Metric for myself; not others. I can't pretend to know what "line" people have in their mind that gives them anxiety around money. (I'll edit for clarity)

It ends up being a discussion point with my wife for lots of topics where I'm not picky about the quality of food because it's not mustard on bread.

Oh in that case I understand your trauma. But you need to understand that it is trauma and not facts of life. I am, for the past few years, learning how to be happy. I realized that most of my life training has been around learning how to survive because that's how it is where I was born. And because that's all I knew, I thought that was somehow superior. Our media also tries very hard to glamorize "struggling", there are no stories about how to be happy because it will be laughed out of room. It will be counted as either "privileged people being privileged" or they will tie it to family/love as the only posed answer.

Seriously man, I want to be happy and nobody out there wants to tell me how. I am slowly discovering it for myself, but I feel like this is a deficiency in our media.

>Oh in that case I understand your trauma. But you need to understand that it is trauma and not facts of life.

Thank god you now understand their trauma well enough to explain how they don't comprehend reality the right way.

I did not comment upon their trauma at all. Just that I think it is trauma. I have gone through my share of poverty without the first world safety nets. That is what I was talking about.