Hacker News Reader

Comment by Johnny555 | Hacker News Reader

I think there are a lot of people like that. I've visited homes of plenty of acquaintances that, based on their jobs, earn less money than me, but live a much more luxurious life - for example, a 2700 square foot 4 bedroom 5 bath home, $5000 viking stove (how do I know it was a $5K stove? They were sure to let me know: "Gosh, $5,000 for this stove and it still burns the eggs!"), BMW car for him, BMW SUV for her, private school for the kids (despite paying a premium to live in a desirable public school district). It's possible that they have some alternate source of income, but still I wonder how they can afford all of that luxury.

I think there are more people that look at the equity in their home to see how rich they are than look in their bank account.

View on HN

I think what has happened is that post war we have defined success as having it better than our parents. Which isn't necessarily incorrect, though ways of measuring that can be. Starting in the '80s people have been making a lot of money in things like real estate and the stock market, while the price of access to opportunities like education and job markets have increased. If you weren't part of the former group, you have essentially been left behind.

At the same time wealth, or inequity, isn't something a lot of people talk about openly. So you are left either accepting your place in the world or you can pretend that you have success by going into debt and hoping for the best. That is that the market continues to be on your side. Some people might even think this is the normal thing to do, not realizing other people have family wealth. Some people realize what is going on, but thinks that it is worth trying anyway. Or they could be those people with family wealth.

This was something that surprised me too. Looking at how someone lived and expecting them to be wealthy, only to find out later that they had no savings for retirement, and selling off property to get out from under leases or mortgages.

Who's really the sucker when they can just keep counting on forever increasing real-estate valuations? Even in the 2008 collapse, banks got bailouts and the market today is just as ridiculous as it was pre-2008.[1] "Too big to fail." The cars, the private school, they're nothing but a couple years of home appreciation with a generous tax writeoff discount. Free money, no work required. Houses in the middle of the desert and homes that have burned to the ground, are worth more than a garage full of Ferraris these days.

Savers are stupidly working hard and socking away meager sums rather than hopping on the housing gravy train.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/06/20/f...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com