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> but I really struggle to imagine any pair of pants being worth that much money unless they are lined with gold or something. It depends on how much you earn.

> but I really struggle to imagine any pair of pants being worth that much money unless they are lined with gold or something. It depends on how much you earn. I don’t mind spending tens of thousands on Loro Piana cashmere because it’s really nice, but at my income level the price difference between that and Zara is pretty much immaterial. Keep in mind that HN is packed with people with salaries above $1M/yr and entrepreneurs with way higher income levels. A few years ago I too would’ve considered $500 for pants to be absurd, at this point I just go to a tailor and pay slightly more than that but save tons of time in the long term and always have perfect fitting pants. The time savings alone are tremendous, after getting a pair fitted properly I can just order new ones whenever I need without having to spend hours going through shops looking for the right pair of pants.

frmersdog 11mo ago
In this job market, in this political environment, with Luigi Mangione a Bonnie-and-Clyde-tier folk hero, the bit you quoted was perhaps a clue to the lack of wisdom in humblebragging that you spend a family's annual food budget on 5 pounds of spun sheep keratin. I imagine that I will be the bad guy for pointing this out. (Perhaps even to myself, considering that there's certainly utility in rich people yapping incautiously about the reasons others might want to turn on an Enes Yilmazer video and figure out where the panic room is.)
- walletdrainer 11mo ago
  This feels like Reddit leaking over a little bit. Let me remind you that this is a forum operated by a VC fund looking for people to give lots of money to so they can build billion dollar businesses. Those who succeed are routinely celebrated here, but actually discussing that money being spent rapidly becomes judgmental. Hard to reconcile it being super cool to build an unicorn (a cute term we’ve come up with to describe billion dollar startups which have made their founders tremendously wealthy), but somewhat disgusting to actually have or spend that money. News.ycombinator.com seems like the wrong place to complain about capitalism. FWIW I don’t even get a Silicon Valley salary, am not in any way extraordinary, but have spent 10+ years building 100+ small online businesses out of which none have been particularly successful (but in total the little streams add up)
  - ok_dad 11mo ago
    It's not reddit leaking, it's normal people leaking into your weird millionaire world. I say weird because 99.9% of people in the world would consider it on a range of weird all the way to unethical that you spend tens of thousands on pants. I'm not going to sit here and preach and make you bored, but consider what good you could do with that money, if only your ass and thighs were slightly more uncomfortable than they are today. Especially now when people around the world are dealing with 2x the food costs of a year or a few ago. Also, HN is a fine place to complain about capitalism, maybe a few of you capitalists will have it click in your brains that other people are struggling and you can do something about it other than sitting on a cloud.
    - walletdrainer 11mo ago
      I donate approximately 47.5% of everything I earn to the French government, is that not enough? (And yes, taxes are a voluntary donation in my case. I could move less than a mile across the border to Monaco and incorporate elsewhere if I wanted to pay ~0%) Of course, when I spend 10000 euros in the Loro Piana boutique or anywhere really, 20% of that goes to the government too. Could I afford give more? Sure! To whom? How much? Figuring that out seems like another full time job, and the track record of the effective altruism folks doesn’t seem all that great.
      - robocat 11mo ago
        Everybody seems to have an opinion on what someone more wealthy than they are should spend their money on. Unfortunately we don't get to look at what the commenter earns or spend... A normal car weekly payment in the US is ridiculously wasteful. If you live in the US its almost a given that you are ridiculously wealthy in comparison to many in the world. A normal overseas trip is ridiculously wasteful. It's hard to consider what an average person in the world would think is wasteful, because with our common developed country expenses we don't feel like millionaires. We couldn't even ask a person with an average world income to comment, since do they even have the free time to waste? (edits)
- basisword 11mo ago
  He wasn't 'humblebragging'. He was answering a question on an anonymous forum honestly.
  - boston_clone 11mo ago
    > at my income level the price difference between that and Zara is pretty much immaterial this is probably just regular bragging, right? now, discussing how donating $100 versus $10k to a cause or community being negligible to their economic security would at least front-load some humility, but capitalists gon' capitalist. oops! thank god this is Hacker News though, and not some safe-haven for boring rich people!
    - walletdrainer 11mo ago
      Can you describe a way of communicating that same point without it being bragging in your eyes? I guess I could’ve engaged in the gymnastics of saying SWIM like they used to do on some drug forums :)
      - boston_clone 11mo ago
        Sure, you could just omit that entire sentence, no? Retains readability but avoids unnecessary specifics.
        walletdrainer 11mo ago
        I think without that sentence it fails to communicate the absurdity of trying to figure out a generic answer to whether or not something is worth it. With a total rewrite I could certainly have communicated that point in a much more clinical manner. I just don’t see the point.
        marknutter 11mo ago
        No it doesn't. He's establishing the fact that he can afford very expensive clothes and why, from personal experience, he believes them to be worth it if you can afford it. If you omit the entire sentence the whole meaning of the post changes. I think you may just be upset because he's wealthier than you.
- jazzyjackson 11mo ago
  Luigi wouldn't have been famous if he offed a guy for wearing tailored pants and a rolex, he's famous because the CEO was a scapegoat of everything wrong with health insurance.
- awakeasleep 11mo ago
  I don’t make nearly that kind of money, but I don’t think people who do should keep it a secret like you’re trying to enforce some norm of secrecy on him
  - Teever 11mo ago
    I agree. It's interesting how in Norway, Sweden, and Finland people's tax returns are public information and it seems to work out just fine.
- tavavex 11mo ago
  > you spend a family's annual food budget on 5 pounds of spun sheep keratin Maybe they're obscenely rich, or perhaps they're just living up to their username?
  - walletdrainer 11mo ago
    Thankfully this username was related to a post I created this account to comment on, not me personally :)
- basisword 11mo ago
  >> there's certainly utility in rich people yapping incautiously about the reasons others might want to turn on an Enes Yilmazer video and figure out where the panic room is. Can you explain what you mean by this? I hope I'm misunderstanding it.
carabiner 11mo ago
What is your NW?
- walletdrainer 11mo ago
  Less than $10M with the mortgage, my income will hit $5M this year pre-tax for the first time (almost half of that goes to the government) Valuing my vast and eclectic empire of small websites earning between $1k and $300k per year is tricky because it’d presumably be tremendously hard to sell them all at once. Of course some reasonable multiple would arrive at some much higher number than my bank account+physical assets.
tavavex 11mo ago
> Keep in mind that HN is packed with people with salaries above $1M/yr and entrepreneurs with way higher income levels. Is it really packed with those people? I know there's some, but I imagined that the average user here is probably some senior engineer in his 40s making six figures - not an executive or some industry-leading employee, and not the top <1% entrepreneur who manages to walk away with multimillion dollar profits. If that really is the common audience here, then I'm living in a whole different universe from what the average would work out to.
- walletdrainer 11mo ago
  You don’t have to be “industry leading” to reach that kind of comp working for big tech. I could be totally wrong, but in a world where plumbers and the likes can walk away with multimillion dollar profits you probably don’t have to be top <1% to pull that off either. Not taking shots at plumbers, but the point is that even something boring can and will pay off if you work hard at it. My own work couldn’t be more boring, I’m not particularly smart or talented. I just grind out many little varyingly useful websites with card payment forms.
  - astrange 11mo ago
    $1M/year in big tech is like director level? That's not "industry leading" but there aren't that many of them.
    - bradlys 11mo ago
      Senior manager can hit $1m depending on division and/or a little bit of stock appreciation.
  - pseudalopex 11mo ago
    Most people don't work for big tech. Most people who work for big tech don't make so much. And not most plumbers. Many people under estimate their skills and luck.
  - brailsafe 11mo ago
gr4vityWall 11mo ago
> Keep in mind that HN is packed with people with salaries above $1M/yr and entrepreneurs with way higher income levels. Are you sure about that? I would be surprised if it was much above the US salary average, considering the global audience of HN.
- walletdrainer 11mo ago
  I could be totally wrong! However, at the very least I think we can agree that it’s a site chock-full of aspiring multimillionaires.
  - zipy124 11mo ago
    In the UK for intance there's only about 20,000 people who earn over a million yearly, and I'd bet a decent amount of those are C-suite or purely through capital gains...
freddie_mercury 11mo ago
There's some weird online effect where people assume everyone they talk to on the internet makes essentially the same exact amount of money they do. I've noticed this most in a forum for a country I used to live in where foreigners would come in and post "What's an affordable hotel/restaurant/bar/travel experience". Uh, I have no idea what "affordable" means to you!?
- walletdrainer 11mo ago
  Occasionally I read the local subreddit /r/monaco, and see posts like “how much should my weekly food budget be?” with no further information included. In a place where “normal” genuinely ranges between a couple of euros at McDonald’s and 500+ euros a day in fancy restaurants (easily 1000+ if you drink wine) it always feels like a particularly outrageous question. There are many places in the world where that’s not a very unreasonable question, but this certainly isn’t it.

frmersdog 11mo ago

In this job market, in this political environment, with Luigi Mangione a Bonnie-and-Clyde-tier folk hero, the bit you quoted was perhaps a clue to the lack of wisdom in humblebragging that you spend a family's annual food budget on 5 pounds of spun sheep keratin. I imagine that I will be the bad guy for pointing this out. (Perhaps even to myself, considering that there's certainly utility in rich people yapping incautiously about the reasons others might want to turn on an Enes Yilmazer video and figure out where the panic room is.)

walletdrainer 11mo ago
This feels like Reddit leaking over a little bit. Let me remind you that this is a forum operated by a VC fund looking for people to give lots of money to so they can build billion dollar businesses. Those who succeed are routinely celebrated here, but actually discussing that money being spent rapidly becomes judgmental. Hard to reconcile it being super cool to build an unicorn (a cute term we’ve come up with to describe billion dollar startups which have made their founders tremendously wealthy), but somewhat disgusting to actually have or spend that money. News.ycombinator.com seems like the wrong place to complain about capitalism. FWIW I don’t even get a Silicon Valley salary, am not in any way extraordinary, but have spent 10+ years building 100+ small online businesses out of which none have been particularly successful (but in total the little streams add up)
- ok_dad 11mo ago
  It's not reddit leaking, it's normal people leaking into your weird millionaire world. I say weird because 99.9% of people in the world would consider it on a range of weird all the way to unethical that you spend tens of thousands on pants. I'm not going to sit here and preach and make you bored, but consider what good you could do with that money, if only your ass and thighs were slightly more uncomfortable than they are today. Especially now when people around the world are dealing with 2x the food costs of a year or a few ago. Also, HN is a fine place to complain about capitalism, maybe a few of you capitalists will have it click in your brains that other people are struggling and you can do something about it other than sitting on a cloud.
  - walletdrainer 11mo ago
    I donate approximately 47.5% of everything I earn to the French government, is that not enough? (And yes, taxes are a voluntary donation in my case. I could move less than a mile across the border to Monaco and incorporate elsewhere if I wanted to pay ~0%) Of course, when I spend 10000 euros in the Loro Piana boutique or anywhere really, 20% of that goes to the government too. Could I afford give more? Sure! To whom? How much? Figuring that out seems like another full time job, and the track record of the effective altruism folks doesn’t seem all that great.
    - robocat 11mo ago
      Everybody seems to have an opinion on what someone more wealthy than they are should spend their money on. Unfortunately we don't get to look at what the commenter earns or spend... A normal car weekly payment in the US is ridiculously wasteful. If you live in the US its almost a given that you are ridiculously wealthy in comparison to many in the world. A normal overseas trip is ridiculously wasteful. It's hard to consider what an average person in the world would think is wasteful, because with our common developed country expenses we don't feel like millionaires. We couldn't even ask a person with an average world income to comment, since do they even have the free time to waste? (edits)
basisword 11mo ago
He wasn't 'humblebragging'. He was answering a question on an anonymous forum honestly.
- boston_clone 11mo ago
  > at my income level the price difference between that and Zara is pretty much immaterial this is probably just regular bragging, right? now, discussing how donating $100 versus $10k to a cause or community being negligible to their economic security would at least front-load some humility, but capitalists gon' capitalist. oops! thank god this is Hacker News though, and not some safe-haven for boring rich people!
  - walletdrainer 11mo ago
    Can you describe a way of communicating that same point without it being bragging in your eyes? I guess I could’ve engaged in the gymnastics of saying SWIM like they used to do on some drug forums :)
    - boston_clone 11mo ago
      Sure, you could just omit that entire sentence, no? Retains readability but avoids unnecessary specifics.
      - walletdrainer 11mo ago
        I think without that sentence it fails to communicate the absurdity of trying to figure out a generic answer to whether or not something is worth it. With a total rewrite I could certainly have communicated that point in a much more clinical manner. I just don’t see the point.
      - marknutter 11mo ago
        No it doesn't. He's establishing the fact that he can afford very expensive clothes and why, from personal experience, he believes them to be worth it if you can afford it. If you omit the entire sentence the whole meaning of the post changes. I think you may just be upset because he's wealthier than you.
jazzyjackson 11mo ago
Luigi wouldn't have been famous if he offed a guy for wearing tailored pants and a rolex, he's famous because the CEO was a scapegoat of everything wrong with health insurance.
awakeasleep 11mo ago
I don’t make nearly that kind of money, but I don’t think people who do should keep it a secret like you’re trying to enforce some norm of secrecy on him
- Teever 11mo ago
  I agree. It's interesting how in Norway, Sweden, and Finland people's tax returns are public information and it seems to work out just fine.
tavavex 11mo ago
> you spend a family's annual food budget on 5 pounds of spun sheep keratin Maybe they're obscenely rich, or perhaps they're just living up to their username?
- walletdrainer 11mo ago
  Thankfully this username was related to a post I created this account to comment on, not me personally :)
basisword 11mo ago
>> there's certainly utility in rich people yapping incautiously about the reasons others might want to turn on an Enes Yilmazer video and figure out where the panic room is. Can you explain what you mean by this? I hope I'm misunderstanding it.

carabiner 11mo ago

What is your NW?

walletdrainer 11mo ago
Less than $10M with the mortgage, my income will hit $5M this year pre-tax for the first time (almost half of that goes to the government) Valuing my vast and eclectic empire of small websites earning between $1k and $300k per year is tricky because it’d presumably be tremendously hard to sell them all at once. Of course some reasonable multiple would arrive at some much higher number than my bank account+physical assets.

tavavex 11mo ago

> Keep in mind that HN is packed with people with salaries above $1M/yr and entrepreneurs with way higher income levels. Is it really packed with those people? I know there's some, but I imagined that the average user here is probably some senior engineer in his 40s making six figures - not an executive or some industry-leading employee, and not the top <1% entrepreneur who manages to walk away with multimillion dollar profits. If that really is the common audience here, then I'm living in a whole different universe from what the average would work out to.

walletdrainer 11mo ago
You don’t have to be “industry leading” to reach that kind of comp working for big tech. I could be totally wrong, but in a world where plumbers and the likes can walk away with multimillion dollar profits you probably don’t have to be top <1% to pull that off either. Not taking shots at plumbers, but the point is that even something boring can and will pay off if you work hard at it. My own work couldn’t be more boring, I’m not particularly smart or talented. I just grind out many little varyingly useful websites with card payment forms.
- astrange 11mo ago
  $1M/year in big tech is like director level? That's not "industry leading" but there aren't that many of them.
  - bradlys 11mo ago
    Senior manager can hit $1m depending on division and/or a little bit of stock appreciation.
- pseudalopex 11mo ago
  Most people don't work for big tech. Most people who work for big tech don't make so much. And not most plumbers. Many people under estimate their skills and luck.
- brailsafe 11mo ago

gr4vityWall 11mo ago

> Keep in mind that HN is packed with people with salaries above $1M/yr and entrepreneurs with way higher income levels. Are you sure about that? I would be surprised if it was much above the US salary average, considering the global audience of HN.

walletdrainer 11mo ago
I could be totally wrong! However, at the very least I think we can agree that it’s a site chock-full of aspiring multimillionaires.
- zipy124 11mo ago
  In the UK for intance there's only about 20,000 people who earn over a million yearly, and I'd bet a decent amount of those are C-suite or purely through capital gains...

freddie_mercury 11mo ago

There's some weird online effect where people assume everyone they talk to on the internet makes essentially the same exact amount of money they do. I've noticed this most in a forum for a country I used to live in where foreigners would come in and post "What's an affordable hotel/restaurant/bar/travel experience". Uh, I have no idea what "affordable" means to you!?

walletdrainer 11mo ago
Occasionally I read the local subreddit /r/monaco, and see posts like “how much should my weekly food budget be?” with no further information included. In a place where “normal” genuinely ranges between a couple of euros at McDonald’s and 500+ euros a day in fancy restaurants (easily 1000+ if you drink wine) it always feels like a particularly outrageous question. There are many places in the world where that’s not a very unreasonable question, but this certainly isn’t it.