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What the flying fuck. I've never had more than $10k in my life, and that's a recent accomplishment -- most of my life was a single missed-paycheck away from fin

What the flying fuck. I've never had more than $10k in my life, and that's a recent accomplishment -- most of my life was a single missed-paycheck away from financial insolvency, and for a brief period, I was actually homeless. For 14 months I lived on a $2,250/mo salary in downtown Boulder, CO. That meant trying to scrounge free meals from meetups or wherever else would feed me. The idea of having a million dollars, or even making 200-300k a year is so insane to me. If that isn't rich maybe I missed a memo somewhere.

keredson 6y ago
virtually no one feels rich. for the simple fact that you achieving it also normalizes it in your own brain. and the more wealthy you are the more wealthy(-er than you) people you tend to know, so your position relative to your peer group stays largely the same. i'm not arguing these people aren't rich. just trying to help illuminate why they never feel rich (and therefore don't seem to acknowledge that very obvious fact about themselves).
- imtringued 6y ago
  It's pretty obvious. If you don't know many people who are less wealthy than you then you have no frame of reference to consider yourself wealthy.
  - keredson 6y ago
    That's only a small part of it. Most of the people are the richest in their extended family, and tons of friends from HS, college, etc. so they do know people who are not in their income bracket. I'd say it's more related to the imposter syndrome. IE if I got here and I'm just ok, clearly this wasn't too hard a level to reach. That and "well I used to work with so-and-so, and we're about equal, but they're making $800k while I'm stuck making $400k, so I'm clearly failing". Or even $2M vs $10M, etc. Again, it's crazy, because both people are clearly actually "rich", I'm just trying to explain the mechanics of why so few actually feel that way.

keredson 6y ago

virtually no one feels rich. for the simple fact that you achieving it also normalizes it in your own brain. and the more wealthy you are the more wealthy(-er than you) people you tend to know, so your position relative to your peer group stays largely the same. i'm not arguing these people aren't rich. just trying to help illuminate why they never feel rich (and therefore don't seem to acknowledge that very obvious fact about themselves).

imtringued 6y ago
It's pretty obvious. If you don't know many people who are less wealthy than you then you have no frame of reference to consider yourself wealthy.
- keredson 6y ago
  That's only a small part of it. Most of the people are the richest in their extended family, and tons of friends from HS, college, etc. so they do know people who are not in their income bracket. I'd say it's more related to the imposter syndrome. IE if I got here and I'm just ok, clearly this wasn't too hard a level to reach. That and "well I used to work with so-and-so, and we're about equal, but they're making $800k while I'm stuck making $400k, so I'm clearly failing". Or even $2M vs $10M, etc. Again, it's crazy, because both people are clearly actually "rich", I'm just trying to explain the mechanics of why so few actually feel that way.