Reply to Why are people so hesitant to call themselves rich/wealthy when they are by any definition?

Forum Index » Money and Finances

Reply to "Why are people so hesitant to call themselves rich/wealthy when they are by any definition?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think a big part of issue is that being middle class is often tied to the need to debt.  We need debt to buy houses, cars, education, and often healthcare.   It takes a huge amount of wealth to avoid the need for bank loans for major life expenses.[/quote]

Only because you keep increasing your baseline for what is acceptable for those expenses.

I'm middle class (HHI of 150k, spouse and I both work, one kid) and we had some college debt, though we paid that off. We don't borrow money to buy cars -- we just save up and buy decent used cars for cash (no SUVs, but then with only one kid we don't need a big vehicle, and we buy practical brands like Subaru or Toyota). We will pay off our house around 55 (purchased for $500k, now worth about $600k, so some added equity but not a massive windfall), and our intention is either to retire in place or to sell our home and downsize/move to a lower COL area. That should make us debt free before DC goes to college, which should enable us to pay for college out of saving and income and mostly minimize borrowing.

Rich people who carry a lot of debt are making a choice to do so. If our income was higher, we'd already be debt-free. Just because you scaled your lifestyle up to something that necessitates debt does not make you middle class. It just means your approach to finances relies heavily on leverage. So does Elon Musk's. Is he not rich? He bought Twitter with debt.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics