Perhaps coming up poor you are really focused on money. That’s fine.
My 82 year old working class boss used to say, “A little each day to have enough.” It worked just fine for him. It has worked just fine for me.
I don’t have debts and I do just fine on my 45,000 a year, thank you very much. I am quite contentedly middle/working class. My house is 1200 sq ft. What would I do with a bigger house? How much food can I eat? How many cars do I need?
Just because you bought into the pseudo-wealth mindset doesn’t mean anyone who chooses a different path is deficient. You wrongly place your viewpoint in other people’s heads.
This from a 47 year old construction worker. My money comes honest. That is far more meaningful to me than counting it.
Perhaps you are not the huge jerk your post makes you out to be, so I will hold my tongue. Enjoy your money.
Yeah, I also consider myself middle class and I don’t have any debt. I’ve never had any debt except my auto loan, and I just paid that off (a year early!) this month. I live in an apartment, but I’m an under-30 single person with no kids and don’t feel it would be wise to buy a home at this point in my career since it’s possible I’ll have to move within the next 3-4 years. I’ve got money in the bank and have made a good start on saving for my retirement.
It’s very unlikely that I’ll ever rise above the middle class, because I work in a field that pays a middle class salary. People in my line of work don’t get rich. I knew that going in, and if it were important to me to be wealthy rather than “merely” comfortable then I’d have chosen some other occupation. I don’t know what I’d do with a lot more money if I had it though, unless it were buying things I don’t care about like a flashy car and designer clothes – the same things the OP says rich people don’t do.
I suppose it comes down to semantics, really. $100,000/year with $2 million in assets strikes me as just comfortable. Certainly not ‘wealthy’; however, I guess it depends on your starting point.
I grew up with parents who were ‘comfortable’ (and still are in retirement). My husband and I are ‘comfortable’. Ditto my in laws and my brother and his wife. I would not describe any of us as ‘wealthy’.
To me wealthy is Paris Hilton (well, actually Paris Hilton’s daddy) or Donald Trump. If you can LOSE $2 million in assets and have it be a bad day, as opposed to a financial disaster, THEN you’re wealthy.
Well again my apologies if I pissed anyone off as that wasn’t my intent. But my point is that having all those items you listed (which I do not subscribe to) doesn’t make a person wealthy or rich. I am not placing my viewpoint in anyones head.
My money came through my hard work, investments and luck. But in my opinion luck only happens if you allow a breeding ground for it to happen and that only happens when you have money. It is a double edged sword but it is even worse when you are poor (as I noted in the other thread).
And for the record my new house is 2000 SF and my old house is 1500 SF. You may think of me as a jerk who counts his money but you would be far from the truth. I keep track of it for sure and at my age I consider myself well off but I don’t discuss money with anyone in my real life at all. In fact if you met we you would never know I have the money I do have.
I would suggest people here read the book "the millionaire next door’ it was very eye opening to me.
Yep I suppose you are right. Perhaps I used the wrong words in my title. In hindsight it was just being pissed about the poor thread I think! Reading through that thread it seemed everyone was being so classist it pissed me off!
I would agree that a Paris Hilton is rich but based on past threads on this subject I would think most people would define $2m in assets as rich or well off or upper middle class or whatever word you want to use, especially given that the medain net worth for that age group is $300k.
I pretty much agree with you. I’d be hard pressed to consider someone ‘wealthy’ unless they didn’t have to work. They may choose to, but they don’t have to.
I remain solidly middle class in order to avoid the elitist swine who think of themselves as upper class. Besides that, a lot of them are not only elitist but Republicans as well; I’m just preserving my mental health.
That is another thing why do people think only republicans have money? Warren Buffet is a Democrat as far as I can tell. I vote Democrat much more often then I do republican (see I can’t even capitalize it!). Maybe you guys are just too used to Rand posting to discuss money where he seems to glorify in picking on poor people and they are reading my thread as another thread like that. It is one of the reasons I never discuss it in the real world as it make people uncomfortable, hell it makes me uncomfortable to discuss it even here.
I went a school for rich kids. I never liked them much. We had to wear ties and jackets. The kids would come up to people in the hall and do a “tie check”. If your tie had three gold threads on the back, you passed.
I had the opportunity and the grades to go Ivy league. I dropped out instead. In my experience wealthy people suck and I never wanted to be one. The hallmark of wealth is to judge others and find them lacking, (fed largely by guilt among the truly rich).
I have known, as worked for, many extremely wealthy people. I just never wanted to be one. It’s not because I have poor habits, am stupid or lack understanding. I don’t want to be “the millionaire next door.” That’s my mindset.
Confusing cash with class is a schoolboy error, even for an American. You (the OP) are always going to be middle class, but if you’re very wealthy you’ve given your kids an excellent chance at moving up - to whatever the next level is termed these days.
If you’re asking what’s stopping general middle class folk from becoming rich - in my case I’d say it’s supreme indifference / ignorance to the idea of making money. I’m a scientist in my mid-30s, and thus far I’ve put all of my creative energies into my work. I’m comfortably off, and as long as I’m living above a certain middle class threshold then I’m happy - we’re financially stable and do all the sensible things, not big consumers, but it’s all passive. We’ve never actively pursued investments or thought creatively on how to make money.
However - this is starting to change because we’ve had our first kid (I suspect this is a common occurrence). This has completely changed my outlook - put some pressure on our income and made me actually think seriously about wealth, probably for the first time.
On re-reading the OP, perhaps the real answer is that people who were born middle class are perfectly content with remaining so.
You were not. Perhaps that is all there is to it. You had a drive, others not so much. Everyone strives for happiness, but the definition varies.
On the whole, I am somewhat sympathetic. I’ve been around enough to know being rich is not always easy, what with all the guilt and paranoia it can bring. Mo’ money mo’ problems.
I agree 100% with this though. I actually don’t consider myself middle class either, I grew up poor and that is my mental framework. I happen to be in a profession that afforded me lots of opportunities to make money and I have. But my outlook on things is based on my early years. So I guess I am a poor person with lots of cash! That is what is interesting about this thread which in hindsight I probably shouldn’t have started, but people seem to think that I am living this high and mighty rich life. I am not by any stretch, my daily existence is very middle class, my home, my vehicles, my vacations, etc–but I do have enough money I could retire right now and live comfortably for the rest of my life. But I enjoy what I do but I do plan on retiring early (age 55 baby!) and ship the kid off to college and my wife and I will start to enjoy our retirement. And to stave off those posts (this is the dope afterall) I enjoy my life now, I don’t want for things, etc, but I try and balance my current happiness with my future happiness.
Did I say that having money gave someone class? I suppose since the title says middle class but I was using it more in the terms of money not class as in snobby.
Well I didn’t intend this thread to be about ‘me’ It was started in irritation to the poor thread. Maybe it is just me but it struck me as odd that people seem perfectly content to note the things that keep poor people poor, but not the things that keep themselves in the spots they are in. That was the intent of the thread.
But since I am for all intents and purposes anonymous here I feel I can discuss money if people actually want to. I am not comfortable about talking about it but I can.
Yeah your experience in school sounds sucky! I went to public schools including my colleges. I have found what you have said to be true in general as well but only with those that act rich. That is what was so interesting about that book I mentioned. The vast majority of millionares in this country are living next door to you and me. They are just average people who are very good at saving money, etc, but they don’t live a rich lifestyle. Again I am willing to bet dollars to donuts that they rich guys you hated weren’t rich at all. I see it with my clients, they are people that buy into the concept of ‘rich’ but who are mortgaged to the hilt.
You’re confusing “rich” with “asshole”. There is some overlap, but IMO, no more so than in any economic class. Obviously, your mileage may vary. I went to an Ivy as well and encountered many nice rich kids and some assholes. But that held for all the middle class kids and poor kids there as well. And there were certainly a lot more middle class kids than wealthy ones.
Sorry for going post-happy, just wanted to link to this excellent HBO doc “Born Rich” from 2003. If you haven’t seen it, it is very good. It involves wealthy heirs discussing the unmentionable…money, and why it is such a taboo subject among themselves. Some of the participants were (understandably) very embarrassed by the end result and sued to prevent the films release. It provides an interesting look at the guilt/elitism that great wealth brings, from an insider’s viewpoint.
I post it because any discussion of money/class always brings out the worst.
I suppose it comes down to the fact that many people don’t consider middle class, or upper middle class or even lower middle class to be a ‘spot’ - that implies a rather unpleasant situation to my mind.
I do have a good friend who is much more frugal than I, saves every extra dollar, very rarely buys luxuries, will find a shirt he likes for $50 and then spend another 8 hours looking for a similar shirt for $20 (which he never finds and winds up buying the original, minus 8 hours of his life). He undoubtedly has more assets than I do; however, I don’t think he’s any happier.
I think that’s the point - if you don’t worry about money (as in, you have enough to sustain a comfortable lifestyle that you’re happy with) there’s little motivation to twist yourself up trying to make more.
I think if you are truly poor, wondering where your next meal is coming from, wondering if you’ll have a roof over your head and if your children will be OK, to me that seems much more untenable - a situation to be overcome.
However, I’ve never lived in that situation or even something approaching that (lucky me) so to my eyes what seems unlivable may be perfectly acceptable to someone living it - or at least not so bad that they’re motivated to change. That being said, my example in that thread (my high school chum) WAS motivated to change and did - I think that motivation is stronger for people who are in worse situations.
Yes, and I think also that people who work their way up to the middle class are often happy to stay there.
What keeps me, and many other middle class people, where we are is that we’re happy with where we are. If you were hoping to encourage sympathy for the poor then this is a terrible way of doing so. If I were to assume that poor people are not middle class for much the same reason that I am middle class and not wealthy, then I’d have to conclude that poor people like being poor and already have everything they feel they need.
The rich don’t just save more. They earn more. It takes an extrordinary amount of talent, hard work and luck to land the sorts of jobs that pay millions of dollars - ceos, investmennt bankers, certain lawyers, entrepreneurs, professional athletes and entertainers.
The middle classes typically are not taught to think in that sort of way or to pursue extraordinary things. They are typically taught to fit in with other middle class folks. Go to college, find a nice stable job, buy a modest home and be like everyone else.
One can have a pretty comfortible life being just like everyone else.
Also, most people don’t want to make the personal sacrifices or have the singleminded sense of purpose required to get rich. Working 100 hour weeks. Putting career ahead of family, friends and personal life. I know plenty of wealthy types who are divorced or in sham marriages