“They’re only worth a few million. Not really rich”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Everyone who owns a million dollar house is a millionaire. That includes the majority of the population around here.

I think my bank would disagree with you. They've got the majority of that holding!

When you are an in law that won't be true.

Clearly you don't know the practice of law to say that.

You bought more than you can afford, I understand that.

But normally, once somebody is in a house 30 years... when their kids are getting married, it is paid off... or you at least own most of it.

Well...that's a qualifier that already negates the "everyone who owns a million dollar house is a millionaire" proposition, let alone the "majority of the population" statement as well.

[Anonymous]

DH and I are in our 50s and each have over a million in retirement accounts, plus another $700k for the house and a few hundred K in stocks. So we're worth "a few million". But we are definitely not "rich" except in the sense we keep our wants in line with our resources.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My inlaws are worth 3 million and then their house is another $900k. They are certainly rich by many standards. But if they go into nice assisted living that money will evaporate so fast. And it's what they saved for in the first place. Drove one Japanese car for 20 years before getting another, kept the house cold in winter and hot in summer, no European vacations for kids, no private, rare new clothes.

This. Without a pension, that money is unlikely to last until the next generation if one or both of them ends up needing long-term care. It's a hedge against having to go into an medicare-paid nursing home, not a resource for free-wheeling living.

This is sad. I get it and I'm not judging -- costs ARE atrocious. But to get to a place in life where you've accumulated $3 mil plus another 1 mil in housing and STILL it involves keeping the house hot in the summer and no new clothes!?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Everyone who owns a million dollar house is a millionaire. That includes the majority of the population around here.

I think my bank would disagree with you. They've got the majority of that holding!

When you are an in law that won't be true.

Clearly you don't know the practice of law to say that.

You bought more than you can afford, I understand that.

But normally, once somebody is in a house 30 years... when their kids are getting married, it is paid off... or you at least own most of it.

Well...that's a qualifier that already negates the "everyone who owns a million dollar house is a millionaire" proposition, let alone the "majority of the population" statement as well.

Not when you are talking about in-laws.

[Anonymous]

5 million is the new one million. I would say most folks in 50s and 60s are single digit millionaires in the DMV. Ten million plus is low bar. Personnel I think 100 million is bare min to be rich vs well off

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My inlaws are worth 3 million and then their house is another $900k. They are certainly rich by many standards. But if they go into nice assisted living that money will evaporate so fast. And it's what they saved for in the first place. Drove one Japanese car for 20 years before getting another, kept the house cold in winter and hot in summer, no European vacations for kids, no private, rare new clothes.

This. Without a pension, that money is unlikely to last until the next generation if one or both of them ends up needing long-term care. It's a hedge against having to go into an medicare-paid nursing home, not a resource for free-wheeling living.

This is why we have a lot aaved.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My inlaws are worth 3 million and then their house is another $900k. They are certainly rich by many standards. But if they go into nice assisted living that money will evaporate so fast. And it's what they saved for in the first place. Drove one Japanese car for 20 years before getting another, kept the house cold in winter and hot in summer, no European vacations for kids, no private, rare new clothes.

This. Without a pension, that money is unlikely to last until the next generation if one or both of them ends up needing long-term care. It's a hedge against having to go into an medicare-paid nursing home, not a resource for free-wheeling living.

I don’t really get the obsession with having the “gold standard” in long term care at the expense of otherwise being able to enjoy life when you are healthy. News flash: all nursing homes are miserable places. You might be bed-ridden and totally out of it, at which point do you really care if you are in a Medicaid place or not? (And not Medicare — that program generally doesn’t apply) Will have given up those nicer vacations with your kids really be worth it when you can’t even remember who they are? People who make posts like these assume they will the healthiest person at the nursing home and able to enjoy all these nice perks at a nursing home. That’s a facade — and your health may be so bad that you can’t even tell the difference between the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Plus, the vast, vast, vast majority of people don’t have anywhere even close to $3 million bucks saved. Not even anywhere in that ballpark. Instead, they have modest savings and depend on SS and will depend on Medicaid if they ever need a nursing home. The percentage of elderly on Medicaid in most blue collar states is very high.

Look, saving isn’t a bad thing. More people should save more. Agreed. But some people who post here have very warped views of the world and warped views of nursing homes too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:5 million is the new one million. I would say most folks in 50s and 60s are single digit millionaires in the DMV. Ten million plus is low bar. Personnel I think 100 million is bare min to be rich vs well off

lol

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My inlaws are worth 3 million and then their house is another $900k. They are certainly rich by many standards. But if they go into nice assisted living that money will evaporate so fast. And it's what they saved for in the first place. Drove one Japanese car for 20 years before getting another, kept the house cold in winter and hot in summer, no European vacations for kids, no private, rare new clothes.

This. Without a pension, that money is unlikely to last until the next generation if one or both of them ends up needing long-term care. It's a hedge against having to go into an medicare-paid nursing home, not a resource for free-wheeling living.

I don’t really get the obsession with having the “gold standard” in long term care at the expense of otherwise being able to enjoy life when you are healthy. News flash: all nursing homes are miserable places. You might be bed-ridden and totally out of it, at which point do you really care if you are in a Medicaid place or not? (And not Medicare — that program generally doesn’t apply) Will have given up those nicer vacations with your kids really be worth it when you can’t even remember who they are? People who make posts like these assume they will the healthiest person at the nursing home and able to enjoy all these nice perks at a nursing home. That’s a facade — and your health may be so bad that you can’t even tell the difference between the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Plus, the vast, vast, vast majority of people don’t have anywhere even close to $3 million bucks saved. Not even anywhere in that ballpark. Instead, they have modest savings and depend on SS and will depend on Medicaid if they ever need a nursing home. The percentage of elderly on Medicaid in most blue collar states is very high.

Look, saving isn’t a bad thing. More people should save more. Agreed. But some people who post here have very warped views of the world and warped views of nursing homes too.

NP here - Don't kid yourself - there is a HUGE difference between nursing homes and that different matters. I've spent a fair amount of time with a couple different older relatives while they were in nursing homes. Thankfully, none of them were in truly awful homes, but there was a fairly large difference between the mediocre and the great homes. ( Also, my husband works in the medical field and has been in some truly awful nursing homes, so I know that they exist, even if I haven't personally spent much time in them.) At the high end nursing homes, there was sunlight in the rooms, flowers and nice decor in the common areas, all the patients (even the dementia patients) always had their hair done and looked cute and clean, the aides joked with the patients....and best of all, the place didn't smell. Not at all. My relatives did decline mentally, but they each had a couple of years where they were well aware where they were....and even during the worst mental periods, I think that they had some awareness of their surroundings. And for the rest of us, it was much better to visit in a nice nursing home than a dark, kind of smelly one.

My family members didn't have $3M saved, but they did have savings and well as some pensions. Also, they lived in a lower cost of living area, so they could stay close to their community (and family) and still have high quality care. If someone wants to stay in a high quality facility in the Washington DC area, that will cost a lot more than my family member's care in a semi-rural area. And in my family, in all cases only one spouse out of the couple needed the nursing home care, so that was definitely a different situation than both spouses needing high intensity care.

I realize that there's absolutely no guarantee that I'll live long enough to need a nursing home, but looking at my family history, I'm certainly saving. I'm glad that my elderly loved ones had good care and that I didn't have to watch them suffer in a crappy place (or take on all of the care myself), and I'd like my kids to have that same luxury. I'm not eating beans and rice, but it's well worth it to me to keep my car for a couple of extra years and maybe not buy quite as much stuff. I don't need all that stuff, and I sleep better at night.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Really rich = assets that allow you to not work if you don't want to (for me anyway). A few million doesn't do that around here (it's working-rich if you will).

This is a ridiculous post. Do you really think every retiree in the metro area has something like 5m in assets? Of course a few million, even here, means one can choose not to work.

[Anonymous]

We're 40, we have a little over 3 million in cash and investments, and our house is worth another million something.

I would say we are UMC too.

When we retire, we hope to have over 6 million plus the house which we'll sell and move somewhere cheaper.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We're 40, we have a little over 3 million in cash and investments, and our house is worth another million something.

I would say we are UMC too.

When we retire, we hope to have over 6 million plus the house which we'll sell and move somewhere cheaper.

Also I will tell you that I was posting in the "subtle signs of class" thread on Off Topic and was told I was hopelessly middle class because I've bought furniture from Stickley and would like to go to Portugal on vacation someday.

[Anonymous]

If that's ALL they have, it's not enough to live a comfortable end-of-life in an expensive area, because of healthcare/nursing home costs. Unless you just pop off from a heart attack, or have a car accident...

If you live in a low COL area, then you have less access to quality medical care, but you can live a more comfortable daily life.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My inlaws are worth 3 million and then their house is another $900k. They are certainly rich by many standards. But if they go into nice assisted living that money will evaporate so fast. And it's what they saved for in the first place. Drove one Japanese car for 20 years before getting another, kept the house cold in winter and hot in summer, no European vacations for kids, no private, rare new clothes.

This. Without a pension, that money is unlikely to last until the next generation if one or both of them ends up needing long-term care. It's a hedge against having to go into an medicare-paid nursing home, not a resource for free-wheeling living.

This is sad. I get it and I'm not judging -- costs ARE atrocious. But to get to a place in life where you've accumulated $3 mil plus another 1 mil in housing and STILL it involves keeping the house hot in the summer and no new clothes!?

As DH and I are getting older and costs are looming for our respective parents as they reach the frail health years, I see the truth of this. Now I'm thinking about how sad it is that people have to hoarde all this money in order to pay for nice assisted living at the end of their lives.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My inlaws are worth 3 million and then their house is another $900k. They are certainly rich by many standards. But if they go into nice assisted living that money will evaporate so fast. And it's what they saved for in the first place. Drove one Japanese car for 20 years before getting another, kept the house cold in winter and hot in summer, no European vacations for kids, no private, rare new clothes.

This. Without a pension, that money is unlikely to last until the next generation if one or both of them ends up needing long-term care. It's a hedge against having to go into an medicare-paid nursing home, not a resource for free-wheeling living.

This is sad. I get it and I'm not judging -- costs ARE atrocious. But to get to a place in life where you've accumulated $3 mil plus another 1 mil in housing and STILL it involves keeping the house hot in the summer and no new clothes!?

As DH and I are getting older and costs are looming for our respective parents as they reach the frail health years, I see the truth of this. Now I'm thinking about how sad it is that people have to hoarde all this money in order to pay for nice assisted living at the end of their lives.

I just watched my father pass this past February. His mother had been in a nursing home, and he swore he would never go to one - she had a stroke and was there for almost 5 years. He'd been going through chemo for a recurrence of lung cancer (had a miraculous recovery in 2015) and the chemo was torture. He basically stopped eating, got pneumonia, was admitted to the hospital on Jan 31, was doing better, then said the hell with this, was in hospice on Feb 9, and passed on Feb. 15. The hospice was a medicare facility and was lovely (I spent about 10 hours a day there with my mom). I think he had the right idea. I'm hoping by the time I am that age that assisted suicide will be an option.