> I don’t want other people seeing me as flaunting wealth
Lmao.
Edit: I rarely do this with HN but I'm getting troll vibes from you and so I clicked on your comment history where you lay out your unfortunate financial situation in a comment ("I have 500€ in my bank account, 3k debt and 30 years of work left ahead of me") and it all makes sense that you are just resentful or jealous. My only constructive advise is you should try not to have this attitude on HN, there are plenty of wealthy or good-to-know people here and any chance conversation could turn into something that shifts your life's trajectory. If the breadcrumbs show that you're just a troll you're basically building a wall between you and those people.
For one, I like to have a connection with the place I live and the physical objects I use like my car and home- the fact that they are old things I fixed up and maintain myself gives me a sense of place, connection, and pride- just buying something expensive that someone else prepared for me would feel infantalizing and unsatisfying. I enjoy deeply understanding and being part of the history of the objects and tools I use, in a way that can’t be purchased.
Also, I think a lot of consumerism and conspicuous consumption comes from a sad and depressing place of anxiety that you aren’t good enough to make friends or find romantic partners without doing this. Many people don’t directly want or enjoy conspicuously expensive things, but are hoping it leads to social status or approval. But this inevitably means resigning yourself to essentially buying the company of people that don’t actually like you. At the extreme end you see some famously wealthy people so anxious about not being perceived as wealthy enough that they glue tacky fake plastic gold on everything they own because they’re afraid of looking poorer than billionaires. That type of narcissism is not a happy way to live, and will turn off the kind of people that would have built a genuine emotional connection with you.
Modern society is too narrow minded about what wealth means. To most people it means fancy watches, cars, homes, etc. To me wealth is about time and freedom. I can pick up the tab at dinner for a group of 12. I can afford to keep my 1972 Schwinn bicycle in tip top shape or my grandfather's jacket mended when it breaks. I can afford to rent forever if I want. I'll never work a job I don't like, I can just quit. I feel more wealthy this way than if I owned 3 lambos and had to work to make ends meet.
That said, I do, like Buffet, live in a nice house. I’m not depriving myself. But it’s also very approachable by any successful employee of a company (maybe salary of a director or VP of any large company could afford it). It doesn’t represent what I could afford if I wanted to really get into the elite neighborhoods of my city. I don’t really enjoy people in those areas. They tend to always talk about money in one way or another (vacations, private schools, cars, houses, maids, nanny’s, etc). Nothing wrong with it I suppose, just not my jam and not how I want my children raised and not the people I want as my neighbors and peers. I’ve always been much more envious of those unsuspecting rich people that drive clunker cars or live in modest homes and mow their own lawns but then you find out they paid for 16 grand children to go to college or something random like that. That’s the kind of thing I’d rather be known for than the guy with the Ferrari or yacht (even if they weren’t mutually exclusive).