Investing General Discussion

Mist said:

If I had 600k in 2003 I definitely would have felt pretty rich or at least extremely comfortable. I would have invested 11/12ths of that and would be very rich right now.

I had 16k in the bank in 2003 and felt like I was doing much better than most of my friends.

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Try on those numbers while raising kids. $1M in today's monopoly money is a great, comfortable start but not enough to reliably retire on (indefinitely) at the median standard of living after paying for secondary education(s). Obviously YMMV if you can crank down your spend and don't plan on leaving anything behind.

Mist said:

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I'm pretty confident we'd get the same results if we polled this forum.
"I've got a couple million in the bank, own a half dozen rental properties, and drive an 80 thousand fucking dollar car... I'm super middle class and inflation is really hurting right now!"

As someone who grew up poor and remained on the much lower end of the income scale, its always struck me as a combination of sad and hilarious how rich people feel the need to lie to themselves about their circumstances. Its like bro, just own it. But no, they always insist they're middle class. Its like we've done such a good job of putting the middle class on a pedestal that everyone wants to be there.

I always visualize income as a faucet and spending as a drain. If your drain is bigger than your faucet you're not going to feel wealthy no matter how much you're making.

I think too many people outspend their income and they rationalize the fact that they don't have any money as being "middle class" and suffering from inflation. Where they're really just fiscally irresponsible.

A lot of these goons have never experienced real poverty

Aldarion said:

I'm pretty confident we'd get the same results if we polled this forum.
"I've got a couple million in the bank, own a half dozen rental properties, and drive an 80 thousand fucking dollar car... I'm super middle class and inflation is really hurting right now!"

As someone who grew up poor and remained on the much lower end of the income scale, its always struck me as a combination of sad and hilarious how rich people feel the need to lie to themselves about their circumstances. Its like bro, just own it. But no, they always insist they're middle class. Its like we've done such a good job of putting the middle class on a pedestal that everyone wants to be there.

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Not saying this stereotype doesn't exist, but I don't think that is really the point per se. It's more about how the entire economy is built upon usurious credit and consumerism. You have to be in the .1% to not care about 20% increase in prices regardless of if the thing you can't really afford is $100 or $100MM.

Well, theres two ways to go with that tweet.

1. A bunch of millionaires are calling themselves middle class, but they're obviously wrong and we should make fun of them
2. A bunch of millionaires are calling themselves middle class and acktually, technically, heres how they really are middle class

I emphatically side with interpretation 1

Aldarion said:

Well, theres two ways to go with that tweet.

1. A bunch of millionaires are calling themselves middle class, but they're obviously wrong and we should make fun of them
2. A bunch of millionaires are calling themselves middle class and acktually, technically, heres how they really are middle class

I emphatically side with interpretation 1

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Well you can't separate the cultural milieu and present circumstances from these responses. Middle class has always generally been defined around a landowning class that do well by their profession and income, not wealth like the upper class; some idiots in the media saying $X is middle class or upper class doesn't really matter, it's about what the money is spent on and how much is saved. It's true a lot of this is impacted by rampant consumerism and bad decision making, but I think the point is in most places in America if you go back just 5 years that much income is lake house + yacht club 'faux rich', whereas now it's enough to be comfortably living on your income without really being able to save/invest enough for social mobility to enter the upper class by retirement.

I don't consider anyone 'rich' or upper class who has to work. From a lottery perspective, if I won something like 1MM I wouldn't be able to retire, if I won 10MM maybe then I wouldn't want to retire because I could start some side businesses, and if I won 100MM+ I wouldn't be able to not retire because the investment income would far surpass anything I could reasonably hope to generate myself. At that point working or businesses are hobbies. *shrug*

Palum said:

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I don't consider anyone 'rich' or upper class who has to work. From a lottery perspective, if I won something like 1MM I wouldn't be able to retire, if I won 10MM maybe then I wouldn't want to retire because I could start some side businesses, and if I won 100MM+ I wouldn't be able to not retire because the investment income would far surpass anything I could reasonably hope to generate myself. At that point working or businesses are hobbies. *shrug*

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I would retire all day long with 10MM. Why would you want a new business at that point? It would have to be some hobby that you really enjoy and just happen to make money off of. With $10M and recent treasury rates, we were recently around 5% on a 20yr note. That's $500k per year in completely risk free investing. Plus, even if you spent every single penny of the half mil a year in interest earnings, you'd still have your original $10M after 20 years.

Foler said:

lol the second tweet reminds me of everyone in tech. “Bro my TC is peanuts it’s only 250k”.

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Do you know how much it costs to get ubereats from bonefish grill every night????