Of course, I’d do all the obvious things, such as getting a bigger house, a newer car, and quitting work, but beyond that, I have no interest in an extravagant lifestyle—or at least that’s what I tell myself.
By a bigger house, I mean one typical of upper-middle-class living. I’ve watched plenty of videos of people touring million-dollar mansions, and they all look too big, open, and sterile to me. I’ve seen cozier tiny homes than those. And by a newer car, I mean a 2017 model or so instead of the 2007 one I drive now.
Really, give me a nice cottage by the lake with some land and a big garage for all my tools and toys, and I’m all set. I much prefer the idea of “hidden wealth” over showing it off. I’m just kind of worried that I wouldn’t be able to live up to my own expectations if push comes to shove, and there’s really no way of testing that. Am I just kidding myself here?
I feel the same way about fame. Many people aspire to become successful YouTubers or such, but the idea of people recognizing me on the street sounds awful.
Congratulations, you are living your life according to some values and standards, instead of just being envious and dissatisfied all the time.
just being envious and dissatisfied all the time.
What does this mean?
You actually won’t become wealthy.
The people who weren’t born destined for it are the only ones that sit around imagining what it would be like…
I’m just a “temporarily embarrassed millionaire!”
If you did get a seriously large lump of cash… after a settling in period a lot of changes will happen, and you will be happy they did (IMHO).
The reason is that one of the biggest gifts that wealth gives you is TIME. A lot of the day to day crap that the rest of us need to deal with just evaporates. No need to shop (there are people for that). Want to travel… people will organise everything. There will be no waiting in lines at airports, at restaurants, at government offices… there are people for that. Someone to clean, someone to pick up the kids (unless you want to of course), someone to cook, holidays on a fuck-off huge yacht with crew to manage everything, or just to zip to Paris for the weekend.
You will probably really appreciate not having to deal with most of that crap. Also, while you probably don’t want a stupid large house, you do want privacy and so will want to get a house on 1000 acres in a gorgeous landscape (plus perhaps apartments in various cities that you like).
Imagine moving from a food insecure lifestyle to a secure lifestyle where food, safety, housing is always there. Would you want to keep your old food-insecure lifestyle? No. Same with going from a food secure lifestyle to a time-and-resource abundant lifestyle.
I feel like the wealthy people you see are the ones who either get excitement from flaunting it or from lying about it (for example, mtv cribs was all fake). There are plenty of stories (yes i know they’re just stories) about multi millionaires who drive the same old truck, wear regular blue jeans, and have a nice quiet (albeit larger than average) home.
It’s not crazy at all. I just think we see the outliers more frequently than not because they want us to see them.
I honestly think most people would do what you think you would do: Just reinforce what makes you happy and remove stressors.
We just notice more the ones who believe happiness is showing off how big they are.
In addition to what you listed I think you’d probably travel more and consider hiring people to do regular house cleaning and garden maintenance.
I think most people who come into money probably say the same thing, but I think it probably depends on a few factors, sociability and impulsivity probably being up there. I think as your standard of living rises, it’s just going to change most people who aren’t well-grounded. Some people blow it all at once, wanting the money to change them because they weren’t happy with their life before, others change over time, but both are changed just from the experience of not having to deal with the anxiety of “survival” anymore.
When you’re not worried about making your rent/mortgage or getting all your bills paid each month, that’s just naturally going to free you up to think about other things. When barriers to life dissolve away like that, you stop having reasons to not do things what you feel like doing. “I’ve always wanted to see London/France/underpants, I should just do it,” or “I could get a nice entertainment system in the living room… and my bedroom… and the bathroom…” At some point, your standard of living is so far removed from “normal” people, that “it” has already happened, money changed you.
Money doesn’t change, it enables.
I remember having a guy living near me who made quite a fair bit of money, but since he was Christian he donated most of it to charity and just lived a normal middle class life lol
It’s all a hypothetical, feel free to just decide you are that type of person. No harm in it.
In real life though, if money is no object, the difference between a 2017 normal car and a 2025 luxury car is literally just “do you want extra features and a bigger screen on a car that will last longer?” It just doesn’t make sense to get the cheaper version, unless you are giving up something else because you only have a limited amount of money.
You are suddenly super rich. Now all your friends and family expect you to provide for them. Every kindness they offer is suspect, are they doing it because they like you or because they want your money? How can you really know?
You don’t have to work and can go anywhere in the world. But your friends still have jobs, so you travel alone.
Some of your friends start to resent your new lifestyle. Others may just be staying quiet. You read about “crabs in a bucket” and distance yourself more from them.
It’s really isolating, but you meet some other wealthy people and you know they don’t need your money. And… you actually have some stuff in common with them. Yes Ibiza is overrated, but they suggest another place to check out. You go out with them to amazing restaurants that your old friends wouldn’t even appreciate. You can commiserate about how hard it is to get good help these days.
On top of all that, you slowly start to notice an emptiness inside. You should be happy! You don’t have to work anymore! You have everything you could ever want! Why do you feel this way!?!? Drugs and expensive purchases fill the need momentarily. If try telling your old friends that you’re not all that fulfilled, they’ll pull out the world’s tiniest violin for you. You lack purpose and goals, and feel like you are drifting in a life of luxury completely devoid of meaning.
If you’re lucky you find a way to have a new purpose in life and accept that the money changed you. If not you spiral and, best case scenario, wind up broke.
Don’t have to worry about your friend’s motives if you honestly want to help them.
Travel a little bit. Spend most of your time at home, either enjoying the simple pleasures, or with friends and family.
So what if they are taking advantage of you? You are rich! What’s the downside?
Sure, you have to be vigilant against con artists, grifters, and addicts. You have to draw a line somewhere. Maybe don’t fund their casino trips, drug trips, or Candy Crush high score.
Extravagant birthday gifts? College tuition for your niblings? Why not?
If someone is lying to you, you will find out eventually. I’d rather have friends now and let future me deal with the fallout from the grifters.
The “why not” is that some people actually are harmed not helped by being handed stuff. I tried to help one of my friends who lived with me rent free for a year and by the end he was completely unmotivated to actually get or keep a job, contribute around the house, or even behave pleasantly towards anyone in the house. It happened gradually over time til living with him became intolerable.
Then you have a hard conversation.
I’ve been that person. I lived with my grandparents for a year. Rent free, nearly no job. My aunt and uncle sat me down and explained that they appreciated my work helping to care for my grandparents, but if I stayed with them I would only be qualified for a career as a home health aid.
I talked to my extended family and moved out. Other arrangements were made for my grandparents. I found a job and started a new career. It’s certainly possible to enable bad behavior, but it’s also possible to help someone that needs it.
Good on you for being receptive to their conversation and actually making improvements and changes. Not everyone behaves that way, some people like my friend just become dependent on the help instead. It’s important to recognize that external help isn’t always the solution; that shouldn’t stop us from trying to help initially but it’s important to withdraw it if it’s causing dependency.
One of those guides to “what to do if you win the lottery” says to, up front, decide how much and who you want to fund. Want to buy all your friends and family houses and college tuition? Sure.
But the thing is that money can make people go crazy. Some people will always want more. Sure you got them a house, but you’re rich, why can’t you get them a car too? And now they’re a little behind on bills, surely you can help them out, right? And it never stops. Not everyone, but someone.
You might be interested in this podcast episode that touches on the subject: https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/between-two-worlds/
That’s tragic when it happens. I know that it will happen. Free lunches attract flies.
That doesn’t mean you can’t help people. It means you cut them off when it’s clear they are being hurt and not helped.
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Where do you start from? You’re on lemmy, most likely work in tech but are too leftist to get promoted, to the drive a Tesla and get stock option paygrade
If you enjoy your job, and get enough income struggle to fulfill your basic needs, more money is just some extra comfort. Sure you could spend you holiday in a hotel rather than a camping and get designer furnitures rather than IKEA one. You could finally have the free room in you house to set up a lab.
So compared to people who don’t even reach the (full time) minimal wage, you are way in advance.
Most rich people don’t have such an extravagant lifestyle. And many people who show off areren’t that rich( they could become if they stop getting debt and showing off)
I’m self-employed contractor. I make enough to buy whatever I want, and I have plenty of savings. However, I often find that my anxieties boil down to finances. Even though things are good now, I’m always worried something bad might happen in the future. With enough money to retire, I wouldn’t need to worry about that anymore and could move on to worrying about other things, like my health and such.
Not sure if you’ve ever come across FIRE (financially independent, retire early)? Mr Money Moustache is a pretty interesting blog to read about his journey.
Yeah I’ve listened to him, Dave Ramsey and others as well. It’s what originally got me into investing around 6 years ago. I should’ve started way sooner…
I’m going to assume this isn’t “lottery” ultra-wealthy where you can spend it all and suddenly be back to destitute. So you say you wouldn’t live that differently, and immediately begin with “quitting work.” That’s the first step, because being wildly wealthy does change you incrementally because in this situation you’ve just bought yourself a commodity that once spent can’t be bought back, time.
You now have 40 hours a week that you were giving to someone else. Add on 5-10 hours for commute time (.5 to hour commute) that can get up to 50 hours for whatever the hell you want to do.
Buying a new car just a quick glance at Carmax and you’re looking at around $13,000 for a standard sedan. Not many have that pocket change going around, much less to buy the house that at low end houses cost $100,000 so you’re done, no worries, no muss, no fuss and you didn’t give some company your money in interest because you bought for cash. And on buying houses, as competitive as the market is, buying with cash right now at least in my region is about the only way to do it.
So lets assume you’re working from home right now, you gained back 40 hours. Hey, I want to have a party/trip/etc! Well, your buddies are all working, possibly can’t afford to go on trip, night out to eat. Offer to pay, but it’s still the getting the time off. They’ve got bills to worry about, the ones you’re not even thinking about. Sometimes they’ll show up, other times, not so much. So either you’re out fishing and working on your hobbies during that 40, or working to a new project job wise which really by this point is how the wealthy keep getting more and more money because build up a new thing, hire someone else to run it, passive income. But you don’t have your friends to hang out with, travel and the like, you’ll run into the others that don’t have those concerns because you can buy your way around inconveniences (airport seats are uncomfortable, but those lounges are nice. Why have to take connecting flights? etc) those are also going to be the ultra wealthy. And they have a standard of living that will look more and more “normal” to you. Little bit of peer pressure, little bit of “take a ride in my Lambo” and finding it fun, it’s a frog in the pot situation, you’ll go back to your roots and go “How did I live like this?”
So just don’t have any friends or desire to travel. Done.
I think most people who win the lottery for example, make bad choices and end up losing that money anyways.
I’d say it’s possible to a degree. But it’s certainly not easy. If you own a bigger house, you need someone to clean it. Same for other nice things like a big pool. A large, well-maintained lawn etc. There will be people envying your wealth and you got to deal with them. You need someone to manage your money and assets, or have lots of spare time to deal with all of that. And it’ll be at the cost of your hobbies. If you have too may people doing stuff for you, you need people to manage those people…
Over the years Ive worked up the salary I earn. I am not wealthy, just earn more than most. I am bad with money at the best of times, but I found my spending just naturally grew as I had more available to spend. If I was suddenly ultra wealthy, at the start I would probably live “normally” but honestly I would likely end up spending vastly more money just because its there
Agreed, and it’s not necessarily something big or sudden. Over the years I’ve become more likely to hire someone to care for my yard, more likely to use the AC, more likely to not watch my spending at a restaurant. More likely to go overboard at Costco. I get a better cut of meat, more expensive beer, etc. these are all little niceties I can afford, but they add up to a much more expensive lifestyle that always seems to rise with my income
Dunno bud, I’ve met and heard about a lot of rich people in my life (my partner builds high-end houses), and they’ve all been absolute assholes, though some more overly than others. I know exactly 2 nice rich people out of dozens.
My theory is two-fold: one, to get rich you probably screwed somebody else over, and two, once you get rich you feel an inherent need to protect your resources without ever actually feeling satisfied (gated communities, voting for your own self-interest, suspicion towards normal people).
I do think that having large sums of money almost always lead toward personal corruption, and I wish we all just had enough resources and societal support to be healthy and happy.
normal people
Who are these non-weirdos of which you speak?
