Anonymous wrote:Forget the rich. The much poorer people( like myself) could be rich also if they kept working, but took a few chances with their money. I missed out on Amazon, Netwflix, apple and many more. $1k has been turned into hundreds of thousand. I wouldn't miss the couple of thousands every once in a while, but I never knew that such a small amount can grow so much. While I saved my couple of thousand or even more, rich were getting richer while investing it. I didn't because the concept that $7 Netflix can turn in $550 Netflix, didn't exist.
I had $3000 in 1997 and several times over the last 25 years. I had no idea what to do with it or where to put it. I think I just shopped it away most of the time. Robinhood and others have changed a few things for the poor. Many will lose money, but even more will make money. Again, many poor do have the money to make money. They don't trust or simply know about investing. I talked to all of my lower class co-workers about turning my little investments into $300k. They just smiled, said they wished and that was the end of their enthusiasm. The only one who was interested, has no work permit ad can't invest. Most have the extra thousands, but they'd rather shop it away. It's not even the medical bills for most, but the distrust and simply being so far from being a person who can invest.

How much GME do you own, PP?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's hard to believe people who are making this kind of money are posting on DCUM.

How do lawyers have so much free time to post on a message board?

Don't believe everything you read on DCUM, it's anonymous. People can say whatever they want and live out their wildest fantasies.

This. More than 3/4 of the people posting on DCUM claim to be top 1%. I find it hard to believe that MOST of the top 1%ers in America have found the DCUM boards AND ALL of them aren't busy earning that top 1%. I mean sure a lot of the top 1% is due to inheritance and trusts but in America A LOT of them are working -- often as bankers, surgeons, and lawyers. IDK any Goldman Sachs or hedge fund banker or surgeon or biglaw partner was enough time on their hands that they are ADDICTED to DCUM and posting EVERY time a net worth thread drops. I do think lots of DCUM does have a lot of money, but I think they also multiple what they have by 2x or 3x bc hey it's an anonymous internet board, who will know and it makes them feel superior.

Those people are doing it wrong.

Forget the rich. The much poorer people( like myself) could be rich also if they kept working, but took a few chances with their money. I missed out on Amazon, Netwflix, apple and many more. $1k has been turned into hundreds of thousand. I wouldn't miss the couple of thousands every once in a while, but I never knew that such a small amount can grow so much. While I saved my couple of thousand or even more, rich were getting richer while investing it. I didn't because the concept that $7 Netflix can turn in $550 Netflix, didn't exist.
I had $3000 in 1997 and several times over the last 25 years. I had no idea what to do with it or where to put it. I think I just shopped it away most of the time. Robinhood and others have changed a few things for the poor. Many will lose money, but even more will make money. Again, many poor do have the money to make money. They don't trust or simply know about investing. I talked to all of my lower class co-workers about turning my little investments into $300k. They just smiled, said they wished and that was the end of their enthusiasm. The only one who was interested, has no work permit ad can't invest. Most have the extra thousands, but they'd rather shop it away. It's not even the medical bills for most, but the distrust and simply being so far from being a person who can invest.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm crying I had to sell my car to make rent today.

So now i am facing a 2.5 hour bus ride in this COVID to make it to work tomorrow and i am NOT looking forward to it.


I was doing uber eats as side income, but obviously it was not enough.

I wish I could order myself an uber eats meal but we are having spagetthi tonight. (99 cent pasta, $3 sauce I sprang for the prego).

Still mad a customer from last week snatched the food bag out of my hand when it was the restaurant that made me late to deliver, no tip. In one of those 1 million dollar houses you all are talking about. As i cout the $17 in my wallet over and over again (no credit cards, thankfully).

Thanks i feel better getting to rant.
That is all.

OP, why are you not on unemployment and why do you feel obligated to pay rent when there is an eviction moratiorium in place? Inform your landlord, go to all organizations providing relief and have them help you with rent, car payment, etc. Food delivery is not worth it! Been there, done that. Good luck!

Do you understand that when the rent moratoriums expire, ALL the rent that was put into forbearance is due? And if the renter can’t pay it, evictions will issue forthwith? Anyone with any sense who wants to stay where they are and not incur an eviction history and poor rental references is scrambling to make rent monthly despite the moratoriums. Those who can’t make it are facing serious hardship post-moratorium. Watch the homeless population skyrocket when the moratoriums are lifted.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is just going to turn into a humble bragging circle-jerk for defensive so-called “self made” users here.

Yep. Lots of people explaining why THEY are super-rich because of their own hard work and good choices, and THEY deserve their good fortune, but THEY are super down to earth or aware of their privileges, and also everyone could be successful if they just worked hard enough, because that's definitely how life works.

But that is exactly how life works in the US. Not in many other countries, but definitely in the US. My mom came here when I was 6. She had $250 in her pocket, didn’t speak a word of English, and settled in subsidized housing given to her by the immigration agency as she was a refugee. She learned English, worked cleaning restaurants and offices, on weekends I helped. The school I went to wasn’t great by any means but if I brought home anything lower than top marks, there was hell to pay because “we came to this country for a chance and you have the chance to do better”. We didn’t own a TV, I slept on a mattress in the living room, food was pasta, so much pasta and whatever else was on sale. Clothes were all donations and books were from the library. I had no presents for my birthday, but she did make cake. No vacations, no camps, no lessons (though I did play an instrument after 6th grade thanks to music classes in school). For 10 years, she drove a run down car with peeling paint that was basically held together with duct tape. She got a couple of the ladies she worked with and they started a cleaning business. That business helped pay for college for me, along with Pell grants and me working. I didn’t go to a private college and lived at home to save money on housing. I didn’t get much choice in college major because I knew I needed to earn good money, I couldn’t just get my BA in Art History and intern for a year. I did accounting because it was practical and paid well. I got my masters. I married my husband (also from an immigrant family, he’s an attorney). We lived very frugally until his loans were paid off and then once he hit 35, his income really went up. Suddenly we are making serious money but we are investing it. We do own a $1m+ house, our cars are both under 50k and we paid cash for them. We took our first vacation after we paid off his loans. We have two kids (we can’t comfortably afford three), we help our parents out and they help us out with babysitting. The American dream is possible but what I see going on isn’t that the dream is dead, it’s that folks don’t want to work for it or they make dumb decisions.

Americans are up to their eyeballs in debt. I’m not talking medical debt (that’s it’s own separate issue and I very much support universal healthcare and would pay higher taxes for it). I’ve seen guys earning 100k and blowing it on car payments, buying houses they can’t afford, and other crap they don’t need. There’s a sense of entitlement to it, like they should be able to have everything. And then I also saw how little folks value education. Immigrant kids get a beating if they don’t bring home good grades, meanwhile you have American kids skipping school or talking back to teachers and parents support the kids! So all this crying about how life isn’t fair is ridiculous. Of course it’s not fair! Nothing is fair. Every country has its own problems, but be glad your problem is just debt. Where my mom is from, if you owed someone money, they’d come to your door in the middle of the night and you’d disappear. You wanted to start a business and it made someone upset, they could hire someone to shoot up your business. You got sick and didn’t have any money, there was plenty of hospital space but no medicine at all. And you can’t change anything about your situation. In America, you can change things. Your town has no jobs? Move. You can’t afford a house? Get a different job. America isn’t perfect (I’m not trying to sweep racial inequality under the table) but it’s got opportunities. It just requires you to actually work for the opportunities, instead of insisting on them just because you were born here.

I think those that have like to brag about it on DCUM.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hear, hear!

DCUM is apparently the land of the
...3%? I don't even know. Well above the top 10% of earners for the country, it seems. And yet all these posts say "I just worked hard and made good choices." Do you think you are honestly THAT much smarter and harder working than the other 97% of the country? Do you honestly think everyone in a job that pays under 6 figures just doesn't work as hard as you? Or that there are enough jobs in finance, law, medicine, and tech that if everyone wanted to make "better choices" and be wealthy, everyone could? Statistically, either everyone else is really dumb and lazy, or you're overvaluing your efforts and undervaluing luck and other factors.

While not everyone, the bottom half of the curve in the U.S. is pretty dumb and lazy.

I hate to say it, and I can't quite confirm lazy, but dumb, yes, for sure. I have come into contact with people recently (a lot of them) working minimum wage jobs. Most of them aren't capable of navigating this world even inasmuch as getting their UI claims right and writing a coherent paragraph. It is sad and I don't know how to fix this but many many poor people are not smart. At all.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's hard to believe people who are making this kind of money are posting on DCUM.

How do lawyers have so much free time to post on a message board?

Don't believe everything you read on DCUM, it's anonymous. People can say whatever they want and live out their wildest fantasies.

This. More than 3/4 of the people posting on DCUM claim to be top 1%. I find it hard to believe that MOST of the top 1%ers in America have found the DCUM boards AND ALL of them aren't busy earning that top 1%. I mean sure a lot of the top 1% is due to inheritance and trusts but in America A LOT of them are working -- often as bankers, surgeons, and lawyers. IDK any Goldman Sachs or hedge fund banker or surgeon or biglaw partner was enough time on their hands that they are ADDICTED to DCUM and posting EVERY time a net worth thread drops. I do think lots of DCUM does have a lot of money, but I think they also multiple what they have by 2x or 3x bc hey it's an anonymous internet board, who will know and it makes them feel superior.

Actually the more $ I make the more time I have, because my money is making money passively and in my job I have more control over time / resources to deploy. With Zoom / WFH I spend way more time on useless conference calls where I am browsing news / forums on the side. There are 1.6M households in the US in the top 1% -- which is a fairly large number in absolute terms.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is just going to turn into a humble bragging circle-jerk for defensive so-called “self made” users here.

Yep. Lots of people explaining why THEY are super-rich because of their own hard work and good choices, and THEY deserve their good fortune, but THEY are super down to earth or aware of their privileges, and also everyone could be successful if they just worked hard enough, because that's definitely how life works.

I think this interesting because I come from a legitimately poor upbringing and am a professional with a hhi > 1M now and I have the opposite reaction. It was very, very hard to make this jump (and my beloved siblings didn’t.) yes, lots of hard work was involved but more so dumb luck (right teacher at the right time encouraging me, the luck of being a fast learner, did not have a tendency to get depressed despite lots of stressors.) if any of those things had been different I would be in my old neighborhood also working very hard. I think lots of people remember their hard work (I do too) but not all the other random things that made a change in SES possible.

I would love a DCUM rule where you aren't allowed to post about yout >=$400k HHI without first acknowledging your privilege.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some of the answers (not all) are why the US is basically over as a country. No sense of identity in anything but money and work. They don’t call it the Almighty Dollar for nothing.

https://www.studyfinds.org/stimulus-check-voters-agree/

I agree! The US is over. Somebody let the tens of millions of immigrants hoping to move here know that the party is over. Tell them we have determined that money and work don’t matter and they can just stay and be happy where they are.

Immigrants think very differently. Where they come from it is mostly much worse than here. The low income uneducated ones are happy to earn some cash, get some benefits, get some hand me downs, put their kids into safe schools. They don't think happiness is having a million dollar home and sending a kid to private.

Anonymous wrote:I'm crying I had to sell my car to make rent today.

So now i am facing a 2.5 hour bus ride in this COVID to make it to work tomorrow and i am NOT looking forward to it.


I was doing uber eats as side income, but obviously it was not enough.

I wish I could order myself an uber eats meal but we are having spagetthi tonight. (99 cent pasta, $3 sauce I sprang for the prego).

Still mad a customer from last week snatched the food bag out of my hand when it was the restaurant that made me late to deliver, no tip. In one of those 1 million dollar houses you all are talking about. As i cout the $17 in my wallet over and over again (no credit cards, thankfully).

Thanks i feel better getting to rant.
That is all.

OP, why are you not on unemployment and why do you feel obligated to pay rent when there is an eviction moratiorium in place? Inform your landlord, go to all organizations providing relief and have them help you with rent, car payment, etc. Food delivery is not worth it! Been there, done that. Good luck!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's hard to believe people who are making this kind of money are posting on DCUM.

How do lawyers have so much free time to post on a message board?

Don't believe everything you read on DCUM, it's anonymous. People can say whatever they want and live out their wildest fantasies.

This. More than 3/4 of the people posting on DCUM claim to be top 1%. I find it hard to believe that MOST of the top 1%ers in America have found the DCUM boards AND ALL of them aren't busy earning that top 1%. I mean sure a lot of the top 1% is due to inheritance and trusts but in America A LOT of them are working -- often as bankers, surgeons, and lawyers. IDK any Goldman Sachs or hedge fund banker or surgeon or biglaw partner was enough time on their hands that they are ADDICTED to DCUM and posting EVERY time a net worth thread drops. I do think lots of DCUM does have a lot of money, but I think they also multiple what they have by 2x or 3x bc hey it's an anonymous internet board, who will know and it makes them feel superior.

I think you're wrong. My cousin's husband is a CEO of a major pharmaceutical company. I often see his picture in the news. He plays a lot of candy crush and Hay Day on his phone.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's hard to believe people who are making this kind of money are posting on DCUM.

How do lawyers have so much free time to post on a message board?

Don't believe everything you read on DCUM, it's anonymous. People can say whatever they want and live out their wildest fantasies.

This. More than 3/4 of the people posting on DCUM claim to be top 1%. I find it hard to believe that MOST of the top 1%ers in America have found the DCUM boards AND ALL of them aren't busy earning that top 1%. I mean sure a lot of the top 1% is due to inheritance and trusts but in America A LOT of them are working -- often as bankers, surgeons, and lawyers. IDK any Goldman Sachs or hedge fund banker or surgeon or biglaw partner was enough time on their hands that they are ADDICTED to DCUM and posting EVERY time a net worth thread drops. I do think lots of DCUM does have a lot of money, but I think they also multiple what they have by 2x or 3x bc hey it's an anonymous internet board, who will know and it makes them feel superior.

I think to some degree a money and finance forum is going to self-select wealthier people. Maybe not 1%, but probably top 20%. I also think you have a lot of SAH spouse's of high earners that post on here and they have a lot of free time.

Why are people on DCUM even worrying about stimulus checks? If you all are as wealthy as you say you are, you aren't getting them -- don't you have to make under 150k as a married couple or 75k as a single person to get one? I mean those are poverty wages to DCUM.