Reply to s/o - feeling "poor" at these ludicrously high incomes. what are they actually missing?

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Reply to "s/o - feeling "poor" at these ludicrously high incomes. what are they actually missing?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think it's that simple. Lots of people in this area are not from here and are not from any competitive market like SF or NYC or even NJ or Mass. So they think by making it to DC and making 300k, they have ARRIVED. Then they look around and realize there are people making 400k, 500k, 1 million etc. They look around at the Jones and realize that at 300k, they may have to think about private school and it's no fair that their friends making 500k have to give zero thought to whether to enroll their 3 kids in private school.

And then they look back home to Wisconsin or Arkansas or wherever and realize that it's no fair that their old high school classmates -- who weren't even class valedictorian and weren't ivy bound land are grads of the local non flagship u are making 150k in sales and living in a McMansion style house with 2 brand new cars, whereas they HAVE ARRIVED in DC but "only" have a 700k brick home from the 1960s to show for it.

I haven't seen the same insecurity from people coming from say Long Island or NJ or the Bay Area bc they are used to be around A LOT of money and are also from competitive places so they never expected that they would be "the one" in their group of peers who'd be the success.[/quote]

There may be some of this, but these HCOL coastal cities aren't the only places where people make high salaries.  My parents are MDs in "flyover country", and they easily pull in a 7 figure HHI.

What I've noticed on DCUM is that people have a skewed perception of "rich", that seems to look more like "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" (i.e. .1%).  They don't think that having a house in a good part of town, maybe paying for private school and/or a nanny, having cars that work, having a savings, and having enough discretionary income to not have to worry too much about what/where they eat makes them UMC or even "rich" by most definitions.  What's funny is that growing up in a LCOL area with parents who had a 7 figure income, that's more or less the lifestyle we lived...and I was very aware that we were rich.  The additional things we did was have luxury cars, take international trips (we didn't necessarily stay in 5 star hotels, though, and those trips were typically to my parents' country of origin), and not stress about extra curricular activity spending.  My parents were also able to pay full price for college for all of us.  We still mostly shopped sales and discount stores/outlets.

I think another thing people miss is how much on the edge some people live, even with high incomes.  My parents, especially my dad, are pretty conservative when it comes to savings.  It's actually to the point where we sometimes wonder why he works so hard, given that all of his kids also earn good livings so we aren't depending on an inheritance from him (and he's not the type of parent to let us live off of a trust fund while he's alive).  But a very good friend of his died relatively young (late 60s), after receiving an aggressive cancer diagnosis.  My dad helped his wife sort out the financial details. It was clear that despite his friend also being a doctor who lived in the same part of town and spent, if anything, a bit more than my parents while certainly earning less on a single income, he hadn't planned his future as well.  His wife who was a SAHM for 40+ years had to sell their house and start working again.  I asked my dad the state of their mortgage, and he told me he had paid it off early around the time they turned 60 so there would be nothing for us to worry about whenever the time comes.

I think if people accept that rich means having a lot of choice in how you get the basics plus some variable amount of extra, then they would be a lot happier.  Most MC people don't have a ton of choices and they do worry about how they are going to get the basics.  Remember "Roseanne"?  That's MC.  Not sending your kids to one of the best public schools, affording a nanny, and having a car that's less than 10 years old.[/quote]

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