In the past few years, I've received bonuses that were massive and I could only have dreamed of some years ago. Since then I've come to realize that sums like that were not life changing. When I dreamed of them some time ago, I imagined they would have been. I would have bought the car I really wanted or bought a bigger apartment or something. But in the end, I would have still had a car and somewhere to live, working to sustain that quality of life. Is it life changing?
But she didn't say "I don't think much [...]", she said "You don't think much [...]", which makes it sound like this notion wasn't specific to her, but rather a sentiment shared by some majority. Now my point is that while it may be true for the majority of her social circle, it's important not to loose track entirely of how others are doing, because our lifes aren't isolated from one another.
Maybe I'm reading too much into the specific choice of words , and if that is true just take my comment as a friendly reminder to us all not to forget those less fortunate than us.
Roughly 10 years ago when I first started in software development I was making ~$40k and thought I had made it and I'd be able to achieve everything I wanted on that amount assuming I just kept up with inflation.
Fast forward, I bought $500 of Basic Attention Tokens at $0.17 and after currency conversion it is over $5k. The money has 10x'ed but in the present I wouldn't describe it as life changing at all. The impact isn't notable at all to the point I'm like, either it goes to $0 or it goes to $50k to be "worthwhile".
It's all percentages. If the author's lifetime earnings were already going to be $5M than $200k might not seem like a life changing amount but anyone's who lifetime earnings are going to be $1M could see that as a life changing amount.
I would define life changing as being able to have kids if you couldn't before, moving to a radically different environment than before, or being able to stop working if you were working before.
So probably it needs to double what you were expected to make without it.
I hope that you are helping to make other lives better. I wish you well.
The Australian Gov floated making people pay for doctor visits that are currently free, and bagged out disagreement that it was 'only the price of a coffee'. Those on benefits cannot afford a coffee, as that would be almost 10% of money they had to per day to pay for everything. Meanwhile they use government flights costing $60000+, or give themselves raises more that a minimum wage earner gets per year.
Bill Gates was on a show and they made fun of him because he had no idea what bread and milk costs. Yet people like him are the ones that politicians listen to.
Isn't this often the case? Rich people looking at even richer people as something to aspire to. Middle-class people look up at the rich as something to aspire to. And the poor / working class look up at middle class as something to aspire to.
Everybody wants to move up in the world.
Which means most humans won't make $200K in their entire lives. Considering that it's not a life changing amount of money just shows how the 1% has lost touch with reality.
I think they probably would albeit in a small way. No doubt your dinner will include ingredients that are traded globally, cooked using energy and fuels bought in international markets, served by an immigrant from a poorer country, eaten using cutlery made in another. Driving your car to the restaurant will emit CO2 that is going to impact the poorest countries first.
For better or worse we live in a globalised world where commodities are freely traded and some people are inevitably outbid.
All depends on what you mean by life-changing though.
Maybe the smart thing to do would be to take the money and move to a cheap place. But there would be another price besides the money. And after 10 years, you would have a problem.
> You don’t think much about $200,000; it’s not life-changing
I'm happy for the author that $200,000 isn't and wasn't a life-changing amount of money for her, but to so many people it would be incredibly life-changing. I could very comfortably live off that amount of money for 10 years. As an alternative view, that's more than four years of my net income. Obviously my cost of living is also dramatically lower than it is in SF.
For someone working minimum wage where I live it would be more like 11 or 12 years, that's an incredible amount of money and I think it's important not to forget about that entirely.
EDIT: I've said this in a grand-child comment, but I just want to clarify this here since it has come up more than once. I don't mean to say that $200,000 is or should be a life-changing amount of money to her. I just think it's easy to forget the scales sometimes. I've had the same "whatever" reaction to smaller amounts of money that would have been life-changing to someone else. My point is: those of use who are fortunate (and I include myself in this group), let's not forget it.