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Re:Three Levels of Wealth by ryandrake on Thursday August 02, 2018 @01:59PM (#17673779)
I don’t know... all these levels are over complicating a simple concept. The way I look at wealth is binary: “Can I stop working today and maintain a lifestyle that I am comfortable with indefinitely?” Most people, even those who consider themselves well-off, cannot say yes to that question. People like to try to gauge whether they are middle class or upper middle class or upper lower middle class... whatever. There is no real defining characteristic. At the end of the day, most of us are N missed paychecks away from insolvency. N may be large but unless it’s infinite, we are in the same bucket: our labor pays for our existence, not capital.

There are people who can just sit there collecting checks and their lifestyle is never in jeopardy, because of investment income. They’re the only ones I’d consider truly wealthy.

Re:Three Levels of Wealth by NeoBasilisk on Thursday August 02, 2018 @04:08PM (#17675010)
Yep, people in the "upper-middle class" delude themselves into thinking they are in some special transition zone between the serfs and the aristocrats. A grasshopper is much larger than an ant, but neither are worthy of notice next to a bear.
Re:Three Levels of Wealth by comboy on Friday August 03, 2018 @07:47AM (#17679030)
I strongly urge you to review that perspective on wealth.

First of all, the real fuck you money is enormous if you really want to forget about money problem altogether. You don't want to wonder if you can afford that expensive car and if it will impact your ability to buy an expensive car 10 years down the road. Second, you do not want to worry about your wealth in general. If you would just have it in a bank, then you definitely should. Inflation being just one of many things to consider. You could spread your investments all around the world and be doomed only in case of some world war or other catastrophe, but to do it well you need a lot of funds and a lot of effort.

So what you would really want is a cashflow. Your assets providing you comfortable enough paycheck each month without your wealth diminishing too much. Real estate investments seem like a pretty good option for that, although you probably still want to diversify not to depend on a single government. But without any effort on your side, optimistically, your income will only stay the same. Which is likely not to make your brain very happy because it is really good at adaptation.

You may think I'm overcomplicating it, you still can choose to work if you want to, it's the comfort that you don't have to and can continue without worrying about basic needs (whatever they may be for you). In that case though, if you are living in SF, there are so many places in the world where you can move with little to no savings and be set for life.

Would you want that though? Or do you prefer to be coding/creating or whatever it is that you are doing? Skillset also can kind of work like FU money. Knowing that at any point you can find a decent job and have money problem solved.

But my short point, apart from suggestion to reconsider the attitude yourself, which you can do much more through-fully that I can in a comment, is that you either are doing what you like - in which case keep doing it, especially in IT it is likely that you have the money problem solved, as long as your passionate about it - or you don't, in which case you can start doing something else and switch to the first scenario or just quit and live a slow life in some place where your money is worth a lot.

Number of people with FU money attitude who will actually achieve it, without lying to themselves, is infinitesimally small. Question to how many of them it will bring peace/happiness/satisfaction I leave unanswered.