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You can have an income of only $20,000 and live rich if you had the foresight to pay off your house and car and never use credit cards. Instead people mortgaged to the hilt, then borrowed more, and bought a car they could not afford.
Hey, I once lived in a lower middle class area and my property taxes were somewhere between a quarter and half of that income that you mention. I always paid my cashback credit card off at the end of each month. I always saved up and paid cash for my car and the only mortgage I ever had on a house was on my first one.
Once you get that first car or home paid off, if you did not bite off more than you could chew, you should also have enough saved for contingencies, which always come up. I have always lived what most folks would say was below my means. I cannot see the logic of doing it the other way. It does mean that I travel to make friends with an education who share my interests.
However, by the time this economic downturn came my assets were all protected and I intend to retire into a better lifestyle than I'd lived for much of my life. I always thought that aging people need more resources and can do less to get them. We are selling the care and house and retiring to a safe condo in a city with great doctors and hospitals and museums, and colleges, etc.
This is the reverse of what many people do, but it makes logical sense to us and we can afford it.
'Rich', up to a certain point, is relative to where you are, to the lifestyle of your associates. Everyone wants to fit in. Nobody wants to appear to be the pauper in a group.
I think this answers your question. If you earn more than 99.1% of Americans, you are most certainly rich.
This is only true from the outside looking in. If a person earning more than 99.1% of all Americans FEELS poor, then that person is mired in poverty consciousness nonetheless.
I think this answers your question. If you earn more than 99.1% of Americans, you are most certainly rich.
This is only true from the outside looking in. If a person earning more than 99.1% of all Americans FEELS poor, then that person is mired in poverty consciousness nonetheless.
Okay. I was responding objectively. Bill Gates can "feel" that he's poverty stricken. Doesn't make it so.
Okay. I was responding objectively. Bill Gates can "feel" that he's poverty stricken. Doesn't make it so.
Not to you and I, but if he FEELS poor, then in his mind he would be poor. However, it's rather irrelevant becasue I doubt than he feels poor, so we don't have to feel sorry for him. He is certainly not poor in the eyes of the world!
Okay. I was responding objectively. Bill Gates can "feel" that he's poverty stricken. Doesn't make it so.
Not to you and I, but if he FEELS poor, then in his mind he would be poor. However, it's rather irrelevant becasue I doubt than he feels poor, so we don't have to feel sorry for him. He is certainly not poor in the eyes of the world!
Okay (again). The thread title is not "Does an income of $300,000 make someone feel rich?"
This forum always leaves me shaking my head in disbelief.
What is the next thread on this topic going to be, "Are Bill Gates and Warren Buffett rich?"
I'm sure some here would say "Oh no, of course not."
The sad thing is that they'd be serious.
It is amazing what some people say. I sometimes find it hard to decipher when some actually believe what they are saying and when they are just saying things for effect. Who knows, maybe there are some that nobody else will talk to.
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