a $100K/yr seems to take care of the bills for the two of us.
Another $100K/yr would be fun for a while until one gets used to it. Then there has to be “new” money to keep the excitement going.
Nitpick: Your SS would be at least partially taxable if you had other taxable income in the mix. When I was working, my income was enough to make my husband’s SS income partially or mostly taxable. Now that I’m not working, but we have income from his late parents’ trust, same deal, his SS is partially or mostly taxable depending on how much of the trust’s tax liability is passed through to us.
My wife and I decided to forgo children, and thus we had the time to earn graduate degrees so that we could enjoy decent duel salaries; and as a result be able to live without budgeting and afford just about everything we ever wanted. You don’t need all that much money to live almost as well as kazillionaires. All they have that we don’t are huge houses to rattle around in and multiple copies of material things, whereas you can only enjoy one lake house, one winter in the tropics, one fancy car, one fine dinner, one nice outfit, etcetera, at a time.
It’s important to know when there is still time that wanting children is societal, not biological (sex is the biological driver), and for most people the itch to have children goes completely away if not scratched for a couple of years. And the planet is already way overpopulated.
Living on a grand a month or so is possible but you have to meet the following caveats:
- Live in a place with dirt cheap real estate, probably with roommates
- Have few/no health care costs, or have your health care subsidized by the state
- Have no dependents
If you can hit those, then yeah you can do it. But sadly for a lot of people hitting those 3 things isn’t always possible. I knew many people in college who lived on 1k a month.
I’m pretty much there. Well, I don’t fly first class, but I could afford it, and I’m considering it. I do stay in whatever hotel I prefer, and by the meal and the couch I want.
I supported my stay at home husband and two kids for many years. Then the kids graduated, and my husband went back to work. He earns about 2/3 my income. Granted, taxes eat a chunk of that, but it’s still an enormous increase in income, and we were comfortable before that.