Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

On Being Rich-ish: Lessons I learned becoming suddenly middle-class

residentcontrarian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 124 posts

Re: On Being Rich-ish: Lessons I learned becoming suddenly middle-class

#91

Post by rayiner »

lscdlscd wrote: post #27
commandlinefan wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn't help but do the same thing when I was reading the article, in the opposite direction: "wait - you had a wife and you were poor?" When I was young and my income was low or nonexistent, it seemed like women could smell the poverty on me and I couldn't even get close to them. It was like trying to sneak up on a grazing gazelle - they'd hear me coming and just sprint to a safe distance. The more money I made,…

That's a very sad way to view the world and people.

I don’t really understand what’s sad about it. I’m from Bangladesh, where nearly all marriages are still facilitated by family members. When a profile for a man comes in, do you think the aunties are looking at the guy’s hobbies and tastes in music? Of course they’re judging men based on education and earning potential. Why wouldn’t they?

It’s completely rational for women to place a high value on men’s income. The vast majority of people want kids someday. From the perspective of women, that means they need to either find a man with a good job that can support a family, find one who truly can take on half the caregiving and half the bread winning, or can truly take over the domestic role. The number of men who, if they’re not out earning money, can instead have the kids bathed, homework done, and dinner on the table for when the woman gets home from work are vanishingly small. Great stay at home dads exist, but they’re unicorns. Statistically, they are vastly outnumbered by the number of guys who leave the mother of their children to do both the bread winning and caregiving. Thus as a purely rational matter, it makes complete sense for women to seek out men who can at least fulfill the traditional male gender role.

Re: On Being Rich-ish: Lessons I learned becoming suddenly middle-class

#92

Post by jelliclesfarm »

hallway_monitor wrote: post #37
lscdlscd wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very sad way to view the world and people.

Why would it be sad? Women are attracted to security and success. Men are attracted to good genetics expressed physically.

Women are attracted to stability. You can be a stable and trustworthy poor guy and be attractive to women. Women find unstable psycho rich guys hideously unattractive.

Re: On Being Rich-ish: Lessons I learned becoming suddenly middle-class

#93

Post by jelliclesfarm »

There is a difference between being nouveau rich-ish Vs being nouveau riche. The author is comparing two different wealth classes.

When you are middle class, it’s lower middle class, middle class and upper middle class. Only the UMC has being rich aspirations/possibilities.

Re: On Being Rich-ish: Lessons I learned becoming suddenly middle-class

#94

Post by ncmncm »

sershe wrote: post #88
ncmncm wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand very, very well. The average American lives in a hellscape, one serious illness removed from homelessness. If you can imagine losing your home to illness, you are lower class like the rest of us. Upper class is what they call the 1%. Most of us are among the other 99%.

An average American lives unbelievably rich, safe life by the standards of pretty much any major country that has ever existed or currently exists (yes, including Europe - see e.g. disposable income, debt etc. here - https://data.oecd.org/hha/household-disposable-income.htm ). An average American is indeed saddled by a healthcare system distorted by misaligned incentives (tax-free benefits), tons of regulation and go…

America is a rich country. But the overwhelming bulk of its property and income is concentrated in the upper class. They drop crumbs for the rest of us.

Sweden, e.g., is much less rich, but its regular citizens get a decent cut. So they are mostly a little better off than the typical American.

That word "whining" is an effective trick. It distracts attention very conveniently.

Re: On Being Rich-ish: Lessons I learned becoming suddenly middle-class

#95

Post by refurb »

legitster wrote: post #60
wnissen wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would strengthen your statement to say that almost everyone can't afford it. Median household income is around $67K in the US, and the median household assets (minus the house) at age 65-69 is $75K. So even if a third of your income is being replaced by social security, a typical household has not even two years of income saved. A 25th percentile household has less than 5 months! Most people save basically nothing,…

> median household assets (minus the house) at age 65-69 is $75K Why would you take out the house? For most people that's a key part of their retirement. Going into retirement as a renter or with a $500k home paid outright is one of the biggest difference makers.

Right, but that $500k is tied up in your housing, so not really accessible.

I wouldn’t discount it entirely, but home equity should clearly be evaluated differently than cash in the bank.

Re: On Being Rich-ish: Lessons I learned becoming suddenly middle-class

#96

Post by refurb »

WXLCKNO wrote: post #45
thatfrenchguy wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but simply to stop being worried every damn minute of my life. You would be worried nonetheless, because your brain will latch on to the next anxiety. Just like you thought that having 5 years of expenses would alleviate your anxiety. What you need is a good therapist to work on your anxiety issues.

I can confirm. Grew up poor, now worth mid 7 figures and still have money anxiety despite barely spending money. Therapy sounds like a good idea lol.

Not that it’s a random sample of the wealthy, but go look at r/FATFire if you want to see how unhappy the ultra-wealthy can be.

Re: On Being Rich-ish: Lessons I learned becoming suddenly middle-class

#97

Post by ncmncm »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #82
ncmncm wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wish. But I remember an America that still had a middle class. It wasn't like this. My father grew up on a farm, upper middle class. He carried around a roll of $100 bills, and once bought an airplane on the spot, out of it (plus the motorcycle he rode up on). By the time I went to college, we were mid-lower middle, and I worked my way through (took 7 years), but there still was one.

When I ask for evidence, and someone else supplies it, "you wish" isn't a strong rebuttal to the evidence. > It wasn't like this. I kind of have to agree with you here. I think three things made a huge difference: The breakup of the extended family, the rise in medical costs, and the rise in college costs. And, maybe, the failure of the pre-college education system to prepare people for the workforce (or even for adu…

Right. But the amount of money that could be paid in regular wages and salaries has continued on up, since the '70s, at the same rate. It just isn't, anymore. Instead, the extreme rich contrive to skim it off.

Then they hire PR experts to trick people. Very, very successfully, as you can see in this thread.

People really cling to the idea that they are doing well, and always compare their status to those further down, as they have been trained to do. Most cannot conceive of how life is for the actual upper class, or even what it would be for somebody truly middle class, if there still were any.

Re: On Being Rich-ish: Lessons I learned becoming suddenly middle-class

#98

Post by ncmncm »

dragonwriter wrote: post #78
ncmncm wrote: post #61

The hell of it is, he still isn't middle class. The US doesn't even have a middle class anymore. He is just no longer at the very bottom of the underclass. He is now mid-lower lower class. It is impossibly hard for most people not in the upper class in the US to conceive of just how impossibly far they are from that upper class. $100k/yr? Lower class. $200k/yr? Still lower class: you still can't afford to send your k…

> The US doesn't even have a middle class anymore Like most capitalist societies historically, the US still has a middle class ( petit bourgeoisie .) Like most capitalist societies, this class is fairly small (not as small as the upper class, the haut bourgeoisie , though), generally high-income group, defined by relying on a mix of labor and capital income, both being important (or applying their own labor, rather t…

Top lower did once shade smoothly into bottom upper. A solid voting cohort was there. The last of them were the Baby Boomers, who lately wonder what happened to the rising prosperity they grew up with.

That prosperity continued, to a height unimaginable at the time. But their children and now grandchildren get a constantly decreasing share of it.

Re: On Being Rich-ish: Lessons I learned becoming suddenly middle-class

#99

Post by jen20 »

rayiner wrote: post #73
ncmncm wrote: post #61

The hell of it is, he still isn't middle class. The US doesn't even have a middle class anymore. He is just no longer at the very bottom of the underclass. He is now mid-lower lower class. It is impossibly hard for most people not in the upper class in the US to conceive of just how impossibly far they are from that upper class. $100k/yr? Lower class. $200k/yr? Still lower class: you still can't afford to send your k…

> Still lower class: you still can't afford to send your kids through college, and still make your house and car payments, replacing your car every year or two. Yes, that was what middle-class people used to do. This is a complete delusion designed to justify affluent people asserting they’re “middle class.” Americans never lived like that. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, most people didn’t even go to college. They live…

> You know why many Americans are on the edge of medical bankruptcy?

It’s nothing to do with the tax rate, and entirely to do with the insane insurance system that does not even try to keep costs reasonable. The UK gets this correct with the same tax rates (when you include property tax) as the US.

Re: On Being Rich-ish: Lessons I learned becoming suddenly middle-class

#100

Post by ncmncm »

ProjectArcturis wrote: post #80
ncmncm wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no middle class anymore. What you mention are lower class pressures. Middle-class pressures, back when there was one , meant you were expected to get a new car every year. There were reasons for that, back then: tetraethyl lead additives in the gasoline destroyed engines in no time. But it was not a big drain on middle-class people, just an expense to keep up with. "They" have been very, very good at convinc…

I don't know why you're claiming middle class people used to get a new car every year. It used to be that a man with a high-school education could provide fairly well for his family as the sole breadwinner. But a new car every year is fantasy.

A new car every year is fantasy today. It was a commonplace for upper middle class, before.

A wage-earner could be comfortably lower middle class. A professional could be upper-middle.

Post reply on HN