Ok DCUrban Mums. What is Rich
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Anonymous
The criteria is somewhere below Bezos, but well above $400k annual earned income that stops as soon as you stop showing up for work, or when you start to age out of your prime. |
Anonymous
And I think this is utter nonsense. Just because there are rich people who are even richer than other rich people doesn't mean that they are the *only* rich people. I know that I am rich (HHI of $300k-800k for the past 8 years, now in mid 30s with NW of a couple million). I'm not going to point to Jeff Bezos and cry, "but he's the REALLY rich one!" I should be taxed heavily, be expected to give money to people in need, and not expect financial aid for my kids' private school or college, and yes, STFU. I think the blindness to one's own richness comes from the affluent all congregating in NYC/DC/SF/Chicago. When I was a kid growing up in a small town, the "rich" were specialty doctors or small business owners clearing a few hundred thousand. They knew they were rich, sponsored my soccer team, all that. I see people saying they're not *really* rich, don't *really* live an affluent lifestyle, because they don't carry Chanel bags and their only real indulgence is spending $30k a year on travel. You see, all their money is just eaten up by living in an affluent neighborhood in a million dollar house. Well anyone in my hometown would see you're rich. You've just deluded yourself to thinking that your richness doesn't count because too many people you know are also rich. |
Anonymous
| Yeah, I disagree. We have a low HHI Of $120k by DCUM standards, and maybe a 3M net worth if you consider our house (purchased for $600k now worth $1.2). I’m currently not working due to the pandemic and distance learning. When I was working, I was bringing in $140k, so our income was more than double. We have two kids in upper elementary and middle. I feel rich. I believe we are rich. While we drive a Toyota have no house cleaners, don’t buy luxury things, we are and feel extremely fortunate. My parents grew up in a developing country with very little except education to propel them forward. They achieved a solidly upper middle class income in the us, though finances were often tight. We were rich and still they struggled and saw the glass half full. I’m trying to flip that for my family and focus on the abundance we have. We really are so lucky compared to so so many. rich is a state of mind. It’s not the same as blindly spending, it’s a state of contentment with what you have and realizing it’s not the most, but it is just right. Yes, we are rich, and we bear a responsibility to others who are not rich. We must pay more taxes and give more to charity. |
Anonymous
This feel right 
In truth, we make 400-500k and I still wouldn't put my early ES kids in private school. For us, 80k is too big a chunk post-tax when you consider we didn't come from money and are working hard to create a secure future for our family. So I view our friends and neighbors who choose private as "rich" and somehow separate from us when they are probably better defined as having different backgrounds and/or priorities. It's interesting to examine how we think about money and wealth. Honestly, we are rich. But it wouldn't take much to knock us back down to MC. |
Anonymous
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I'll bite. I grew up in a very unstable financial environment - we went from being very wealthy to barely hanging on - home ownership and scholarships kept us from poverty. Got a scholarship to a top tier college, and was so poor in college I got zero money from home for anything - had to work 4 jobs until I figured out emergency student loans and dropped from 4 jobs to 2. Freshman year before I got the jobs I couldn't even afford shampoo and would wash my hair with hand soap from the dorm bathroom. Hid from my friends how poor I was by working so many jobs.
Came to DC and ended up in a decent but not well paying job, worked super hard and ended up capitalizing on my technical skills to do consulting and a number of jobs. Now, my income is around $220k. The big change in income came when I married my husband, who had saved $150k over his lifetime, and inherited $150k. Now with my husbands salary is $120k, and I feel rich, but we live upper middle class lives because we saved so much and have about 10k a year in dividend income on our investments of 1 million. We are so so lucky. Childcare costs, which I committed to spending because I never want to let my career go after starting at such a low point, have been very very expensive- probably about 45k for the past 7 years. But the investment in childcare has kept me working through multiple pregnancies, surgeries, family challenges- its literally the price we pay for two working parents. That being said, I'm worried about the Fed devaluing money and the stock market being insanely overvalued. Plus, we have friends in this area who have dropped us because we won't join their country club or go to Aspen to ski. I actually think they are fine people, its just that they want their friendships to be easy to maintain, when you're busy that makes sense. But it made us ask the question of ourselves, are we rich? We concluded no, until kids college is paid for we aren't rich. When COVID hit, I realized that while our choices aren't endless, we are very very lucky to have food on the table, not worry about food costs, have a large enough house that we are comfortable, have some bandwidth in case one of us lost our job, have good health insurance. So we are definitely upper middle class, but it is 100% because I insist on staying in the workforce, even though with my health issues and small children, that can be really really hard- so hard some days. Sometimes I'm jealous of people who've made other choices, but hey, if my kid can afford to buy shampoo in college, I will have accomplished a better standard of living for them. I just need them to know that they will need to work really hard. Very impressed with the acumen of the people who have made lots of money on this board. Feel bad for the people who are making good money and let the grass is greener mindset start detracting from their many blessings. Life is hard, but we are lucky to be living in America. |
Anonymous
Just curious to know exactly how much extra you paid in taxes, voluntarily for 2019, above your calculated liability? |
Anonymous
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It's a disease: people strenously denying they're rich in the face of all available evidence, including publicly available data regarding median and average incomes and net worth, even after factoring high cost of living areas (of which the DC area is NOT, by far, the highest) 
So they can go blue in the face all they want, we know they're rich. |
Anonymous
what percent of the country would you classify as rich? the top ____ percent? |
Anonymous
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Rich = high income w/o the assets. They still work for their money.
You didn't ask, but wealthy = high assets + high net worth. They make their money on passive income. |
Anonymous
I gave away money to the things I would want government to spend if they taxed me more heavily. Obviously. |
Anonymous
so you wouldn't consider an heiress rich? |
Anonymous
So you think that you should be free to donate your money as you see fit, but you don't think others should be afforded the same privilege. You think other people should pay more taxes, but not you. |
Anonymous
No, I think I should be taxed more to pay for the kinds of things that I currently donate money for (diaper banks, UNCF). I think people who are rich like me and not taxes enough should also donate to those things since they are currently not taxed for them, but that they should, of course, be taxed to pay for them. |
Anonymous
Of course you do. Other rich people think that more donations should go to the church, and they think you should be taxed more so that more donations can go to churches. You see how that works? People like you always think that you should have the freedom to choose what to do with other people's money, but you don't want them to be able to dictate what you do with your money. |
Anonymous
Except taxes are Constitutional. And using governement money to fund religious activity is not. |