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Comment by tjs8rj | Hacker News Reader

FAANG income certainly isn't "rich". Maybe you recognize this and I'm just picking semantics, but I've noticed this annoying trend of FAANG engineers who crack $1m at 29 acting like they are a member of the rich when their just a person with a great job. To get rich comes from investments over time, or an impressive startup exit, or starting a business, or getting lucky. Nobody gets rich on the standard FAANG salary until they've been there for 20 years.

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You and I have very different perspectives on what rich is. If you're 29 years old with >$1M in personal wealth, you're rich. That net worth would put you firmly in the top 1% of net worth at that age.

https://dqydj.com/net-worth-by-age-calculator-united-states/

Apparently so. I don't disagree that you'd be well-off, but you couldn't never work again without a very frugal life, you couldn't vacation every month, you're entire subsistence is still tied to your job you must work to survive, and so on. Certainly in a great position, but being rich is very different

It sounds like your definition of "rich" is actually "independently wealthy". To me those are different. You can still have a job (and need a job to sustain your lifestyle) and still be rich.

Living in a 5000 sq ft luxury apartment in Manhattan makes you rich whether you rent it, own it and regardless if you need to work to afford it.

What the flying fuck. I've never had more than $10k in my life, and that's a recent accomplishment -- most of my life was a single missed-paycheck away from financial insolvency, and for a brief period, I was actually homeless.

For 14 months I lived on a $2,250/mo salary in downtown Boulder, CO. That meant trying to scrounge free meals from meetups or wherever else would feed me.

The idea of having a million dollars, or even making 200-300k a year is so insane to me. If that isn't rich maybe I missed a memo somewhere.

virtually no one feels rich. for the simple fact that you achieving it also normalizes it in your own brain. and the more wealthy you are the more wealthy(-er than you) people you tend to know, so your position relative to your peer group stays largely the same.

i'm not arguing these people aren't rich. just trying to help illuminate why they never feel rich (and therefore don't seem to acknowledge that very obvious fact about themselves).

It's pretty obvious. If you don't know many people who are less wealthy than you then you have no frame of reference to consider yourself wealthy.

That's only a small part of it. Most of the people are the richest in their extended family, and tons of friends from HS, college, etc. so they do know people who are not in their income bracket.

I'd say it's more related to the imposter syndrome. IE if I got here and I'm just ok, clearly this wasn't too hard a level to reach.

That and "well I used to work with so-and-so, and we're about equal, but they're making $800k while I'm stuck making $400k, so I'm clearly failing". Or even $2M vs $10M, etc.

Again, it's crazy, because both people are clearly actually "rich", I'm just trying to explain the mechanics of why so few actually feel that way.

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