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You shouldn't compare your success to someone's failures. It's unfortunate that a lot of people struggle and everyone is in different situations, but you should just feel blessed and thankful that you're just doing your best.
I work as a part-time wine consultant in a large liquor store, and I am sure that some people feel sorry for me when they see me, a 66-year-old woman, lifting 40-pound cases of wine, but I love my job -- and deposit my checks only about every two months or so after four or five of them accumulate. It is, as I've said before, like being paid to do a hobby I enjoy.
I envy a job like that, I would love to be a wine consultant.
The rule of thumb is the more money you have the less boasting is necessary, in fact, you want to down play it. Same with everything. It’s all those insecure people who like to boast. You never heard Bill Gates or Warren Buffett say something stupid like that. The crowd I’m playing pickleball with, all claim to drive American car, judging by some of the comments they made, I’m sure they can buy a Maserati or Bulgaria easily.
Wow you have rich friends, I don't know anyone that can buy a country (Bulgaria) easily.
I'm due to close on a condo this week. I'm buying at around 40% of what I was preapproved for. I'm not home much during the warmer months, have a lot of other hobbies, and finally found a remodeled townhome with garage for below $100k. I don't need a huge or expensive home. It has a lot of stairs, but that's fine by me, and I have a large garage for storage, 2BR/2BA, with a "loft" with a skylight on the top level. It's a good layout for what I want and do.
A high school buddy of mine posted a pic on Facebook of his kid and others bicycling behind my unit tonight. I sent him a message that we're going to be neighbors. He replied and we started talking.
He splits the mortgage on the ~$90k-$100k condo with his mom and girlfriend, and he says they barely make the bills. He runs a couple of pawn shops locally. He has a son that's 11-12, and a girlfriend as well. All together, they're struggling to keep the place paid for and all the other bills paid. The girlfriend has some fairly significant medical issues. He admitted he makes around $25k.
I couldn't believe that. $25k is a $12/hr job. He runs and manages multiple pawn shops. I told the guy he could make better at the local Citi debt collection call center, and at any number of jobs. He says he likes the pawn shop because it's flexible around what his kid does.
This dude is really barely scraping by. He has no slack in his life, and likely no luxuries. Compared to him, I'm doing incredibly well. Compared to most of the people on this board, I'm dirt poor.
In sum, I'm doing better than the vast majority of my peers. Did you, and when did you realize you did better than those of a similar background?
It hit home for me when i made 6 figures my first year out of college with zero student loan debt.
Wow you have rich friends, I don't know anyone that can buy a country (Bulgaria) easily.
A Maserati is no problem. LOL
Some of them are not my friends, just people I met at pickle ball court. But I do have a friend who donated more than a Bugatti to charity, I once knew him as a young nobody, he is now on UK Forbes list of richest people.
When I retired at 46, I looked around and saw many of my lifetime acquaintances who were the same age or older still trying to figure it out. Some were bouncing from one minimum wage job to another, or had become content with "disability" payments of $1K/month or so (coupled with various government handouts). Others had spent their adult years working for employers that offered no hope of a retirement income other than SS at 62. One even mentioned going back to school in their 50s, hoping for a better paying career path. Another was back living with his mother in his mid-40s.
Now it's four years later, and they are still doing what they've always done, and telling me how "lucky" I am. My usual reply is that luck had nothing to do with it. If they did what I did, they'd have what I have.
I like that! I'm going to borrow it once in a while.
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