What would be so terrible about that?

Or he feels that he is not UMC because its a struggle for him to live a UMC lifestyle?

Being rich has nothing to do with the plight of the common person.

Once again, we aren't really discussing "rich"

wil is not rich. But he has finagled his way into trying to argue that he isn't all that well off because damn, I have to put $1000 a month away for tuition and wow, how am I supposed to retire on only $4-12 million dollars. It's insecurity and ignorance and perhaps a larger indication of American consumer culture and humanity's propensity for never being happy with what we have all wrapped up into one.

The condescending and dismissive comment pretty much said it all. This is how much of middle-class America gets a college education, yet its apparently so far below wil that not only is it not even something he would consider, but it is an idea that he feels is humorous for even being presented.

And then he wonders why people call him delusional.

Agreed. But the word is constantly being thrown around by people on both sides of the debate in places where it doesn't belong.

The post I was responding to, which I quoted, used the word rich in reference to wil.

This seems to be a major cause of a lot of the disagreement in this thread, people conflating "comfortable" with "rich".

Plus you've got to buy the kid a BMW for their 17th birthday - that also comes right out of the take home pay! Another thing people making $50k don't even have to worry about!

Sorry man, I am on board with cost of living as a factor, but this line of argument is ridiculous. Being able to pay for expensive things for your kids is actually one of the definitions of being rich.

This topic kept popping up on my subscribed list -- figured maybe something interesting was happening but nope.

The problem with this discussion is that both camps are talking right past each other which I am fairly certain is what they want to do. Despite that I'll try to add something that is fairly obvious but seems to be being overlooked. Wil and Brocktoon are defining rich as a basket of goods and experiences. The people yelling at them are defining rich as a relative rank against the rest of society. Wil and Brocktoon are correct the rest of you are wrong. Relative rank means nothing. Consider a scenario where we are stranded on a deserted island if camp A can only gather 800 calories a day of food per member and camp B can cather 1200 calories. Saying that camp B is well fed is simply not true even though they have 50% more than camp A. The same is true of wealth -- if you are going to have this conversation you need to hash out what you consider to be the essential requirements of a wealthy life and then figure out what it costs to have that while also being able to save for retirement. I don't expect that to go any better than this is going but it really can't go any worse.

Henry clearly hasn't read the last few pages and doesn't even know what we're discussing at this point lol

Thanks for your input

Also, this whole "When you're my age / When you're in my income bracket you'll feel differently" comes off really badly. Like, if some 45-year-old making $175,000 said that to you, I don't think you'd find it terribly convincing.

Good lord.

Just when the Wil AIDSathon was winding down, in comes Henry!

Wil,

You just seem exceptionally weird ITT. Not really going to bother agreeing or disagreeing with anything you have written, but man you seem like borderline mentally ill. Deep breaths.

Henry,

True wealth is defined by leisure. And good god you must be rich if you can write 100,000 words on Amanda Knox for free on a poker forum. Congrats.

Disagree, I think his point is valid to some degree, which is why many of us wouldn't necessarily call someone in the bottom of the top 25% percentile "rich". But even still, when we're talking about people in the top 5% of the richest nation on Earth telling us that they aren't rich because they can't afford a nice house, a full ride at a good school, a nice car, a million in retirement savings, AND a 10k watch, it just gets preposterous.

Sure, but that doesn't mean that if and when you become that 45 year old guy making $175k (or the inflation adjusted future equivalent), that you won't look back and think, "Maybe that douchey old "rich" guy had a point. I'll be damned."

Even if that's an inaccurate description of what someone's future self would think, they certainly wouldn't be shouting out any Chappelle-esque "I'm rich, bitch" lines either.

I agree that the percentile game is dumb, but the "essential requirements of a wealthy life" don't exist in a vacuum, they are heavily influenced by relative factors. A college education used to be the nearly-exclusive domain of the children of the rich, now it's common for the middle class. So once upon a time you could have cited a college education as a point in favour of being rich, nowadays it's not much of one.

@Trolly, I'm more still on the upper-middle-class argument. People keep using the word "rich" all over the place without discretion, and then statements get twisted because like I said, there's definitely an area between middle-of-the-road and rich.

sigh

For sure.

I gotta say tho, looking down one's nose at public colleges seems like a pretty good indicator that one has crossed over that line. I really don't see a lot of Joe Lunchbucket guys with that view.

Not just a public college, a very good public college. **** when I was looking at what schools I would end up at I basically decided it would be Michigan and nothing else because the added cost just wasn't worth it.

How is this thread over 100 pages long?

"Rich" is a subjective term, and individual definitions of what constitutes "rich" will vary depending on myriad factors. The end.

/thread

This doesn't make sense. I AM the common person. I didn't even have a non-service job until 8 years ago.

You think I don't know what its like to not be able to pay bills? My parents didn't pay for anything after I turned 16. Where are you getting this idea from?

Nothing would be terrible about it. I did it. The issue is that when there are options, people usually opt for better choices. There's nothing wrong with taking a bus, I did it, but if my parents had money, I'd have had a car. Is this really illogical?

I think being rich is being able to get 100% of what I need to survive and 99% of what I want.

Heh. I don't mean to come off this way. It just really becomes tiresome when people call you out on things or say things that simply aren't true. I don't think many people define rich a being able to go out to dinner whenever you want or having some money saved up. Who would define that as rich? I could understand if I had some sort of brand new Mercedes in the garage, but I don't own a garage or a Mercedes.

My best friend is really good at saving money. He has a service job at a hotel. He has something like over 100k in cash saved up in a safety deposit box. He makes approx 1,200 a week cash. Is he rich? Almost anyone would say no, yet he makes very similar net income as I do.

It's baffling to me. If I worked in Lincoln NE and made 70,000k we wouldn't even be having this discussion, but since I live in Philadelphia and make the equivalent of that everyone thinks I should be in a music video. Really, who's being weird here?

I've had this conversation with plenty of people. In fact, it used to be a conversation we would have multiple times a year. Working shift work, we have plenty of time to talk about life stuff at 3am when we had 6 people working.

People made significantly more than I did (200k), and they said exactly that, and I believe them. It's very hard to imagine because for most people they would think if they had an extra 1,500 a month it would go directly to savings and investments. It doesn't work that way.

Just seems like public college is a waste after 4 years of Exeter.....

It's entirely possible that ikes and I were in the same classroom together. --just an off-topic aside

Also, there's a lot of value in doing a year or two at a community college and then transferring. I wouldn't scoff at that at all.