Reply to What percentage of the population do you think has a trust fund?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Probably about 1%. Think about it though, if 1% is “rich” I’m this country, but you live in an area where almost everyone is a 1%er, I will feel like everyone is a 1%er. So, it’s possible that everyone you sister knows does have a trust fund. [/quote]

This. Particularly if you travel in certain professional circles in DC, there are a lot of people with under-the-radar family wealth. As someone mentioned upthread, most trust funds "only" have a few hundred thousand in them. That's not the kind of money that exempts you from working. So there's probably a ton of people in DC who have a trust fund or similar but still work in Big Law and consulting because they can't live off the trust. They can, however, use the trust to buy a home or put down a sizable downpayment, make investments, and other things.

It took me about a decade of living and working in DC to figure out that the reason I couldn't keep up with the spending habits of so many colleagues or friends from grad school is because, unlike me, they were not living/saving from their salary alone. It's embarrassing to say that, and of course I knew some people had family money, but for so long I just thought everyone was financing these fancy vacations and massive bar tabs on credit cards and was secretly judgmental. Turns out they could afford trips, clothes, and socializing that I could not because their family's funded their housing (and often also their vacations and wardrobes) even into their 30s. It was actually a relief when I realized it because I had previously thought that I was just missing some obvious way to stretch my income, like some investment strategy that magically netted a spare 50k a year or something. Nope.[/quote]

Thanks, PP. You're right, it seems obvious in retrospect, but I've been going through a similar thing since we bought a house and it seems our neighbors have so much more than we do, and this helps to reaffirm that we're doing pretty much everything "right." In our case, it's really that we don't have nearly as high an income-- we can afford this house because we rent the basement, we have less wiggle room after the mortgage is paid, etc. But I do think part is that, while they probably don't have trust funds, a lot of them grew up with more money and thus at least got a down payment from their parents, or (sadly) an inheritance of six figures, which we have not. I always feel like I should be doing more-- not so much owning more things or going on nicer vacations-- but saving more for college and giving more to the PTA, neighborhood charities, etc. In fact, I do a lot of that, and maybe even more than average, but I can't do as much as some people, and it's not because I'm stingy or a spendthrift. I just... literally don't have as much money.  [/quote]

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